Should you bother with an "impact links" manual action
-
I have a couple sites that have these, and I have done a lot of work to get them removed, but there seems to be very little if any benefit from doing this. In fact, sites were we have done nothing after these penalties seem to be doing better than ones where we have done link removal and the reconsideration request.
Google says "I_f you don’t control the links pointing to your site, no action is required on your part. From Google’s perspective, the links already won’t count in ranking. However, if possible, you may wish to remove any artificial links to your site and, if you’re able to get the artificial links removed, submit a reconsideration request__. If we determine that the links to your site are no longer in violation of our guidelines, we’ll revoke the manual action._"
I would guess a lot of people with this penalty don't even know they have it, and it sounds like leaving it alone really doesn't hurt your site.
If seems to me that just simply ignoring this and building better links and higher quality content should help improve your site rankings vs. worrying about trying to get all these links removed/disavowed.
What are your thoughts? Is it worth trying to get this manual action removed?
-
Hey Dave,
It's unfortunate but very much true. I have experimented this with dozens of site
- Deleting thousands of artificial links
- Disavow links
- Fixing Anchors
but recovery is always not measured up to expectations. I tried different with couple of sites (Penguin 2.1), I never remove back-links
- Just build more quality links
and recovery is far better.
I feel, deleting even spamy links leads to loss of link juice which brings things further down for a while.
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
-
Is it good practice to use "SAVE $1000's" in SEO titles and Meta Descriptions?
Our company sells a product system that will permanently waterproof almost anything. We market it as a DIY system. I am working on SEO titles and descriptions. This topic came up for discussion, if using "SAVE $1000's.." would help or hurt. We are trying to create an effective call to action, but we are wondering if search engines see it as click bait. Can you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tyler.louth0 -
How Do You Do Link Building??
I am starting to use the Moz pro tools like optimizing on page SEO for keywords and looking for opportunities. I know link building is a huge part for getting rankings on keywords in google search. Where do I start and how do I do the link building process for specific keywords I can rank for?? Thank you in advance for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wickerparadise1 -
List of SEO "to do's" to increase organic rankings
We are looking for a complete list of all white hat SEO "to do's" that an SEO firm should do in order to help increase Google/Bing/Yahoo organic rankings. We would like to use this list to be sure that the SEO company/individual we choose uses all these white hat items as part of an overall SEO strategy to increase organic rankings. Can anyone please point me in the right direction as to where we can obtain this complete list? If this is not the best approach, please let me know what is, as I am not an SEO person. Thank you kindly in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RetractableAwnings.com0 -
Pages with rel "next"/"prev" still crawling as duplicate?
Howdy! I have a site that is crawling as "duplicate content pages" that is really just pagination. The rel next/prev is in place and done correctly but Roger Bot and Google are both showing duplicated content + duplicate page titles & meta's respectively. The only thing I can think of is we have a canonical pointing back at the URL you are on - we do not have a view all option right now and would not feel comfortable recommending it given the speed implications and size of their catalog. Any experience, recommendations here? Something to be worried about? /collections/all?page=15"/>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | paul-bold0 -
Does the order matter for a rel="alternate" tag
Hi! We just launched our new mobile site and I am trying to get the rel="alternate" tags put on the desktop site. The specs had the tags formatted like this: They ended up like this: My developer is telling me the order does not matter. Can anyone confirm? Does the order matter? Thank You!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shop.nordstrom0 -
Ranking of Moz "A" grade page.
Hello, I built a site in Weebly recently and it was indexed by Google and the one page in fact ranked #1 for one keyword. I used absolutely no SEO optimization techniques for this. It then rapidly dropped out of sight (not surprising ). I have now optimized the site in general and specifically the page www.insolvencylifeline.co.za/voluntary-sequestration-process as recommended by Moz. All the optimization was on-page, except that I also used the SEOProfiler tool to submit the site to their list of search engines recommended and I manually linked to a number of reputable directories. I did this on 09/03. If I search for www.insolvencylifeline.co.za/voluntary-sequestration-process I can see the page has been cached on 10/3. However,if I search for any of my 3 search terms for example "voluntary sequestration" and then do an advanced search for "insolvencylifeline", I only get search results for pages cached before 9/3. My page www.insolvencylifeline.co.za/voluntary-sequestration-process which I know is fully optimized (“A” Moz grade) for the search term, does not rank at all. Also if I search for www.insolvencylifeline.co.za, I can see that the page also was cached on 10/3. However, it does not show www.insolvencylifeline.co.za/voluntary-sequestration-process at all and the other pages shown were all cached before 9/3. Does this mean that the page www.insolvencylifeline.co.za/voluntary-sequestration-process does not rank at all even though it is indexed? If so, any thoughts on why? Regards, Gerhard.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gerrhard0 -
Error: Missing required field "updated"
In my WordPress blog, there are pages for tags,categories,... like : https://www.abc.com/blog/category/how-to-cook-something/ On these pages I am getting the following error: Error: Missing required field "updated" So far I have 39 if these errors. Please let me know if this is an important issue to pay attention to? If yes, how I can fix it? Thanks Everyone
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlirezaHamidian0 -
Can I reduce number of on page links by just adding "no follow" tags to duplicate links
Our site works on templates and we essentially have a link pointing to the same place 3 times on most pages. The links are images not text. We are over 100 links on our on page attributes, and ranking fairly well for key SERPS our core pages are optimized for. I am thinking I should engage in some on-page link juice sculpting and add some "no follow" tags to 2 of the 3 repeated links. Although that being said the Moz's on page optimizer is not saying I have link cannibalization. Any thoughts guys? Hope this scenario makes sense.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | robertrRSwalters0