Getting Rid Of Bad Backlinks - should I pay?

[support2013]

I have had a sudden increase in "bad" incoming links to my site.  And at the same time my ranking has taken a dive.

I have not done any link building in the last few months, and I have used multiple tools to track incoming links, and they show a major increase in incoming links from "toxic" sites in the past couple of months.

I have documented this entire process with reports and emails, and have contacted all the Sites concerned requesting that they kindly remove the links.  Most have replied that we must pay them between $5 - $25 per link to be removed and some of the Sites have multiple links to us.

I am not sure what we should do and am concerned that if we pay these companies to remove the link, they could create more links as it appears many are connected to multiple spam type directory Sites. On the other hand many Sites advise not to use the Disavow Tool unless you are sure you need to use it and that even if used the results may take a very long time.

Our decline in our SEO ranking is really affecting our business and I would really appreciate advice as to what to do?

[DanielFreedman]

I agree.

Giving money to blackmailers is never a good idea.

It only encourages more blackmail.

I would explore every other option.

[Houses]

I wouldn't trust that paying them would be the end of it. As you said, they can just create more.

Don't give them money.

Record all your efforts to contact the sites in case you need to prove what you have been doing.

Good luck - it's pretty low of them to be doing this to you.

[Zoolander]

You have my sympathy.  I'd bet that this is a scam in which bad links have been deliberately made in order to manipulate you into paying money to have them removed.  If you do pay to get them removed, then your category in this criminal organizations chart might change to "sucker" and you will see no end to it.

Surely Google must have known that the penalties themselves would be manipulated.  It seems pretty obvious to me this would happen and could be added as the "criminal one" to the new spin-off industries...   http://www.seroundtable.com/link-removals-15349.html

If I was a Search engine and this kind of thing was going on I would like to know about it, especially knowing that prime targets for extortion are going to be those who rank high and have search traffic, in other words the fruits of Google's many years of tweaking their algorithms.  I would tell Google and maybe other engines about this, you may not get a reply but I think they like to know the statistics.

[jesse-landry]

I just don't trust that disavow tool yet. So if you are going to do that have your resubmission package prepared and watch for notices in GWT.

[Gijsbert]

I would never pay them to get it removed.. I would say Disavow the entire domains. A bit heavy solution but less time consuming. I agree with Jesse to continue building proper and relevant links.

[irvingw]

Paid to put them up and paid to remove them, amazing isn't it.

It really depends on how toxic the links are, what your link profile looks like, if you are trying to recover from a penalty and how much money your site generates. I have paypalled people many times to remove links for me for their "coding time" but i've usually reached out offering via email and offered instead of people telling me I have to pay.

If the link is on a horrible site and sitewide for instance it might be worth it to pay to get that link down.

[jesse-landry]

You are doing exactly what you should be doing as far as dealing with the poison links. Continue contacting webmasters (as politely as possible..make it seem like doing this will help them as well as you) and document ALL of it. Check your GWT and make sure you haven't been issued a manual penalty. If you have, prepare the disavow tool and submit all of your documented efforts with the re-inclusion request you will file.

If you don't have a warning, continue building proper and relevant links. This is the best thing you can do. Make sure they are coming in organically. They should essentially be the results of killer content created by your team for your site. This will help more than anything and more immediately (again assuming you have no manual penalties.)

This is the best advice I can offer. Hope it helps.