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
-
Moz API Spam Score - Backlinks
Hi, everyone I am trying to get my website DA up. I have analyzed my competitors and thanks to Moz I have idea and insights of how my competitors get backlinks. But, some of them are old school techniques. Also my website has some PBNs no follow backlinks does it affect my website ranking? Their spam score is 10-40. But other competitors has them as well. Does anyone know indepth on this topic?
Link Building | | RejinKayastha1 -
Blog post outreach for backlinks
Hi all, My understanding of obtaining backlinks by way of blogpost outreach is that it's best to include several outbound links to related high domain websites within blog post copy (as well as a link to the website you're marketing, obviously) such as this post https://www.scoopearth.com/why-should-you-use-royalty-free-music-for-youtube-videos/ or this one https://small-bizsense.com/how-to-create-quality-content-for-your-business/. However, I've recently read a few articles that suggest that from a human perspective only having one clear link in the copy, such as this post https://www.clichemag.com/entertainment/movies/the-benefits-of-royalty-free-cinematic-music-for-your-videos/, increases the chance of the reader visiting the site in question. I guess the thinking is that if there's only one link to be clicked on it increases the chances of click-thru, as opposed to the reader possibly clicking on another external link that's only there because of current SEO advice. So is it best to follow SEO guidelines and include several outbound links within guest blog posts, or is it better to only have the one link to your client's site (to focus the readers attention on it)?
Link Building | | JCN-SBWD0 -
Nofollow backlinks - are they worth it?
As we all attempt to get backlinks for the sites we manage, I have to wonder if it's worth it at all to get a nofollow backlink. Does Google give and positive credit for a link to a site if it is a nofollow link? Obviously, the follow links are worth pursuing. I'm just trying to gain some perspective. Thanks, Wick
Link Building | | wcksmith10 -
Backlinks from ads on parked domains? Is this possible?
Hello Moz Friends, So as I was researching some competitive backlinks and I noticed a lot of backlinks that a clients competitor has are on parked domains and they appear to be google ads from some point. You know the pages that this page no longer exists, or hey do you want to buy this domain? and it has like 6 google ads on it? Yep those pages. My clients industry is construction and their competitor has links from zombie websites, foreign, websites and more. But the links are no longer on the page. Like when it was crawled, their ad was showing. Does this make any sense and is it usually temporary? Thank you for your thoughts friends!
Link Building | | asbchris0 -
Does LinkedIn Pulse Backlinks add to domain authority?
I'm working on linkbuilding and content partnerships to drive referral traffic and boost our page ranking and domain authority. I wanted to check and see if Medium and LinkedIn Pule backlinking work just as well as other sites? Best, Jonathan
Link Building | | kjomalley0 -
A lot of backlinks from outside of niche – bad?
We have received a lot of backlinks over the years by users putting links on their websites to their home pages on our site, eg: our.domain/user1 our.domain/user2 … our.domain/user100000 There are 10’s of thousands of these backlinks, all natural, but many of them come from blogs that are completely outside of our niche. Only a small percentage of our backlinks 1% to 5% could actually be coming from pages related to our niche, the other 95%+ could be users just linking to their home pages. Could this really hurt us..? We have 1000’s of backlinks related to our niche, yet we’ve noticed that some competitors with less than 50 backlinks can outrank us for certain keywords.. Also related, we’ve noticed these user links popping up on a lot of spammy sites, directories, etc. We didn’t create them but we’re disavowing them now to be safe. So this could also be hitting our rankings.
Link Building | | dsumter0 -
Backlinks From Press Releases - Should I Disavow Them?
About 2 months ago, I published a press release through PRWEB with a link back to my website of course. Now it must have been one of those morning where the coffee wasn't strong enough as my website already has a Penguin penalty I'm trying to get lifted. The intent wasn't to spam the web but rather to gain some traction in the business hosting world. Like I've said, the coffee must've been too weak that morning as it didn't even cross my mind to see if I could "nofollow" the links in the press release. I just hit the submit button... As I'm in the process of submitting a disavow links request to Google, I'm wondering if I should include the URLs to copies of those press releases? I mean, there's no way I can find all those links as it was submitted not long ago. Google and link tools will keep discovering other copies of the PR for months to come probably.
Link Building | | sbrault740 -
How to remove back links from third party website??
Hi Guys, I checked my website back-links and found some bad links. Now i just want to remove links from third party website. I know two methods as mentioned below: Disallow bad links from Google Webmaster Contact to webmaster and remove them I tried both of the above methods but not get success.Is there any other method to solve this issue??
Link Building | | RuchiPardal0