Will removing old (3 years+), low quality inbound links potentially improve my rankings?
-
I have a client site with thousands of old very low quality links purchased from directories etc over several years - I am certain these are doing nothing for the current rankings and I advised them to stop buying these links 18 months ago when I first started working with them, but do you think pro-actively getting old poor quality backlinks removed will potentially improve the site's rankings?
-
Don't do it. Very bad idea.
Consern your efforts with buildingt stronger links.
-
If you have better links to subsidise with the same money - go ahead. Otherwise leave them as they are. Link is a link, however if it looks reallys pammy than it's worth going through trouble of removal. If this was my site I would try to avoid a massive link drop and remove gradually.
-
Hi Simon,
Assuming your client's website has been around for a couple of years or more, these links will have no negative impact. Low quality links won't ever get an aged site penalised - going around and removing them would be hugely time consuming and you're better off focusing on building better quality links instead.
Good luck!
-
Fair enough - the last thing I need is another job on the list
-
No.
The sites in question would have to be in very bad standing to penalise sites they linked too and as these are just directories (or similar) they would have to actually be a recognised link farm to do this.
At worst they're going to be passing no value but can still count as a unique domain link for things like domain authority etc.
I would leave them unless you know they're actually harming you (and if they require monthly payment or similar then you could always just let them die off).
EDIT: On the other hand if you were going to be engaging in 'aggressive' link building and having these would push you over the edge (not that anyone knows where that is) in terms of having a really spammy backlink profile, then maybe.
If you're doing quality link building and getting more natural links, then I'd still leave them
-
True, some links that you can't control/communicate to get removed (scrapers) but at least you try
-
Interesting points. We are currently working on building quality links both with better content on the blog and site, also by pro-actively engaging with bloggers in the client's niche.
Some of the links do look very spammy as the client previously engaged what I'd politely call a questionable SEO firm who just bought a lot of links - this is going back a few years when it probably didn't cause the same penalty it would today, but I suspect some of these links are still hurting them a bit.
I'd love to know if anyone has actually set about removing low quality links as a tactic and seen an improvement in ranking as a result.
-
If the links have keyword rich anchor text, I would ditch them. In general you should only acquire directory links with brand as the anchor text in your link.
-
This is what I'm thinking too, FWIW. Of course, it's hard to remove links from real spammy pages since they are mostly auto-generated
-
Have you done this yourself and are talking from direct experience or is this just a "feeling"? Not bashing you, just curious because some answers like this are too easy to write what everyone assumes rather than real experiences. I'm very interested in this question too - I have a similar situation.
-
You should think more on lines of content creation and better interlinking between your pages and all. Social media is a big power today.
-
I am against this to be honest.
- True these links coming from low quality sites (and they are low quality) but the links have "Age"
- I only go back and remove links, if they look too spammy, or page looks like a link farm.
I would certainely see drop in rankings if these old Links has been removed and not being replaced with good one's
-
Hi Saibose,
Thanks for the quick reply, I'll add it to the job list as a fairly low priority.
Simon
-
You would be better off removing these low quality backlinks, but that would not reflect in rankings right away. Maybe over a period of time with targeted content and engaging people with social media and obtaining good contextual links would help in repairing your link profile.
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
-
How do the powerful links of an old domain help my new domain?
I recently purchased a domain with over twenty years age, a few .gov links and A LOT of .edu links. Of course, the domain is relevant to my site's content. I'm hosting the domain on my shared server and have setup 301 redirects for each page that had external links pointing to it via the htaccess file within the domain's root directory. These 301 redirects, of course, point to my new domain, which is on a dedicated server. Specifically, they point to a directory on my new domain. I've also verified the purchased domain and my new domain on Google Search Console/Webmaster Tools. Finally, I've completed a google site change request for the old site to point to my new site. My questions: Should I also list my old domain on the dedicated server over the shared server or does it matter? Will the backlinks of the old site show up in my new site's links via Google's search console, Open Site Explorer, etc.? Will the backlinks of the old site improve the authority of my domain? Also, keep in mind that I have the 301 redirects pointing to a directory on my new site, not the root page of the new domain. Will the backlinks of the old site help my new domain's authority? In the eyes of Moz I've read, NO. I understand it's just a MOZ metric but from what I understand it also correlates with Google's actual 'authority' metric/method of giving value to a particular domain over another based on the backlinks. How exactly do the backlinks of the old domain benefit my new domain and is there a way to measure this/see the relationship? Thank you for any help you're willing to give!
