Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Link Detox and Link Removal
-
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?
-
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).
- topic:timeago_earlier,6 years
-
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
-
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!
-
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.
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 | Jun 19, 2024, 10:18 AM | wellandpower1 -
Spammy links
Hi Guys, I have a case which seems to occur more often for our customers. The websites of our customers seem to receive tons of backlinks from websites all over the world (China, Russia, Ukrain, etc). It’s spam we never asked for, we didn’t buy any dodgy linkbuilding packages or anything. Do any of you guys have experience with this matter? We try to disavow the links but it takes too much time and we will never manage to disavow 100% of all links. Examples are www.keukensduitsland.nl and www.m2beveiliging.nl Hope anyone has experience and maybe even solutions for this matter. Thanks!
Link Building | Dec 22, 2015, 6:11 AM | Happy-SEO1 -
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
Link Building | May 22, 2014, 1:50 PM | ThridHour0 -
Site Published Our Guest Post but Removed the Link Back
I recently developed a nice article for a career site and they agreed to publish it as a guest post. Once they published the article I noticed they had removed the link back to my site in the byline. What is a best way to approach this situation? Would you ask them to take down the article if they are unwilling to link back to your site?
Link Building | Jan 9, 2013, 8:19 PM | Charlessipe0 -
Locksmith link building
Can anybody please give me any recommendation about a locksmith/security related websites that i can build strong/meaningful links with?
Link Building | Nov 14, 2012, 11:33 AM | lockstarwi0 -
Best way to remove unwanted links
Hello, The site I work with has a number of unwanted, unrealted and just generally spammy sites linking to our site. What is the best way to ask them to remove the links (formal notice asking to remove or more of a "hey, can you get remove this for us as a favor" tone)? Do you have any tips for getting rid of these links? Thank you!
Link Building | May 14, 2012, 3:57 PM | airnwater2 -
Inbound links from porn sites into a professional business services site - remove help?
The website in question was hacked four years ago and there was porn on the servers. It was used as a peer to peer torrent streamer. The images were deleted. We have just found inappropriate inward bound links (with great link juice!!) - how can we remove these links - or should we? any advice would be appreciated thanks
Link Building | Sep 6, 2011, 6:44 PM | GardenBeet0 -
Porn link ...
I just ran https://www.majesticseo.com report for back links and showed me that I have one link at porn site ... not sure if it will be appropriate to post it here. The link was discovered on 03.05.11 and when I visited today link is not there... I dont know who put that link there. Can I get penalty for that from google? Can it be a mistake?
Link Building | Mar 24, 2011, 1:20 AM | DiamondJewelryEmpire1