Drop in Rankings After Removing Links
-
So I removed some links to a particular homepage for one of the sites we own, this page had A LOT of links pointing to it using exact match anchors. And for the most part the links were coming from low quality pages/content. After removing a good chunk of them I noticed are rankings went down from around 8-9th two weeks ago to 21 as of today. Has anyone else had a problem like this before?
I'm thinking about restoring some of these links now to see if I can recover some of that. Any thoughts on doing this?
Thanks
-
Update on this issue........
I ended up restoring a few of the links I removed but none of the truly crappy ones. It seems though I was just needing to be a little patient. This latest algo update shot be back up to 8th after I had dropped to 30th (after removing a ton of links). So it seems those links were still passing pagerank even though they were total garbage and didn't offer any value whatsoever. I think this is evidence that Google's quality standard when it comes to links definitely went up. Which I guess goes without saying but it's good to have proof. I also hadn't done anything else to the site for the last couple months other than remove those links so there shouldn't have been any other variables at play.
-
I see, Anthony provides some good insights below.
Removing inbound links from other domains thus effects your overall inbound links which then can have an impact on your natural ranking. Restoring them will probably fix the immediate issue. BUT! There is a fine line here that should be discussed.
You don't want to become a victim of link manipulation this can be done by buying a crap ton of domains making some generic content and point them back to one another or just one, creating an internal link ring or link funnel. This will eventually get you penalized. Now, owing a handful of sites and pointing them to one another is perfectly acceptable. An example being Pepsico pointing to Pepsi, Mt. Dew, Taco Bell, Quaker Oats, Tropicana ect.. these are all companies they own. In fact our company owns 3 branded websites, but we were careful only pointing to relevant pages when it suits the user's experience. You may have been benefiting from a form of this, which is why your rank dropped whence you removed the links.
Hope that makes sense.
Don
-
I've done this to several of our other sites and haven't seen a ranking increase or decrease. They have all continued to have roughly the same amount of organic traffic. So I'm assuming these links were really doing nothing from an SEO standpoint and probably a ticking time bomb ready to go off when the next major algo update rolls out.
I may have just gotten a little overzealous when removing them on this particular site. It was for a pretty significant keyword so I'm tempted to maybe restore at least some of them and see what it does.
-
I meant links to the homepage of a site from other sites that we happen to own.
-
Removing backlinks, especially ones with money anchor text, will most definitely cause your rankings to decrease. I can only assume you did this because you viewed the links as spammy or something that could eventually cause you future ranking problems at an algorithmic or manual level. If that is the case, you probably made the right decision if you are hoping this site will rank for the long-term.
Instead of restoring those links, try to find a way to create a few new ones that you feel are safe for the long-term.
-
Rankings are dynamic. Moving 1-3 spots from day to day or even hour to hour is actually common and not really concerning. Now dropping from page 1 (rank 8), to page 3 (rank 21) would be something I would certainly want to to watch.
When you said you removed the links to your homepage from lower ranking pages.. my first question is why? Were they redundant links? Ie you can click a banner or home page button instead? If not, then you are creating orphan pages which from a useability standpoint is not good. A user should always be able to get to your homepage or any main topic pages very easily and apparent. Just look at this forum, even in edit post mode I can still get to Moz.com homepage in 1 click.
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
-
Inbound link is follow link but we put no follow link back - is it beneficial for rankings?
Dear Moz Community, We are operating in a niche market, where there are not so many content marketing options. What we are left with are link exchanging with relevant sites that are on the same topic but to not directly compete with us. Now we know that if we link back to site A and site a links back to us - for google this is not a very good link. But, some of the sites we are exchanging links with, do not know the term follow vs no follow links. My question - if your link is to site A is a no follow link but they give us a follow link - does it mean thats a better option than a follow vs follow. Thanks for help!
Link Building | | advertisingcloud0 -
The No of Sites linking to www.apollopowersystems.com is 50 as per Alexa, but Moz shows that the no of sites linking is 23\. The no has increased in Alexa but in Moz the no is 23 since 3 months. Why is this Difference?
Hi There, As I am new to SEO, so the problem that I am listing below may seem very naive. Please help me out. Please explain me the difference between the no of backlinks of the website, www.apollopowersystems.com as per the websites below. The nos are completely different as per the websites below: As per www.moz.com the no is 23 As per www.ahrefs.com the no currently is 586 As per www.alexa.com the no is 50 Please tell me why these nos are different. Looking forward to hear from you at the earliest. Thanks in advance.
Link Building | | KDKini0 -
Build links to home page or internal to rank internal pages?
I understand that naturally people link to the home page and internal pages - probably the home page more often than not. In order to build a natural looking link profile I also understand that I need a variety of anchor text, brand and url links. Should I be building links mainly to the home page with only a few to internal pages? Ultimately I want my internal pages to rank for specific terms so in my head it makes sense to concentrate my link building effort to internal pages but that would seem unnatural to google I'm sure. For arguments sake if I only built links to the home page with a mix of the anchor texts described above would these internal pages rank eventually anyway as 'link juice' flows throughout the site? Or is it an absolute must to build some links to internal pages. Could a page rank for a keyword without having any links to the site with the keyword anchor text (simply url links) based on the page title/content? Also what is a good ratio of home page to internal links? I would assume around 10:1? A lot of questions I know but I'm confused as to what will be the best strategy.
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
How do you remove links TO your site?
Lots of old links to our wine rack store site from many years ago, how do I get these removed? block them? Not sure if Penguin got us because of these....
Link Building | | AmazingUniverse560 -
Linking Root Domains V.s Total Links
When analysing a company's inbound links, what is more important to note: The number of linking root domains, or the total number of links? And why?
Link Building | | SEOrookie170 -
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 -
Internal Linking - 100 plus links
Hi Everyone, I have a question of how the on-page links are being counted. Say you have a page with a warning of having too many on page links (100+). How are all of these links counted? Let's say there are only 5 links on that page. Do the links on each of those pages count too and so on and so forth? I just want to make sure I have wrapped my head around this correctly. Thanks!
Link Building | | dirigodev0 -
RSS links vs. contextual links
Which has more value? Passes more "link juice"? Auto generated rss links or contextual links?
Link Building | | nicole.healthline0