Can changing our links page make our rankings drop through the floor?

[TEFLScot]

Hi all,

When I first started at my current job, most of the link building (aside from submitting to free directories left, right and centre) was replying to every spammy reciprocal email and adding them to our links page!

Now we're all a bit wiser about such matters (thanks SEOMoz!), I want to get our links page turned into something actually useful.  My plan was to get it neatly categorised, with recommendations, cut out unrelated links that would be useless to visitors and call it something like "Our Friends"

I thought this might be useful for future link building efforts, but in its current state, it's a complete mess.

However, I am worried about cutting out a lot of links if they have been reciprocal ones.  Are the sort of sites that would be sending typical spammy link exchange emails for window installation in NY likely to notice our UK education site taking away their link six months later and take away ours?  If they do, will losing links from these sites harm us?  Perhaps more importantly, is my plan a terrible idea in the first place?

Look forward to hearing from y'all!

[irvingw]

I would personally remove the page(s), but you could also do the following if you are afraid of losing links from partners linking to your site when they see their links are no longer there.

a) nofollow or javascript all of the links

b) noindex, nofollow, noarchive the links page(s)

c) block the links section in robots.txt

at a quick glance or to a non SEO person it would appear that nothing has changed, in reality you neutered all of the links - you should definitely do something to protect your site.

[TEFLScot]

Thanks everyone, those are some really useful bits of advice!

Salman - that's a nice way of looking at it.  I bet that will help me persuade my boss to let me do it as I'm sure he'll worry otherwise!

Aaron/Kieran - I've got a feeling that they are definitely not good links and there's some dodgy looking stuff popping up in Open Site Explorer.  Content's going to be a big part of our future strategy, though I've been interested in how well competitors with poor content have been ranking in comparison and wondering if we are being penalised somewhere.   Our recent focus has been much more on improving on site SEO and generating better quality content rather than blindly plugging away on low quality links and we've been steadily climbing rankings since I started that.

EGOL - Thanks for the link!  Similar to what Aaron was saying, it really does emphasise having a good quality well-built site over supposed "easy" linkbuilding.  Plus, it certainly makes me feel rather less guilty about removing them!

Thanks very much for the feedback everyone!

[EGOL]

a little off-topic, but relevant

A post made by link trader Maluk nearly ten years ago but still relevant today... (today you would add "nofollow" and scripted links to his complaint....

http://forums.seochat.com/google-optimization-7/warning-ref-link-partners-5513.html

[kdaly100]

Hi Amy

_will losing links from these sites harm us? _

If you are worried about the link quality just put them into Open Site Explorer to see their weighting.  If they are spammy then delete.

_Perhaps more importantly, is my plan a terrible idea in the first place? _

If you know/feel/think that your link list is spammy then I would delete them and so it is a good idea.  This SEOMOZ link is worth a read as a refresher course on the topic if you haven't seen it already. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-building-101-the-almost-complete-link-guide

Good luck with your efforts

[AaronSchinke]

Salmen is right... I'll add that not only is a link from a spammy site bad, but reciprocal linking can also downgrade the value of a link since it seems forced, which it is.

I hate to sound so cliche, but if you can come up with content people will link to and share without having to trade links with them, then you will get the most SEO benefit.

However, you are definitely headed in the right direction and if linking to your friends is helpful to your audience... do it!

[salmann]

The plan is actually good and you should have done it from the start.

Consider link worth from spammy site as 0.2 as compare to a link from great resource as 8.

so if you loose 40 links from spammy site, and gained one link from good site it will be balanced or more beneficial.

Don't worry about loosing your reciprocal links if you intend to work on the plan of gaining more links from reputable sites!