Should I remove links that are not related to my niche and could be spammy?
-
Our site ranks #2 for our primary search term. Compared to our competition in position #1, we out score them in all of moz metrics except in Moz trust- which we only trail by .3. I've read a lot about Google reducing the impact of backlinks and specifically the influence of anchor text for keyword ranking. However, many state that to increase domain authority you need to get more quality backlinks.
Here is my dilemma: Do we remove backlinks from our link profile that are not in our niche in an effort to increase our moz trust score. Some of our backlinks are from unrelated businesses that could be considered spammy like a poker site - even though the page still has a high page authority.
Currently, we have a significantly higher number of linking domains compared to our competition. Would it be beneficial to "clean up" our link profile or do we risk losing domain authority from a reduced number of links?
-
It's hard to say what to do without knowing the size of your site's backlink profile, but here is my best shot given the information you've provided. If you are currently ranking #2, I would not get rid of any backlinks at the moment, unless they are 100% against Google's TOS (paid, hidden, etc). However, I would also be really focused on acquiring more relevant and natural links to make sure your overall backlink profile looks solid and should survive future algorithms/inspections.
As your backlink profile gets stronger, consider removing poor backlinks gradually for increased SERP stability.
Don't worry about Moztrust. It's just a metric, and not one used by Google.
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
-
Value of Links? What is each link worth?
Morning Everyone, I just had this thought and wondered what everyone's opinions were in terms of link value in monetary terms. We'll assume for the purposes of this that the links come from contextually relevant sites and that the sites in question have got the Moz DA from being high quality and have a good quality incoming link profile. Its a bit of a theoretical question, but i guess imagine if the only way you could get links was to pay for them, what would they be worth to you. This is link value for SEO purposes, they will have in addition value from traffic from good sites, that no doubt varies wildly depending on topic. I assume everyone also agrees on: The first link from a domain is the most valuable High DA sites are worth more than low ones. So could anyone who has an opinion on the link value suggest a monetary value for links. Its really just using a monetary amount to see how best to target my time. Here is my example of what might be expected, but I am hoping people with more knowledge will perhaps correct it. DA Rating First Link 2nd-5th Link 5th-10th Link 10Plus Links 5 $5 $2 $1 $0 15 $7 $3 $2 $1 25 $25 $10 $5 $2 35 $45 $20 $7 $3 45 $65 $30 $11 $4 55 $95 $45 $19 $5 65 $200 $100 $45 $6 75 $350 $120 $65 $9 85 $700 $240 $95 $15 95 $1100 $450 $200 $30
Link Building | | wellandpower1 -
I have links coming from spammy sites that DO NOT exist anymore... Disavow or not?
Hi There !!! I´m cleaning the link profile of one of our sites and making the typical analysis I have found the following scenario: All SEO tools that helped me to gather the data (WMT, opensite, majestic) are showing me that I have links coming from spammy sites that actually are not online any more. In other words, the spammy site where the link is coming is not alive (when I try to check the page itself I´m having a 404 or domain expired). My main question is… Should I disavow these domains links? or should I simply ignore them? We got an unnatural penalty and we are doing the whole proccess (checking sites, contacting, etc….). Many Thanks for your help
Link Building | | AutoEurope0 -
Link quality
Hi, Having read dozens of your blogs and found them highly informative, i have to ask a question. I am kicking oout our SEO company and have taken over the SEO myself with some excellent results. Our SEO providers tell me that links from any site (irrelevent of their DA) are good, providing they are comming from a relevant source. We are in the security industry and according to MOZ, we have a DA of 52. If i can get a link to our site from another company in our industry but they have a DA of 10, is this really beneficial for me? Info i have read in Moz blogs suggest it is n ot a good idea. Please help. many thanks Daddy Smurf
Link Building | | DaddySmurf0 -
Is link exchange a reliable source to get back links?
I read a latest post on seomoz that _“Do not buy or exchange link with anyone who contacts you. This is completely against Google's policies and if they were to find out, you could be penalized." So I went through Google's ''Link Schemes'' and found that ''Excessive link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you")'' can negatively impact a site's ranking . _ So is it the ''excessive'' link exchanging that can cause a negative impact? Exchanging links with good quality, cached sites (without excessive doing) can do good or bad? Can anyone please explain to me in detail?
Link Building | | semvibe0 -
Which is better - A) links from multiple IP addresses, or B) Links with more associated social signals?
If you had to choose: A) 100 links contained in posts on 100 PR2* blogs, all on separate IP addresses, where none of the posts had associated social signals, or B) 100 links contained in posts within a single PR2* blog (single IP address), where each of the posts had 20 associated social signals, Which would you choose to increase your SERP performance? *I chose PR2 so that PageRank would not be a factor in the decision.
Link Building | | JohnScottDixon0 -
Blog traffic / link ratio? (Esimated of how much traffic will result in a link)
Hi, Was wondering if people could please tell me some estimates of how much traffic is likely to gain links to a blog post? For example 1,000 hits = 1 link, Hence 10,000 hits = 10 links to a blog post? I understand there is no magic ratio I just want to know what people have achieved. I’m after averages not just a one off really successful blog post too. Please specify the topic you achieve this in e.g. SEO, photography, business, heath... etc.
Link Building | | charles10 -
Links from Real Estate Websites Link Page, Do or Don't?
It seems that real estate sites have at times been under heavier scrutiny from the search engines. But real estate agents get networking, which makes acquiring those links a little bit easier. Plus with localization of search, I think real estate sites may give off a good GEO scent. Should SEO's go for links from real estate websites? Does a reciprocal link devalue said links?
Link Building | | Thos0030 -
Link building and directory links to a new site
I have three new sites all hosted on the same server in the same public html folder and each site is in a different folder inside the public html folder. These sites are a listing of live music venues in different cities in Texas. Should I link these sites together to increase page rank to each other and also put key search phrases in the anchor text and place these links in the text in the center of each page of each site to make the links more effective? Also, because the sites are about a year old they don't have many inlinks yet. If i submit them to about 50 directories will Google not like this because there are way more directory links than natural links? I've been told that it is trouble to have more than about 50% directory links compared to natural links. Thanks in advance for your answers! Take care,
Link Building | | Ron10
Ron0