Dirty Link Profile - Suggestions?
-
Ok, so I was just hired to do SEO for a company and so I did a backlink analysis. As it turns out, they've got a pretty dirty link profile - footer links, white on white links, unrelated links, tiny font links, links from penalized sites, hardly any branded links... you get it.
I was thinking about taking the worst of the worst links, removing them and leaving the rest, just to clean it up a little. I don't want them to get penalized.... but... I don't want their rankings to drop either.
Think I should leave them all and just start building relevant, branded links?
OR
Clean up the whole link profile?
OR
Just clean it up a little?
-
I have heard multiple reports recently of spammy backlinks hurting a site. Seems Google is more willing to penalize a site for bad linking practices.
-
To follow up on this, the backlinks were in fact hurting rankings. We removed some paid backlinks and immediately saw large increases in rankings. I hope this helps someone else.
When I asked this question I really did not believe that removing backlinks would improve rankings, but it did.
Thanks!
-
If the bad links are not currently hurting then I wouldn't worry too much about them hurting them in the future. I would advise the owner of the site of what you have found, explain the risks, and then offer him your advice. Not that you are excusing yourself if you advise them poorly, but knowing the risks upfront makes it easier if something does go wrong later.
-
I would just leave the old links and start building new, good links.
I would double-check that their site is clean and remove anything poor, though.
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
-
Tools to visually analyse link profiles?
Hey guys, Looking for tools which can visually look at a websites link profile, specifically from what link profile looks from a macro level. I know there is cognitive seo which can do this, but was wondering if there is anything else? Cheers. Hey guys,
Link Building | | jayoliverwright
Looking for tools which can visually look at a websites link profile, specifically from what link profile looks from a macro level.
I know there is cognitive seo which can do this, but was wondering if there is anything else?
Cheers.0 -
Reciprocal links
Are they worth anything, if they are from relevant sites? I'm I better off avoiding linking back wherever possible?
Link Building | | littlesthobo0 -
Do external links hurt ?
Hi there... My company develops policy management software for SharePoint (called DocRead). Obviously, our main SEO push is purely for the product as that's what pays the bills. However, we also issue a weekly SharePoint Community newsletter in HTML as we run a large community group for SharePoint. Each newsletter has lots of outbound links (all coming from the same domain as our product is hosted on). These links won't really have anything to do with 'Policy Management' as they are purely to do with SharePoint. I was wondering if these will harm our ranking in anyway? FYI : The newsletters are here : http://www.collaboris.com/sharepoint-newsletters/all-newsletters and the product is here : http://www.collaboris.com/products/policy-and-procedure-management-software Thanks in advance Mark
Link Building | | MarkQJones0 -
Link profile improvment
I need some guidance on how to improve my link profile, on the whole it's a strong profile compared to my competitors. Yet they rank higher then I do, with seems odd to me. My competitor scores are: www.frontrangecounselingcenter.com/marriagecounseling.html Domain Metrics:
Link Building | | Starman3
Domain Authority
38/100
Page Metrics: Last index update: 11/28/12 Page Authority Linking Root Domains Total Links Facebook Shares Facebook Likes Tweets Google +1
40/100 21 187 0 0 0 1 My scores are: http://www.fivestarcounselingservices.com/ Domain Authority
56/100
Page Metrics: Last index update: 11/28/12 Page Authority Linking Root Domains Total Links Facebook Shares Facebook Likes Tweets Google +1
63/100 1,387 4,741 2 0 0
2 Thank you for you suggestions, Robert Whitman LPC, MA, CACIII | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |0 -
Why does my site only have 4 internal followed links/internal links?
When using Open Site Explorer my site is winning in many categories but lacking in others as compared to competitors. I intend to improve on this but am a little confused by the extremely low number of "internal followed links" and "internal links" at just 4. My competitors have much more than that. Does this mean links to the root domain? Total internal links? I have many internal links so I'm having a hard time figuring this one out. What four internal links are getting noticed? I just went through and changed all the links that went to index.html to link to the root domain at www.njlimocarservice.com as I just found a Q&A that indicates this was better. So as of Wed at 5:45 PM all my links to the homepage went to index.html and not the root which is no longer the case. Not sure if this matters. At the same time I also just put a 301 from index.html to redirect to www.njlimocarservice.com. Any help appreciated! h9QuF.png
Link Building | | kabledesigns0 -
What's Angela/Paul link profile?
Hi, Very new to this and appreciate your time to read and answer my question. What's Angela/Paul link profile? and what should I look out for if someone is offering to provide this type of link building to me?
Link Building | | nojan0 -
There is a New link to my Site but I can see it on link report ?why ?
Hi I found out using link campaign and Open site explorer that my competitors where getting links from this page http://www.visitgreece.gr/en/activities/land_sports/golf So I conatc the admins and added our golf courses too Is the dunes and the bay course in the middle of the page But this happened 3 weeks ago and still this linking domain is not appaering in my campaign why is that any ideas ? does it take so much time to appera to SEOmoz ? Or the problem is because they are linking 2 diffrent sites ? my site is www.costanavarinogolf.com Thanks a lot in advance for your help
Link Building | | grzontan0 -
Forum links
If you are building links in forums how can you decide which forums to post to? Of course you can have a look at averall traffic in Alexa or mozrank but is there anything else you can look at?
Link Building | | sesertin0