What do you when the wrong site links to you?

[voicesdotcom]

In doing research of our backlink profile, I've found a couple dozen of links from off-topic websites linking to us.  You see, our domain is Voices.com and tends to scoop up links from unrelated sites that are clearly trying to link to another site such as evp-voices.com or areavoices.com or dozens of others.

What would you do?  Ask the webmaster to remove them because they are completely unrelated?  Or would you keep them if you believed they aren't causing any harm?

[voicesdotcom]

While I'm certainly not engaged in any form of blackhat techniques, we were severely affected by Penguin.  Needless to say, we suffered a 50% drop on April 24 and have not risen back since.  For that reason, yes, I do have link paranoia - good term

I'm thinking of making another post on the subject (YouMoz) because I've finally figured out what happened.  I'm hoping this next update will catch my fix.

For the record, they are not spammy but rather topical sites and directories related to Ghosts or New Age stuff.  Again, we have nothing to do with these topics.

Seems like the consensus is just leave them.  There are about two dozen out of 2000 links I manually reviewed in a spreadsheet.

[sprynewmedia]

I have to disagree with the monetization sentiment.  One presumes a business plan is based on the servicing core topics of the business.  Monetizing off-topic traffic may give you some short term money but it would do nothing to serve your target audience and long term growth.  EPV has nothing to do with voice overs - unless one of their actors is a ghost.  Any pages on his site about EPV would only water down his messaging and confuse his audience.  It would be distracting and disingenuous to try and monetize this traffic.

As to the first part, again: outcome of cost/benefit analysis (which should include opportunity cost).

[MarieHaynes]

I've noticed a lot of "link paranoia" lately.  Ever since Google started to take action on sites that are seriously trying to game the SERPS webmasters are paying a lot more attention to their backlink profile.

A few unrelated links are not going to get you penalized.

Penguin and manual unnatural links penalties are not intended to granularly punish every single unrelated or anchor texted link.  Rather, the idea was to punish sites that are actively engaging in webspam.

If you are not actively engaging in webspam, then there is no need to worry about your backlinks bringing you down.  The one exception could be negative SEO.  But, I personally believe that 99% of the people who think they are being negatively SEO'd are not.  People look at their backlink profile and think AGH!  There are links here that I didn't make!  It must be a competitor trying to bring me down!  When in reality, every site is going to attract unusual links from unusual sources.

I do believe that negative SEO is possible, but rare.  In order to effectively do negative SEO you would need to bombard a site with followed links containing their desired anchor text.  A few links here and there aren't going to do it.  A campaign like that would be obvious.  And if you are seeing a pile of anchor texted spammy links then just disavow them and that disarms the attacker.

Should you disavow or try to remove these links?  I would say no.  Should you write to the webmaster and say, "Hey, I think you meant to link to this other site, not me?"  I suppose you could if you wanted to try to help the webmaster out.  But given that those links could actually be helpful to your site, I would just leave them.

[EGOL]

When I say that my site has about a million of these links that is not an exaggeration.

My rankings are great.  If I decided to do something about these links I could spend tens of thousands of dollars fighting a problem that does not exist.

I'll wait until they prove to be a problem.

**If he's getting traffic from SEs on the wrong topic, the benefits of solving a few of the more authoritative back links would be worth the time. **

I'd enjoy that traffic and try to monetize it.  I doubt that these links are causing any rankings that are unrelated.

[SVmedia]

At first glance I would not be worried about it.  I tend to think those types of links won't hurt unless they're extremely excessive/abusive.. else negative SEO could really get out of hand.  And you're website has some very strong relevant links pointing to it already.

[sprynewmedia]

Which would be the answer to your cost/benefit analysis.

If he's getting traffic from SEs on the wrong topic, the benefits of solving a few of the more authoritative back links would be worth the time.

[EGOL]

I don't enjoy these links pointing at my site.... but I don't think that it is a good use of my time trying to chase down invisible people in another hemisphere who are probably behind the links and would not take them down if I could get in touch with them.

[sprynewmedia]

I agree but only after doing a link profile and cost/benefit analysis. Assuming away spam, if a significant number of sites are linking to him on the wrong topic,  that would be something I would want to correct.

[EGOL]

Every website with any amount of traffic and spider action will pick up unrelated links.

Some of them are from blackhats, some are from scrapers, some from people building some type of conglomerated site, some even from university experiments.

One of my sites has about a million of these links.

I don't worry about them.  I rarely even look at my links because these are so numerous I have a hard time finding the good ones.

You have a great domain, looks like you have a fantastic website.  I would not worry about this for a minute.

[sprynewmedia]

This case is a little tricky in that there are degrees of 'wrong'. I'm assuming these are not spam links but just off topic. Here you have to weigh the value of the general link equity vs potentially confusing SE's about your site's topic.

Rand just finished a Whiteboard on how important topic is becoming.

If you decide they are hurting, I suggest contacting the site to outline how the link isn't serving their visitors. Even provide a couple alternative site that would be better (ie,  make it worth their  time)

I would hesitate to use the disavow tool. It's supposed to be a last resort for spam links and that doesn't really apply here.