Link Building | | ninel_P0 -
Having High Quality sites link to my site
How can I tell if a site is high quality or not, so far I have been using Moz's Toolbar to find the Domain Authority and Page authority to determine the quality of the site - is this correct?
Link Building | | VoodooCreativeLtd0 -
Will feeding a blog through a widget onto a wix site help rankings?
I have a client I am writing blog content for, however his site was recently redesigned on wix html5. They offer no native blog. I have used a widget to embed blog from another site, however does this help seo in any way? When people share on social media, etc., it is linking the embedded page, not the clients site, right? So it would not be giving any link juice to site. It also doesn't help for organic search of content if it is embedded, is that right? I have been racking my brain trying to figure out how to overcome this issue. Would creating a "faux" blog on the Wix site work (as in multiple pages that I would then categorize and link to each other to navigate like a blog myself)? Wix looks like it has page length maximums too, so I'm not sure how I would get around that. It is also clunky to share on social media without a "share" button for viewer, but perhaps I am mistaken. Is that a ridiculous solution? What have other people done to deal with this issue and get better rankings with Wix platform? Thanks in advance for any input! I'm feeling a little frustrated with what to do.
Link Building | | Quill_Quotient0 -
Question about ranking and links
Hi, Some back ground info first: My DA/PA is 42, the competitors who show up in the search engines for the term I am after have DA/PA 55/60. I have been creating anchor text links which target the term im after through guest blogging usually blogs with DA/PA 40+, I did this consistently with a guest post every 3 days for about a month so that's around 10 guest posts. And I also did some brand name blog comments, but these were no-follow and added sig to some forums. This moved me from page 5 to page 1, position 4. I then stopped and over the last 3 weeks it slipped to position 6 then to position 8. The competition doesn't look to actively target this term looking at the data from opensite explorer there main anchor text is there brand names. Why would I be slipping through the results? Not moaning just want to understand why so I can counter it. I was thinking about going for social signals through a blog to help.
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
Remove links or change anchor text?
I am currently in the process of cleaning up the link profile for a website that has been hit by Penguin thanks to loads of links from free directories with exact match keyword anchor texts (about 200 root domains from total of 300 root domains). I was wondering whether it's best to remove these un-natrual keyword anchor text links altogether, or change the anchor texts to brand (domain name, domainname.com, www.domainname.com, http://www.domainname.com)? I am currently trying to remove these links but was thinking it would be quicker to get to a healthier link profile (in terms of brand/commercial anchor text split) by altering the anchor texts and not removing them. Some of these directories are the worst of the worst on the other hand. Also note that I'm only really getting about a 30% response rate from the owners of these directories. Any thoughts? Many thanks in advance.
Link Building | | ec9awp0 -
Total Links vs Ext. Followed Links
Hi I'm fairly new to SEO and SEOMOZ. I've created a campaign for my own site and I've added 3 competitor sites. There are 1,385 total links to my site and a massive 49,450 links to one of my competitor's site. However under "Ext. Followed Links", there are 1,045 to my site and only 911 to the same competitor site. Am I correct that it is the "Ext. Followed Links" which are more important from an SEO point of view as the other links have the "no follow" attribute set? Or have I got this wrong? Thanks James
Link Building | | avecsys0 -
How to Define Quality of External Website During Link Building?
I want to know about process, method or tool which can help me to define quality of external website during link building. We are searching too many questions and topics on Google to resolve daily mind bubbles which land us on different website with different subject. I found that, I was able to drop my website URL over there but confuse about quality of website. I am selling Football and create external link from baby care website. So, will it make sense? My concern is that, Can we create external links from different subject website or specific to subject oriented website? Is there any specific method which help me to understand more about external website and help me to take decision about link building?
Link Building | | CommercePundit0 -
Do you think 3-way link exchanges help in keyword rank and overall PR authority?
I know traditional link exchanges aren't very valuable and Google doesn't respect them as much, but what about 3-way link exchanges?
Link Building | | visionnexus0