Link Detox and Link Removal

[CobraJones95]

I have a question about which links to remove after running a link detox from Link Research Tools.

First a little back story. I had had an SEO company link building for one of the websites I own.  But I have recently stopped working with them.

In the last month my rankings have near dropped off the charts. I have just recently gotten access to Google webmaster tools and noticed an unnatural link warning from back in March.

So yesterday I ran link detox and it reported 19 toxic links, 120 suspicious links, and 24 healthy links.

It's rather obvious that I should remove all of the toxic links. They all from sites that have been deindexed by google.

But my question is a about the suspicious links. What should my criteria be for removing them? Am I better off removing them all and leaving my site with only 24 healthy links or should I personally comb through them and remove only the worst of the worst so that I leave my site with a few more links?

I'd really like to get the site ready to resubmit to google as soon as I can.

Thoughts?

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[RistoM]

Hi everyone,

I'm doing some bad link cleaning. And am following this nice guide: https://moz.com/blog/bad-backlink-analysis-using-moz-link-explorer

And there it says that "Because we aren't concerned with nofollow links, you will want to set the "follow" filter so that we only export followed links. "

So does it really mean that I don't have to worry about nofollow links, even though they would be spammy, or some weird stuff like drug perscription anchors which for sure won't help me?  Or is it better to disavow those as well? (I would assume so).

[Vizergy]

You are totally correct, Adam  I simply use DA as a guide line for whether or not the website, as a whole, is 'OK' - not as a definitive rule.  You certainly can get a spammy link from a high DA website but I haven't found that to happen very often at all.  I suppose I use it in the way that I used to use toolbar PR - not as a rule, but a guide line.  Thank you for your insight.  Again, you are totally correct, I should not have been so vague.

Cheers, and thumbs up

[AdamThompson]

Billy gave you some good advice, but I disagree with him on one point. Domain authority doesn't necessarily have anything to do with whether a link is dangerous or not. You can get a spammy link from a domain with high authority or a great link from a lower authority domain.

You want to get rid of links that Google will view as intended primarily to manipulate search rankings instead of providing value to the user.

Some factors to consider:

• Is the link from a page or site that is relevant to mine?
• Does the link make sense for / provide value to the user?
• Does the link use my target keyword(s) as anchor text? (Too many keyword anchor texts is a problem.)
• Is the link purchased?
• Is the link near or with spammy links?
• Is the link from a low quality directory, forum signature, blog comment,
• Is the link from a page of duplicate content?

Hope that helps!

[Vizergy]

I would suggest taking the time to go through them.  Check the domain authority and the actual content on the exact page that links to your website.  Suspicious does not necessarily mean that it is a bad link - although most of them probably will be.  If the page that links to you has content that is relevant to what your website is about and if the linking website has decent domain authority, I would put that link in the 'keep' pile.  Even if out of the 120 you only end up with 25 links that you keep, it could make a difference in the positive.