Dirty Link Profile - Suggestions?
-
Ok, so I was just hired to do SEO for a company and so I did a backlink analysis. As it turns out, they've got a pretty dirty link profile - footer links, white on white links, unrelated links, tiny font links, links from penalized sites, hardly any branded links... you get it.
I was thinking about taking the worst of the worst links, removing them and leaving the rest, just to clean it up a little. I don't want them to get penalized.... but... I don't want their rankings to drop either.
Think I should leave them all and just start building relevant, branded links?
OR
Clean up the whole link profile?
OR
Just clean it up a little?
-
I have heard multiple reports recently of spammy backlinks hurting a site. Seems Google is more willing to penalize a site for bad linking practices.
-
To follow up on this, the backlinks were in fact hurting rankings. We removed some paid backlinks and immediately saw large increases in rankings. I hope this helps someone else.
When I asked this question I really did not believe that removing backlinks would improve rankings, but it did.
Thanks!
-
If the bad links are not currently hurting then I wouldn't worry too much about them hurting them in the future. I would advise the owner of the site of what you have found, explain the risks, and then offer him your advice. Not that you are excusing yourself if you advise them poorly, but knowing the risks upfront makes it easier if something does go wrong later.
-
I would just leave the old links and start building new, good links.
I would double-check that their site is clean and remove anything poor, though.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
I am looking for a software to keep track of the back links or link building
Hi Guys, I am very new hear. I just joined. I have a few websites that I need to manage. I am looking for a software that will allow me to manually add the links that I have been able to acquire. It would also be a bonus if it could search for the links to my site and to see if its still active. Because I have a freelancer working a few hours a week on link building and I need to keep track of the links. I am looking for something simple and good. Any suggestions? By the way, I used Raven Tools many years ago, and it had this feature. But since joining Moz, I don't want to be paying for 2 subscriptions. And I don't know if Raven still has this feature. Your suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you. Ryan
Link Building | | RyanNewman0 -
Why are bit.ly and ow.ly links showing up as Inbound Links?
Hello! I noticed this question was asked a while back (around 2013 i think), but I still don't quite understand why I'm seeing these shortened URLs come up as Inbound Links? Can someone please explain? Thanks,
Link Building | | txwildcard
Carlos0 -
Do links from between common sites you run count as "bad" links?
Hi everyone,
Link Building | | AMA-DataSet
Iv recently been asked to review a group of sites. There are 3 sites, each of these sites has a link to the other two sites within the footer or the navigation.
These site are about a similar topic each provides a different perceptive or aims at a specific section of the industry so its not like the links are to irreverent sites. However because the links are in a global section they are repeated thousands of times on each site and count for a large proportion of the link profile to each site, I don't think this is good practise and I want to remove them or at least add a no-follow but my client insists they are relevant to each other and doesn't not want the links removing. What would be best in this situation? remove them? no-follow them? or leave them? Thank you in advance,
Liam0 -
What is good quality link?
Recently we did some job for our friend who promised us link from his page for to ours. His page is very well ranking for key word we try to rank as well and has good authority. What would be a good link for our website to get from his in order to help us to rank better but still did not steel his traffic? Thank you
Link Building | | VillasDiani0 -
Outbound links
Hi there, i know inbound links are what hold the main value in terms of link building but if i have an inbound link from a big company such as ITV or BBC and they have put an article on their site linking back to mine, would it be beneficial if i made a comment on my site and then link back to their article or will this not really help? Sorry as you can tell im very new to seo! thanks anthony
Link Building | | anthonybriant0 -
JavaScript is crawled by search engines, isn’t it? Does it mean that links embedded in JavaScript pass link juice?
I wonder If links embedded in JavaScript from an external Website pass link juice to the linked page and thus have a positive effect on google rankings. I read that JavaScipt is craweld. Does it mean that also the link juice is passed? I'm looking forward to your answers.
Link Building | | Tabea0 -
Are 36 links from one site to nested pages better than one link to the root domain?
I have a Driving School website www.1stclassdriving.co.uk. The site is structured geographically with 36 area pages, one
Link Building | | Brian_Worger
page per area post code and one page per Driving Instructor. I am trying to develop links and have found a site (da91 pa
63) where I can create area links to each of my area pages if I
wish. Is it best to just create one link to the root page or
should I create 36 individual links to each area page? - which is most valuable?0 -
The Value Of A Link
Hi There, Let's say I am able to get a link from a very well trust worthy blog that writes abot things related to my business. Now my question is how much value does another link with the same anchor text, from the same blog has compared to the first link, or compared to a new link from a slightly less powerfull blog? Or in another words, if I got 1 link from this great website should I invest my time to find another website where I can get a link from or should I invest it in getting another link from the website I already got a link from ( which might be easier)?
Link Building | | liors0