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My SEO firm confirmed on 4/5 that they've removed links from a site www.fantake.com.  However, as of today, it still shows on GWM there are 1100 links coming from that site.

Questions:

1. where can I find out bad links from root domain listed on GWM?  There are some domains showing they have hundreds of links to our site.

2. Between the lag time of GWM crawling, is there a tool that  I can use and verify if a link is indded removed?

I understand both of your views (Alan and Thomas'), and my feel for it is 50 & 50, hmmm, what should I do?

Can I then, have both sites, let the current one there to capture residual sales from SEO, and keep the new one separate, and build from scratch.  Does this sound like a good plan?

We plan to re-direct our current site to a new site (with a new domain name as well) because the current site has many unnatural links and it would take too many hours to fix it and yet, the result is unknown and also the site has issues with userability and other SEO issues.

Our question: since the current site is associated with unnatural links, but, it is a domain with 12 years history, should we re-direct it to the new website?  My understanding is that no one is sure if the penalty will be carried over, is it something we can cut off if it happened? or should we not to risk re-direct, and just start from fresh?

We are re-design our home page, one are of the current home page has a drop down window called "popular products" .  We wrote short articles for our keywords and have them linked to product page. In the past, it has helped us rank.

However, with new Google rules, our feeling is that such practice is no good.  So, we lean towards to remove it.  Still, we'd like to hear some opinions and ask some questions too:

www.butterflycraze.com

1. is it clear to you that this is not good in Google's eyes?

2. how do I determine if these links serving any SEO purpose now after Panda?

3. depend on the answer to 2), what should we do about these pages?  shall be re-direct or shall we remove them from Google index?

Hi Ryan,

Great information.

We have had a tug of war with our SEO company who has built "unatural links".  They claim it is impossible to do the job.

I wonder if you can explain your line ...if you build links on disposable sites which are not monitored, you clearly wont find help having them removed) and how the links were built." so that I can access how possible it is to get our bad links removed.

Jo Framcosco,

Do you care to elaborate why you'd recommend aspx ASPDOTNETSTOREFRONT?

Great idea!  That would make our job a lit easier.

Hi Nakul,

Thanks for the detailed suggestion again.

We will take Richard's suggestion to explore the possibility of hiring  Virante if the price is right.  However, it is great learning experience to gain insight to your thought process.

Have a great weekend!

Richard,

Thank you so much for sharing the info.  I will definitely give them a call and compare their cost vs. what Nakul suggested.

It's very kind of you to share the "secret".

The SEO firm we hired built 2797 links with 123 domain within two month period (March and April) when we don't know better.

We received Google's warning on 3/28, and they didn't tell us anything but keep building.  Well, that's history now.  We learned our lesson.  That's why we are a member of SEOmoz.

The SEO firm is not too keen on helping us remove the link (we've discontinue the service) after one initial attempt to a few site with tons of links (performed by their Indian team).

I've got advice from this Forum regarding link removal.  The most suggestions we get is to remove it as many as possible and move on building good links.  But, I am afraid such approach will take us years to come ahead as we are under staffed.

I saw here that someone mentioned their link building firm wants to charge $10 for links removed.  Based on that idea, I wonder if I should offer some monetary incentive?  If so, what amount would make financial sense?

I want to know when it comes to link building with relevant bloggers, is there a difference among the following in terms of SEO value?

1. product review

2. product giveaway

3. guest blog

Also, what would look natural o Google as how many of such links I can build per month?  We are a consumer products, we've had lots of bloggers approach us wanting to do the above link building with us, if they fit the profile, high quality site, relevant to our business, does that mean I can do as many per month as we'd like to?

I enjoy your posts a lot as you make sharp points and offer useful ideas.

Hi Josh,

Our site was also hit.  Will you take a look at our site: www. butterflycraze.com

Thanks for the question and responses.

I just love all the answers and responses from SEOmoz - they are real world questions and you get real time quality response.  It is so helpful for small business.

Nakul,

Thank you for clarifying this question. We are also in the same situation.  It is so good to have someone in the field to offer advice.

Hi!

We recently re-designed our home page in early March.  After Google panda, we re-tweaked it again, before we take it live, we really want to get some expert's opinions.  We would be grateful for any comments/suggestions/feedback, particularly in the following area (you will need to click a few times to get the page to real size):

1. is the bottom content ok? please scroll down all the way.

