Should I Pay For Link Removal?
-
Hi,
I'm in the middle of a link removal campaign and getting a lot of replies from site owners asking for payment or directing me to a link which is effectively a payment page.
The way I see it is my client is paying me to do their SEO. I'd rather be spending my time and their money building quality links, therefore the link removal process is in my way and requests for payment an insult.
However, I am not without sympathy for site owners being expected to remove links free of charge. After all there's absolutely no incentive for them.
So far I've had a zero tolerance attitude towards this and refused to pay, but just wondered what everyone else's opinion was.
On the other hand, many site owners have been very helpful and removed the links at my request. Is it the right thing for me to remove these domains from my Disavow Links file?
I'm finding it to be a bit of a moral conundrum to be honest!
-
Anthony, Marie, Chris, thanks a million for your responses, all most helpful.
Chris, it's funny you should mention this: "...site owners probably feel violated and that you essentially got what was coming to you."
The most recent response I had from a site owner was exactly this. The email stated the link had not appeared there by chance, it had been placed free of charge by either my client, or someone acting on their behalf. Which is true, unfortunately.
Marie, the particular sites I'm dealing with at the moment I will never want links from in future
Thanks again for your responses, you've definitely answered my query.
-
You're right. There's no harm in including a file on your disavow even if they have removed your link. However, if you think you could get a natural link from this site in the future you may want to take it off of your list. (That's pretty uncommon though.)
There is a limit to the size of the disavow file (2 MB) but it's pretty hard to reach this limit. If you had a file that was too big then you'd want to not include sites that had removed your link already.
-
Paying for link removal is a conundrum since as you state the site owners probably feel violated and that you essentially got what was coming to you. I have chosen to pay a couple that had been de-indexed from Google and even so, one did remove the links and the other has not.
As to your other question on removing sites from your disavow list that have been cooperative and removed the links, from what I have read there is no harm in disavowing them anyway. The risk is that some site owners may not have properly removed the link and it may come back. They may have temporarily redirected it to hide it or they don't know how to remove it possibly due to an older platform. I would be interested to hear from experts such as Marie on this point.
-
I almost never pay for link removal. John Mueller mentioned in a hangout that if you have a manual review then you can just make a note in your spreadsheet that the site owner asked for money and then just disavow that link.
However, if I have a site where I am really struggling to get links removed, I might recommend paying for a few to come down. I don't like to pay more than $10 per link though.
-
No, you do not have to pay for link removals. Document the request, note they asked for payment, and then disavow the site.
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-disavow-link-payment-17387.html
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
-
Value of Links? What is each link worth?
Morning Everyone, I just had this thought and wondered what everyone's opinions were in terms of link value in monetary terms. We'll assume for the purposes of this that the links come from contextually relevant sites and that the sites in question have got the Moz DA from being high quality and have a good quality incoming link profile. Its a bit of a theoretical question, but i guess imagine if the only way you could get links was to pay for them, what would they be worth to you. This is link value for SEO purposes, they will have in addition value from traffic from good sites, that no doubt varies wildly depending on topic. I assume everyone also agrees on: The first link from a domain is the most valuable High DA sites are worth more than low ones. So could anyone who has an opinion on the link value suggest a monetary value for links. Its really just using a monetary amount to see how best to target my time. Here is my example of what might be expected, but I am hoping people with more knowledge will perhaps correct it. DA Rating First Link 2nd-5th Link 5th-10th Link 10Plus Links 5 $5 $2 $1 $0 15 $7 $3 $2 $1 25 $25 $10 $5 $2 35 $45 $20 $7 $3 45 $65 $30 $11 $4 55 $95 $45 $19 $5 65 $200 $100 $45 $6 75 $350 $120 $65 $9 85 $700 $240 $95 $15 95 $1100 $450 $200 $30
Link Building | | wellandpower1 -
Internal links: How do I find keywords that are not linked to a URL?
Hi Moz members I'd really like to place an internal link of every instance of an important keyword phrase "cycling caps" or "cycling cap" to my eComm category page
Link Building | | andystorey
https://www.prendas.co.uk/collections/headwear/cotton-caps I feel this would not only help my customers browsing my store, but I believe it will help from an SEO perspective. How can I search my site using Moz, Screaming Frog, Google etc to find every time cycling cap(s) is used but is not linked to the above URL? I can then apply the same for cycling jerseys, socks, etc Andy0 -
Removing a link to a 404 page
Hi guys, If I found a low quality or spam link pointing to my site, but the link points to a 404, 500, etc (inaccessible, error page), Should I bother asking him to remove the link? Thanks
Link Building | | WizardOfMoz0 -
Links to main landing category page or links directly to products
I have an ecommerce website and a manufacturer is providing links directly to my website from their products pages because they do not sell directly online. What is my best linking juice power for this situation:
Link Building | | dsmolinski
Manufacturer A has a number of different brands: brand1, brand2, brand3 and a number of different products in each of it brands. They are currently linking their individual products to my individual products on my website. My website is setup like this:
my.com/manufacture-A
my.com/manufacture-A/brand1
my.com/manufacture-A/brand1/product1
my.com/manufacture-A/brand1/product2
my.com/manufacture-A/brand2
my.com/manufacture-A/brand2/product1
my.com/manufacture-A/brand2/product2 What is the best practice for this situation:
--Linking manufacturer product to my product
--Linking manufacturer product to my associated brand page
--Linking manufacturer product to main manufacturer page
--or something else? Thank you and I can provide more details if need be. Denny0 -
Is link exchange a reliable source to get back links?
I read a latest post on seomoz that _“Do not buy or exchange link with anyone who contacts you. This is completely against Google's policies and if they were to find out, you could be penalized." So I went through Google's ''Link Schemes'' and found that ''Excessive link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you")'' can negatively impact a site's ranking . _ So is it the ''excessive'' link exchanging that can cause a negative impact? Exchanging links with good quality, cached sites (without excessive doing) can do good or bad? Can anyone please explain to me in detail?
Link Building | | semvibe0 -
Thoughts on a particular company -- Paying for Links
Any thoughts on using companies like Text Link Ads (www.textlinkads.com) to do link building? Seems a bit dangerous to me, but if the articles are decent and relevant -- can it hurt you? Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks. MM
Link Building | | MWM37720