Drop in Rankings After Removing Links
-
So I removed some links to a particular homepage for one of the sites we own, this page had A LOT of links pointing to it using exact match anchors. And for the most part the links were coming from low quality pages/content. After removing a good chunk of them I noticed are rankings went down from around 8-9th two weeks ago to 21 as of today. Has anyone else had a problem like this before?
I'm thinking about restoring some of these links now to see if I can recover some of that. Any thoughts on doing this?
Thanks
-
Update on this issue........
I ended up restoring a few of the links I removed but none of the truly crappy ones. It seems though I was just needing to be a little patient. This latest algo update shot be back up to 8th after I had dropped to 30th (after removing a ton of links). So it seems those links were still passing pagerank even though they were total garbage and didn't offer any value whatsoever. I think this is evidence that Google's quality standard when it comes to links definitely went up. Which I guess goes without saying but it's good to have proof. I also hadn't done anything else to the site for the last couple months other than remove those links so there shouldn't have been any other variables at play.
-
I see, Anthony provides some good insights below.
Removing inbound links from other domains thus effects your overall inbound links which then can have an impact on your natural ranking. Restoring them will probably fix the immediate issue. BUT! There is a fine line here that should be discussed.
You don't want to become a victim of link manipulation this can be done by buying a crap ton of domains making some generic content and point them back to one another or just one, creating an internal link ring or link funnel. This will eventually get you penalized. Now, owing a handful of sites and pointing them to one another is perfectly acceptable. An example being Pepsico pointing to Pepsi, Mt. Dew, Taco Bell, Quaker Oats, Tropicana ect.. these are all companies they own. In fact our company owns 3 branded websites, but we were careful only pointing to relevant pages when it suits the user's experience. You may have been benefiting from a form of this, which is why your rank dropped whence you removed the links.
Hope that makes sense.
Don
-
I've done this to several of our other sites and haven't seen a ranking increase or decrease. They have all continued to have roughly the same amount of organic traffic. So I'm assuming these links were really doing nothing from an SEO standpoint and probably a ticking time bomb ready to go off when the next major algo update rolls out.
I may have just gotten a little overzealous when removing them on this particular site. It was for a pretty significant keyword so I'm tempted to maybe restore at least some of them and see what it does.
-
I meant links to the homepage of a site from other sites that we happen to own.
-
Removing backlinks, especially ones with money anchor text, will most definitely cause your rankings to decrease. I can only assume you did this because you viewed the links as spammy or something that could eventually cause you future ranking problems at an algorithmic or manual level. If that is the case, you probably made the right decision if you are hoping this site will rank for the long-term.
Instead of restoring those links, try to find a way to create a few new ones that you feel are safe for the long-term.
-
Rankings are dynamic. Moving 1-3 spots from day to day or even hour to hour is actually common and not really concerning. Now dropping from page 1 (rank 8), to page 3 (rank 21) would be something I would certainly want to to watch.
When you said you removed the links to your homepage from lower ranking pages.. my first question is why? Were they redundant links? Ie you can click a banner or home page button instead? If not, then you are creating orphan pages which from a useability standpoint is not good. A user should always be able to get to your homepage or any main topic pages very easily and apparent. Just look at this forum, even in edit post mode I can still get to Moz.com homepage in 1 click.
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
-
Link Audit
Reviewing a list of links from webmaster console for a client and there are links to their website which render a page but there' s no mention of the clients website on that page. Why does this happen? Why is Google thinking that there is a link to the clients website yet on the page there is no mention of that clients website. There's no comments etc. I don't understand this and if anyone can shed a light??
Link Building | | AL123al0 -
What is the best way to remove a link that redirects to a spammy site?
I've got a new client and I'm trying to clean up their backlinks. There are several links that all redirect to this spam site http://www.expert-lender.com. All of the websites appear to be real, i.e. http://www.sammorganhomes.com/ but the actual links i.e http://www.sammorganhomes.com/wp-fav/backup/supplement/semitruckleasing.html are in a sub-directory and redirect to the spam site. I don't know if these links were from the previous SEO company or if they paid someone to create these or if these sites have been hacked. Can anyone tell me what is going on here and what should I tell these site owners?
Link Building | | Total-Design-Shop0 -
How Long for Penguin Recovery if All Links Were Removed at Once?
Hi, I was wondering if anyone had thoughts on length of time before a Penguin recovery can take place, assuming you removed all the bad links at once? I have a client that has a Penguin penalty, with all the bad links pointing in to a domain, which then redirected to theirs. So, I simply had that domain removed and it now returns a 404 instead of redirecting to the main site. Now all of the bad backlinks do not pass through. All of this happened at once about 5 weeks ago. I was glad to discover such an easy solution, but am wondering how long something like this would take. My initial thought was it would take 2 or 3 months to see recovery, but I was hoping since the issue was fixed so quickly, recovery would be faster. Any experience with Penguin recoveries with all spam links removed (less that 100 links) at once?
Link Building | | wiredseo0 -
Ranking drop Any help please
hi i got a website www.willowstairlifts.co.uk and I am doing seo for keyword Stairlifts , it was going all good i managed to get it from page 15 to page 4 but yesterday its start going backward it jumps back from position 31 to 61 , i have been very careful in doing on page and also with my link building. I have just a few directories , bookmarks and I am targeting guest post, and i have got few links from them. i cant find anything wrong and worried, as surely it can be a penalty, is it just google dance? as i am aware google is recently doing some updates which they are denying it. hope you guys can help me , many thanks
Link Building | | conversiontactics0 -
Link or Ad
I recently requested a link back from a site that is ranking 2nd for a term that i'm working on and they said they would gladly give me the link and remove my competitors but would also like me to have an ad on the same page for an annual fee that i could link to a landing page. I know that paying for links is no good and google can penalize you. so do i pay them and do a no follow to the landing page from the ad and call it a day? and how does google differentiate an ad from a link?
Link Building | | CHiP_RuN0 -
Will a link from a competitor help me to out rank them?
Greetings mozers, One of my competitors and I both rank on the first page for our main keyword. They have 37k+ links, me only like 300 or so. My company actually has a business location though. This other site is just a listing of locations and they build sites for most of my competitors. If I were able to get listed on their site, would that make me a stronger competitior with them? And we would probably only get a brand term link from them but not a main keyword anchor text. Will it be as effective to get the link from them if it's only for my brand name? Thanks, Cy
Link Building | | Nola5040 -
How do you check to see if your site (site A) has already been linked to by another site (site B) when you have a large site with lots of links
There are some basics in SEO relating to finding out about who has linked to whom that I could use some help with.
Link Building | | hughman0 -
Link Building
I've been hearing about going after niche directories, and my question is most of them have a ton of links on any given page. Is it even worth taking the time to approach these sites knowing they won't pass a lot of link juice?
Link Building | | azguy0