2)  We used semantic keywords for 5-6 anchor interlinks to the same page to promote core products from the home page.  Is this too much?

3. 80% links on the footer is a repetition of header navigation links, do these footer serve any SEO value or is it over - optimization?

Here is the URL:

https://www.dropbox.com/gallery/36547134/1/WebDesign?h=109d4a

Thanks a lot!

I told Google that SEO company promised they will remove as best as they can.  I don't know how it sounds to Google.

Yes, I did tell Google their name.  Now, SEO Co. give me run around about removing the link.

But, from the letter above from Google, it stated "If we find that it's no longer in violation of our Webmaster Guidelines, we'll reconsider our indexing of the site.".  Sound like Google doesn't care who did it.

After submit RR last week, we got the following from Google:

"We've received a request from a site owner to reconsider how we index the following site: http://www.butterflycraze.com/

We'll review the site. If we find that it's no longer in violation of our Webmaster Guidelines, we'll reconsider our indexing of the site. Please allow several weeks for the reconsideration request. We do review all requests, but unfortunately we can't reply individually to each request."

We got discouraged that Goodle said that it'd reconsider if we are no longer in violation.  However, we have about 4500 unatural links created by SEO co, who has proceed with some, but, we aren't seen reduction of such links.  In fact, it went up.  I need advise as how to remove the following (they are the few site with bulk links):

1. fantake.com: have their webmaster info, however, since last request, we still have 1200 links from it.

2. blogspot.com - is there any way to remove links from such site?

3. onlineunionmall.com: don't see any contact info on their site

Some suggest us move on by building good links, but, to dilute the power of 4500 unnatural links, it would take forever.

Do you know a reputable SEO company that has good experience in optimizing aspx website ?

We are looking for one if you know one.

I really appreciate your long and detailed answer.  That does crystalize the issue for me.  I will go on and collect PR 2 above sites with relevant and quality content.

If I were to do 10 product review, 10 giveaway, and 10 guest blog with 10 sites each, that would make 30 blog links, what else should I being doing and and how many links total on a monthly basis that would look natural to Google?  In general, if you'd be kind enough, what should I consider for link velocity and link profile?  We are thinking to publish some PR and social bookmarking, but, with the latter, how many is natural?

Hi!

A few days ago, someone asked about how to ask links from bloggers and we got good answers, specially from Egol.

But, I do want to add to that question: after conducting research on each blogger and make sure they have good quality content,

1. how would you factor in their page rank, visitors, page view and social media info?

2. if they don't have much traffic, with PR3 (we are PR4), which means we can't count on too much traffic from them, but, will backlink from such places deemed as quality link by Google?  I do  understand the higher number in PR and traffic is better, but, in our case, they don't come by often.  Is it still worthwhile to do the lower sites?

Thanks again for sharing.

At this point, we also lean towards building good quality links as what Ivaylo suggested.

Thank you for your suggestions - they are what we wanted to do.  However, we lack the expertise to tell what links are "bad" among 600 links SEO company built for us.

They've started removing among 4 sites who have hundreds of links to our site.  Three of them, according to SEO firm, were confirmed "removed", but one of the site is www.blogspot.com, it has over 900 links to our site, what can we do about this one?

First time, I saw such a long organized list - it's just what we are looking for!  Thank you!

They do send us a link report.  Many of them are really random unrelated site to our business.  Are they "unatural"?  Should we ask to remove some so that the distribution of backlink are even, keep it under 25% from unrelated site?

The SEO company built 600 links in two month period.  With variation of 10 anchor text, they've used it evenly among 600 links, we can't go back to change that, right?

We are building links now from guest blogging, but does it have potential to be scraped onto different blog networks?

We hired a SEO firm to build links for us two months ago, and now, we received "unatural link" warning from Google.  SEO firm informed that they have taken steps to remove these links.  But, we don't think we should trust and depend on them for that.  We want to be on it and would like your advise for the following three questions:

1. how to determina whether a link is "natural" or "unatural"?  We want to make sure we don't remove the natural ones

2. We saw 933 links from Blogspot.com, that for sure do not look natural, how do we go about to remove it?

3. Based on SEO firm's report, certain links have be removed, but, it is still showing on Google Webmaster, should we give it sometime to crawl and confirm?