Which links should I remove?
-
What is your general approach when removing links for a new client? Just taken on some new work and found links that I wouldn't dream of building now (unrelated domain name, blogroll, single word, exact match anchor, dead sites).
However some of these are brand anchor links, and some of the pages have decent Page Rank (2/3/4). Obviously I don't want to remove links that might actually be helping the site in a weird way. It would be good to get an idea of other peoples approach to link removal - what goes, what stays etc?
-
Yeah I deliberately showed you that as a pretty awful example haha! This is what I'm dealing with. Unfortunately most of the links follow a very similar theme and that's why I'm worried I'm going to be removing a lot of links and alerting something at Google!!
Also, there's a few links in the same format as that example, but which have brand anchor texts and the page has Page Rank - I assume it should still go?
-
oh yes, that one definitely has to go! not only is the page full with spammy looking links, the content is also not original but copied or scraped...
-
Hi Philipp
Thanks for your prompt reply. The company did receive a unnatural links message back in July 2012 (along with thousands of other sites at the same time!) - however this was the 'targeted action against links' message rather than a site penalty.
I agree with your rule of thumb but it turns out that most of their links go against this principle - hence my caution! I'm tempted to remove all the links with PR N/A or Zero straight away - I'd be surprised if Google was assigning any value to these anyway.
Obviously I want to future-proof my strategy too - I don't want to have to clean up after getting hit by a penalty or an algorithm update!
Let me show you one of the pages as an example. There's a few links on this page so obviously I'm not revealing who my client is. http://scorec.org/the_plumbing_information_you_need_to_read/
-
That's a tough one, especially since I have no clue what your clients business is...
My rule of thumb: Any link and comment that is obviously made for seo and/or marketing one's own site must go (since it's also bad rep for a company). Everything that doesn't add any value to the content: go!
If the links are situated okay and not obviously spammy you could leave them unless you get a penalty. Same for exact match anchor: if you haven't been penalised there's probably no need to remove them now, but take care not to build more links with the same anchor text.
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
-
Do the links from top websites' forums boost in-terms of backlinks?
If we get any backlinks from discussions/forums of top websites like wordpress and joomla forums; do they count as valid and authority improving backlinks? I mean about the dofollow links.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz1 -
Outranked by link farm
Hello Mozzers, I got a questions about some rankings. Some of my sites always had no. 1 rankings for most of the competitive terms per niche. I recently made the change to a full responsive design for more mobile friendliness. No all of the sudden I see different competitors that are not mobile friendly outranking me for some of my most important keywords but also I see some link farm sites (like: camping.startpagina.nl) outranking me for some terms. I was under the impression that Google doesn't like link farm sites? Also I provide a lot of good unique content on my pages and my competitor does no such thing. Still for some terms he outranks me. I understand that it can't be just 1 thing and that there are a lot of factors playing a rol in the big picture but still, you must understand that this is pretty frustrating. I obey the rules of the search engines and see competitors do no such thing and still being outranked by them. Further details of this matter can be send to you in PM if you need it. Looking forward for your thoughts on this. regards Jarno
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JarnoNijzing0 -
How Can I Safely Establish Homepage Relevancy With Internal Keyword Links?
My website has roughly 1000-2000 pages. However, our homepage is lacking relevancy as to what it is about. One way that I'd like to tackle this problem, is by updating many of our pages with internal linking. I often hear, use exact keyword links with caution, but have assumed this mainly referred to external backlinks. Would it be a disaster to set up our single most relevant keyword on about 300 pages and point it to our homepage? There are breadcrumbs on our site, but the home link uses an image (It's a picture of a house, if you're curious.) Am I better off just to change that to our most relevant keyword? I could use any advice on internal links for establishing better homepage relevancy. Thank you!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | osaka730 -
Footer images links, good or bad?
Hi everybody! I have a very serius question because i have a problem with this. We run a website of voucher codes and we are looking that our rivals are putting their logos on footers of online stores with images, sometimes link to home, sometimes link to store within webpage. Should i ask for the same to online stores? I have scary to get a penalty by Google. Please help me with this and recommend me something because we are doing fair play but rivals are doing this and they get best results in SERPS. Thanks very much! Best regards!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | pompero990 -
Deep Link Ratio
Hi there, What ratio links should be to a homepage compared to deep links? I'm aware there probably isn't a fixed ratio, and it may depend on niche, but i've heard Penguin is on the look out for people that link to heavily to content deep in their sites (product pages etc.) Any thoughts?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jennie.evans0 -
Can I be penalized for offering incentives for links and social followers?
A competitor of mine is using contest/loyalty software like ContestBurner or PunchTab to generate social followers and links. This has been very successful, and over the past several months his rankings have improved. Does anyone know if Google is "OK" with this type of program? I'm trying to decide if I should start one myself.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dfeemster1 -
Auto-link inside your own site to the same domain is white-hat?
Hi, I am using a plugin in wordpress that make auto link for some certain keywords in my site suppose: My site is example.com My important keyword is: sample and across the domain example.com through out the content if there is the word: sample it is linked automatically to example.com I like your opinion about this practice, if it may carry any kind of punishment by SEs? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Pooria0 -
Ditching of spammy links - will it be of benefit?
Hi there. We have recently taken over the SEO for a five-star hotel who rank very well already for a lot of their main terms, largely down to the fact they have decent off-site strength (as yet very little on-page optimisation has been done, so they aren't appearing for some quite key terms). This off-page strength includes around 2000 links, giving the home page an authority of 63 in the OSE tool. However, upon looking at the links to check they were pointing to the most relevant page etc, I notice they have A LOT of spammy links, pointing to their site with anchor text like 'cheap cialis' or 'buy valium'. Clearly these aren't the kinds of links that should be pointing to a five-star hotel, but should I expect to see much of a drop by attempting to remove these links? We obviously want to clean their link portfolio up, but I'm not sure they would be too happy if all their top rankings disappeared - even if only temporarily, and even if done with the best intentions. I ask as none of the other sites we handle SEO for have had such a proliferation of these links, so I've not seen the ramifications in full. Any help would be much appreciated, along with advice on the best way to remove these links.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | themegroup0