Is removing inorganic links a bad idea?
-
Hey there,
We have recently been in touch with a SEO agency that recomended we remove all inorganic links from our backlink profile.
Most of the links are pretty good but there are some news sites that have sitewide links to our site. The link is in the nav menu, as a useful link. We didn't ask for this link it was totally organic.
Also some link building in the past was focused on anchor text so some of the keywords may have been over emphasised.
Is it a good idea to go about removing all of the potentially inorganic looking links?
My concern is that we wipe out links that google are actually valuing. I still know sites are ranking #1 with much more dubious backlink profiles, and then there's this guy who removed his sitewide backlinks and dropped in his ranking:
http://www.seomoz.org/q/removed-site-wide-links
If a competitor decided to add negative links to our site, it would take longer to find and remove negative links than it would for them to add them. It seems odd that google would allow negative SEO to be that easy..
What do you think?
-
There isn't much traffic at all as the link is actually in a sub-sub-menu in the nav (the strange things people do).
But I'm more concerned whether removing the link will actually have a negative effect on our SEO
-
Yeah it's linked with our company name so not too dodgey
We also have other sites linking sitewide with our logo, also not paid, just people are saying we are good place to get info from. Some of these are in the sidebar so could look like paid ads..
We have 10,000 links from 350 domains in OSE. Probably 97% of those links are organic. Do you think that would be causing an impact?
-
How much traffic is this site wide link providing? None? Deal with it! Tons? Leave it be.
-
What keyword are they using to link to you? Have you noticed that your rankings have dropped for that keyword? If it's an exact anchor text match keyword, you could consider asking them to change it to your brandname, but again only if you believe that link is negatively impacting you.
It also depends on how robust your link profile is. If you already have thousands of links, then 1 site with a sitewide link probably won't impact you that much, compared to if you have a relatively small link profile.
-
Thanks Irving. The issue isn't so much about removing all the links, but rather what to do with sitewide ones that provide a disproportionate amount of links from one domain.
Should they be dealt to, we could ask them to remove it or make it nofollow, or should we just roll on with the rest of our SEO work, and only respond to that issue if we see a manual penalty?
You're right about dodgey ones too, definitely worth dealing to them now.
-
Yeah that was my feeling too.
However their response is that we are being algorithmically penalized because we have a 10,000's of links from 100's of domains, so a large amount of those links are potentially site wide.
(1 site for example has 100,000's pages with us in their main sitewide navigation).
So to move forward with our SEO work we first need to remove the links that appear inorganic.
Could this be possible or do links only need to be removed when you have a link warning?
-
I would look at the sites linking to you (always a good practice) and if you see any really dodgy ones have them removed. I wouldn't go removing all of your links if you have not incurred a penalty. I'd use that effort on getting new good links to improve your link profile.
-
Have you received any warnings in Google Webmaster Tools or seen a drop in ranking for keywords that are targeted in the sitewide links? If not, I would not remove any links, as they could be passing link juice. If you ever receive a link warning, then I would consider disavowing or removing links at that time.
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
-
Thousands of Links from mrwhatis.net
Google WMT shows that there are thousands of links pointing to the pages of my website from mrwhatis.net. Among the links, hundreds of them have the same anchor text. Here are some examples. http://mrwhatis.net/a-canon-in-music-for-kid.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pianomother
http://mrwhatis.net/canon-chords-piano-in-c.html
http://mrwhatis.net/canon-d-major-piano-chord.html
http://mrwhatis.net/canon-d-major-piano-mp3-free-downloa.html
http://mrwhatis.net/canon-d-major-piano-sheet-fre.html and more.... The links pointing to my site on the above pages share the same link title "Canon In D Sheet Music | Canon In D Music Score". My question is - are these links considered unnatural links by Google based on your experience? Why and why not? I want to get some ideas before I ask Google to disavow these links. Thanks. John0 -
Is CloudFlare bad for SEO?
I have been hit by DDoS attacks lately...not on a huge scale, but probably done by some "script kiddies" or competitors of mine. Still, I need to take some action in order to protect my server and my site against all of this spam traffic that is being sent to it. In the process of researching the tools available for defending a website from a DDoS attack, I came across the service offered by CloudFlare.com. According to the CloudFlare website, they protect your site against a DDoS attack by showing users/visitors they find suspicious an interstitial that asks them if they are a real user or a bot...this interstitial contains a Captcha that suspicious users are asked to enter in order to visit the site. I'm just wondering what kind of an effect such an interstitial could have on my Google rankings...I can imagine that such a thing could add to increased click-backs to the SERPs and, if Google detects this, to lower rankings. Has anyone had experience with the DDoS protection services offered by CloudFlare, who can say a word or two regarding any effects this may have on SEO? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | masterfish1 -
Webmaster Tools Internal Links
Hi all, I have around 400 links in the navigation menu (site-wide) and when I use webmaster tools to check for internal links to each page; some have as many as 250K and some as little as 200. Shouldn't the number of internal links for pages found in the navigation menu be relatively the same? Or is Google registering more internal links for pages linked closer to the top of the code Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carlos-R0 -
Internal links to blog posts
I am linking manually to blog posts in my site from my Home page. Our site isn't set up with an auto "Recent Posts" that shows on Home. Should I use the exact blog post title as the anchor text or do I need to create something that is not an exact match to the title of the post?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gfiedel0 -
Experience with Google Disawow Tool and discovering bad back-links
Hi Community, is there any experience to tell here about the disawow tool from Google? Any review? It have helped revocer sites beaten by Penguin or penalized after WMT Unnatural Link building message? Which tools and methods you use to find bad back-links to submit for the disawow tool? Thanks for your feedback,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Braumueller0 -
Should I link my similar sites together?
Hi I currently have two sites within exactly the same market. I've just purchased a third website from someone. Should I link these sites together? (i.e. in the page header should I cross link them or point two of them to the third?) If I do this will it harm them if they are on the same C-Class IP blocks? Is using private domains and different hosting companies considered dodgey in any way? Basically I'm a big wimp and don't want to do anything potentially that might potentially hurt my rankings;)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blendfish0 -
Removing dashes in our URLs?
Hi Forum, Our site has an errant product review module that is resulting in about 9-10 404 errors per day on Google Webmaster Tools. We've found that by changing our product page URLs to only include 2 dashes, the module stops causing 404 errors for that page. Does changing our URL from "oursite.com/girls-pink-yoga-capri.html" to "oursite.com/girlspink-yoga-capri.html" hurt our SEO for a search for "girls pink yoga capri"? If so, by how much (assuming everthing else on the page is optimized properly) Thanks for your input.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pano0