Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How to remove backlinks?
-
Hey guys,
With all this anti over optimization movement going around with Google, I decided to do a link building profile audit. I see some pages with PR 0 and some pages that expired.
My websites are not penalized at this moment, however I do want to avoid this at all costs.
- What can I do?
- Could a backlink from an expired domain penalize my site?
-
Thanks for the replies! Sometimes its harder to create great content when you are an agency and don't have control of what your clients are doing all the time.
-
Like Anthony said - create great content, and you'll never have to worry about linking penalties. Here's another item to consider - links are always going to be pointed to your site, and not all are going to be of high quality sites today. But, you never know that one blog that stays online and in 5 years from now has grown into an authority site.
People are way over-reacting to this latest Google "penalty". If it was that easy to lose your rankings to just a few blog networks, why wouldn't I go out and get thousands of "bad" links pointed to my competitor to de-rank them?
Look deeper at what Google is trying to accomplish.
-
I would recommend you take action and remove poor back links wherever possible. Why run the risk of being penalised when these links are giving you next to no benefit?
There are a few things you can do
- Contact the sites that you are worried about and request that the link is removed
- Sit tight and hope for the best
- Change the URL of the pages that have poor links pointing to them and remove the original page without redirecting (this has obvious implications for users
I'd recommend you try and contact sites wherever possible, accepting that this is very difficult as I imagine many of the back links you may have will be automated.
If a domain is expired there is no back link in place so you should not be penalised for it as Google should identify that the link is no longer present.
Hope this helps.
-
I wouldn't worry about removing these backlinks, unless you know they are paid or part of a network.
Instead, focus on building some good strong natural links through creating amazing content. The stronger your overall backlink profile is, the less likely you will ever find yourself in trouble over a few bad links.
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
-
How to handle pre-existing backlinks on new site.
Hi - We built a new site on a URL that had previously been used. We are noticing a lot of spammy backlinks pointing to our current site and ending up on a 404 page. Any recommendations on how to handle this?
Link Building | Mar 23, 2024, 7:58 AM | JJKM551 -
Backlinking Strategy
I am particularly new to the field of SEO and Backlinking and I have recently started my own blog feel free to have a look (https://thehorseradar.com/). What I wanted to find out is how can I achieve a DA of at least 30. What should be my link-building strategy? & what steps should I take first? With an abundance of overwhelming info available online I have gotten really confused about what would work and what would not. If someone would lay out the steps needed to be taken, I would be extremely grateful! Thank You
Link Building | Feb 17, 2024, 6:13 AM | haris3131 -
Are backlinks in the form of Footer or Sitewide links safe?
Hi There! Some of our competitors are using sitewide links in the header, footer or sidebar…is it ok to use these type of backlinks to increase overall backlinks. The site-wide links increase backlinks dramatically. Thanks Malik Zakaria
Link Building | Feb 25, 2018, 10:51 PM | mzakaria0 -
Spammy no follow backlinks - what should I do?
There is a individual/company that is creating lots of spam sites in my niche. It doesn't seem that they are trying to rank for any keywords, so I'm a little confused as to their purpose, but here's what they're doing. They scrape the top 10 Google results for each keyword and create a page - so if the niche is "widgets", they scrape the top 10 ranked sites for 'widgets', 'blue widgets', 'red widgets', and so on. A 'results' page is created for each keyword, which is linked from a home page. The results page always contains 10 websites - text is the site metadescription or similar. Each website gets a nofollow link back with the page title used as the anchor text. The host sites all have the keyword in the domain name - e.g www.widgetsxyz.com. The sites are thrown together but interestingly have a very crappy but individual logo (like 90's clipart). The host sites all have high DA/PA due to some very extensive link spam pointing to the sites, with very targeted keywords. There is seemingly no purpose to these sites that I can see - no other 'followed' links on the page or site. Whoever is doing this is churning out tens, if not hundreds of these sites. Any ideas what might be going on here, and whether I should be disavowing these sites (even though no follow). The fear is that they could switch the links to do follow, and get all the major players penalised in one fell swoop. ???
Link Building | Aug 19, 2015, 9:05 AM | johnohara0 -
Top 20 sites for backlinking
My security jobs website was doing very well in Search engines until the penguin got hold of me. I don't profess to be at pro at SEO however seem to have a knack of getting sites to rank well. I think I made some basic mistakes with the original security jobs website, to many links to soon, so I have started again and will build up slowly the backlinks quality rather than quantity this time. My questions is what are the top 20 or so sites that are good to backlink from?
Link Building | Sep 17, 2012, 3:26 AM | SecJobs0 -
Building backlinks for a newspaper site?
Anyone have tips on building links to a newspaper site? I am looking for a strategy to create links to a news site beyond building one link at a time. We have so much content that is constantly updated that it would be impossible to do this one page at a time.
Link Building | Feb 2, 2012, 4:44 PM | BostonWright0 -
Quotations about importance of social media and backlinks
Hi all, I'm looking to put together a presentation on SEO and I'm wondering if anyone knows any good quotes that relate to the importance of having content on your site that people want to use and share. I'm looking for something like this: “Today’s marketing success comes from self-publishing Web content that people want to share. It’s not about gimmicks. It’s not about paying an agency to interrupt others.” David Meerman Scott “The New Rules of Marketing and PR” but ideally something that illustrates in terms of numbers how much more traffic and seo benefits a site can expect from having good guides, pdfs and news stories that people want to share. Thanks so much for any helo you can offer. thanks, David
Link Building | Jul 20, 2011, 10:52 AM | AnthOrange0 -
Backlink booster - boosts and helps to index links?
Hello all, We are using a tool called backlink booster that works in the following way: you view a page with a backlink to your site click on a boost link saved in favourites the link is pinged to rss directories and web 2.0 sites The idea is to get your links indexed faster. Has anyone used this or something like this and had any benefit from it? Thanks Shehzad.
Link Building | May 13, 2020, 5:48 AM | Gareth_Cartman0