Remove Unatural Links
-
We hired a SEO firm to build links for us two months ago, and now, we received "unatural link" warning from Google. SEO firm informed that they have taken steps to remove these links. But, we don't think we should trust and depend on them for that. We want to be on it and would like your advise for the following three questions:
-
how to determina whether a link is "natural" or "unatural"? We want to make sure we don't remove the natural ones
-
We saw 933 links from Blogspot.com, that for sure do not look natural, how do we go about to remove it?
-
Based on SEO firm's report, certain links have be removed, but, it is still showing on Google Webmaster, should we give it sometime to crawl and confirm?
-
-
Thanks again for sharing.
At this point, we also lean towards building good quality links as what Ivaylo suggested.
-
Some links may be unremovable. If they're all coming from one domain, they'll likely just be devalued - Google is going to see this as a single pile of links (not 900 different entities) and probably ignore it. I'd leave it, in most cases, and move forward with higher-quality links. Blogspot isn't paid or a link network, so those links are just low quality.
-
Thank you for your suggestions - they are what we wanted to do. However, we lack the expertise to tell what links are "bad" among 600 links SEO company built for us.
They've started removing among 4 sites who have hundreds of links to our site. Three of them, according to SEO firm, were confirmed "removed", but one of the site is www.blogspot.com, it has over 900 links to our site, what can we do about this one?
-
While I do think you can trade off positive link-building vs. cutting negative links (depending on the severity), I have to disagree with "the warning will still be there no matter what you do". We're seeing accounts from reputable firms that this warning is real, can be followed by a penalty, and will be lifted if action is taken.
The trick is that the warning covers many levels of severity, and there's no good way to tell how severe this one is. If you know you have very questionable links, I'd kill the worst of them, personally. This would include paid links or very obvious, low-value spam.
I'd also tell your SEO company to shift gears ASAP. As Ivaylo said, diverify - no matter whether you cut links or don't.
-
They do send us a link report. Many of them are really random unrelated site to our business. Are they "unatural"? Should we ask to remove some so that the distribution of backlink are even, keep it under 25% from unrelated site?
The SEO company built 600 links in two month period. With variation of 10 anchor text, they've used it evenly among 600 links, we can't go back to change that, right?
We are building links now from guest blogging, but does it have potential to be scraped onto different blog networks?
-
Yes, give it some time. About a week. When you submit a reconsideration request to Google make sure to provide PROOF that you are doing everything possible to remove the unnatural links. If it was truly the SEO firm's fault make sure to mention the name of the firm in reconsideration request.
Was the SEO Firm providing you with a report of the links they built each month? I'd go through that report and try to remove each link 1 by 1.
-
The warning will still be there no matter what you do at this point. You don't have to resubmit your website or revamp it. Most probably the links are coming from public blogging networks and even the SEO company won't be able to remove it. Such links are already devalued by google. While waiting for a resolution try to replace them with normal quality links, links from press releases, guest blogging, etc. Diversify your anchor text portfolio. Make it look natural.
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 Building where link building is dead. Latest tactics in a land of content.
Hello, What is your latest link building techniques considering manual link building is basically dead, and you should really build good content to drive results. Link building has really become less important. It seems to be much more 10X content now. What would you recommend for basic link building considering this besides the 50 first Links video by Rand, which is excellent. Thanks, Bob
Link Building | | BobGW0 -
Internal Linking - Post links vs Side Bar Links behaving differently
Hi, I have a question regarding the internal linking behavior. My website is www.hindimeaning.com which is approx 3 years old. I have approx 450 posts. Now i have a widget on right sidebar "Popular posts". A widget below my posts "Related Posts". And a simple html CSS menu above the posts (I removed menu around 6 month before so currently it will not show.) I crawled my site with moz crawler (same are the result from google crawler as well) and it shows menus links as internal links. While sidebar widget "Popular posts" and "Related Posts" are not showing as internal links. If we talk theoretically what i learn till now is "every link on a page behaves as internal link". Then why the widget links are not showing as internal links. Thanks, Mahesh Kumar
Link Building | | chaudhary04890 -
Reciprocol Links
Am I correct in stating that linking to every article about your company is a bad idea. I see a lot of sites with followed links to the articles that link to them. Is this not devaluing the link? I've been recommending removing the links or no indexing the page and no following the links. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Link Building | | brandonschultz0 -
Link Ratio
Hello, When Building backlinks is there a specific ratio I should try to follow to avoid any issues with google? Thank you!
Link Building | | TP_Marketing0 -
Paying to Remove Links?
I emailed a directory asking to have my link removed and they responded that it costs $20. Does anyone have experience paying to remove links? I would never do this on a mass scale, but for individual links is it worthwhile or a waste of money?
Link Building | | theLotter0 -
Link building
Hello all ! I would love some opinions about one Link Building technical aspect from SEOs, link builders ... How important is the number of outgoing links on the page you have the opportunity to place a link ? (from a scale of 1-10 / what about where dose this factor fits overall with your check list , as important to consider as far as link building) Would you place a link on a page with 200+ outgoing external links if the page is ok (not involved in selling links, all links are related with the subject, target page, anchor text etc) or you would go with a link on a 10-15 links per page but not that 'powerful' and not that related (not spammy but more general on the subject that can contain links to some other non related resources). Eg: Option 1: www.whatever-name.com/links.html the entire domain is about x. It has 250 links in that page (in the links.html) all links on the links.html pages are somehow related / resources with x. Your link can be placed with an anchor text related with x that will target a page on your site related with x. Domain page rank : 6 (as a general indicator), Page PR, the links.html one, PR: 2 Option 2: www.some-other-name.com/x-is-so-great the entire domain is NOT about x, just the page. It has 5..10 links in that page (external links more or less related with x - but not spammy) Your link can be placed with an anchor text related with x that will target a page on your site related with x. Domain page rank : 3 (as a general indicator), Page PR, the links.html one, PR: 1 What's your best option ? Thanks !
Link Building | | eyepaq1 -
Would you advise removing a "links" page?
I'm doing a site audit for someone and they have a links page full of reciprocal links for other similar businesses across the country. My gut instinct is to remove this page. How would you approach this if this was your client?
Link Building | | MarieHaynes0 -
Panda Update: Isn't a link still a link?
I was doing some link building and some SEO's said that the Panda update affected many websites. I am going to use eZineArticles.com as my example. EzineArticles was affected by the Panda update and does not show up in the SERPs as much as before. But they still have doFollow Links coming from the articles I am submitting. QUESTION: Regardless if EzineArticles was affected by the Panda Update, isn't a "Follow Link" still a "Follow Link" OR am I completely wasting my time on this devalued website? Edit: Yes I know a PR 0 page is not as valuable as a PR 9 page. I am asking from the standpoint of the affected Panda Update domains overall.
Link Building | | Francisco_Meza0