Should I remove paid links?

[Mulith]

I recently added about 20 paid links from directories but have since seen a 10% drop in traffic. I did also delete about 1000 pages of content that had no inbound links and were duplicated on other sites on the web and replaced the content with new content supplied by a client but still duplicated on other sites on the web, old URLs no longer valid or linked to, new content on new URLs.

Assuming the drop in traffic had nothing to do with the content change mentioned above, should I remove the paid links in an attempt to recover? I don't think the old content was bringing in much traffic as it appeared elsewhere on more authoritive sites than mine.

[DROIDSTERS]

Hi Mulith

Haven't checked out the situation, but I don't think it is the paid links from directories, here is a blog post from Matt cutts addressing the topic http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/ (It's old, but I don't think much more has officially been released by Google). Often when you do big changes (the right way) on a website your ranking initially drop, just to recover when Google has understood what has happened on your website. Could be alot of factor influencing the drop in traffic, and is probably the result of tampering with the existing site structure/content. I have often had it that when I replace old content, ranking initially drop and later on increase again. Hope you recover Cheers

[Paessler]

Are you seeing the drop in traffic across the board, or on a few pages? Is only Google traffic affected, or also direct traffic, referrals...? If you make different changes (as in this case adding links and deleting pages), you should not just assume that one has no effect, but try to get all data possible. Also, did you redirect the URLs of the deleted pages? Have your rankings changed? Could there be any seasonal changes?

Having said that, you might very well be penalized for getting paid links if google knows about these paid directories.