Asking Sites to Remove Links.. What should I say?
-
After getting some guidance from you guys here on this forum i have decided to go through my WMT backlinks and contact all the sites that I think are spammy and are linking back to me....and I will ask them to remove my links from their sites...
Can you guys please provide some guidance as to what I should say in the letter (also, anything i should definitely not say)....
Thanks for the help...
-
That's a great question and I really don't know the answer....
How would i find out? My site is still indexed, its just ranking very poorly for the keywords that most of these links used as anchor text....
-
Have you been penalised? Or are you just no longer seeing the effects of the links that google has now devalued?
-
I agree that it is a different story if you have been penalized, but I would try to find out if that is the true reason as to why you have been penalized. It very well may be ... but what else have you been doing that may have caused the problem? Have you hired anyone to get you links recently?
-
I didn't know that google was complaining about your links.
If you or someone you hired bought links, traded links or made arrangements to have links created for your site then you might try contacting those webmasters, tell them that google doesn't like the links and ask them to remove them.
Good luck.
-
Sounds like you got a penalty. In that case, you definitely want to make an effort to remove as many as possible. Document the effort you put into it. How many sites you contact for removal and how many links you have successfully removed.
This data will likely help when you file a reconsideration request.
The main problem is, spammy links are a lot harder to remove than they are to acquire. Best of luck.
-
But my rankings have dropped terribly and i got a notice in my WMT that G detected an unnatural flow of links... and within a week i went from page 1 to page 10 on my main keyword... I think i need to try and remove some of those... Do you still think it's not necessary?
-
I agree with EGOL - it is not worth the resources to remove them and most likely they are not hurting your site.These types of links will become inevitable as your site grows.
-
Lots of these types of links are simply part of the content on spammy websites. They are often produced by a robot that scrapes websites and republishes snips of their content, including links. The more popular your website becomes the more of these types of links you will acquire. In some industries there are enormous numbers of spam websites. My site has a million of these links and I am not going to do anything about it. It would cost thousands of dollars in labor just to make "an attempt" at contacting these people and I bet that the response rate will be really really low. Google knows that these sites are trash. I don't think that those links are helping or hurting very much at all.
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
-
Easiest Way to Balance Links Across Site?
I'm struggling to reach the last few spots for my client's main keyword, hovering around mid-page on the first SERP. I have continuously built more links to this page but have not seen a correlation in movement, until I finally realised that I have too high a ratio of links pointing to the home page relative to those pointing to other pages on the site, which doesn't look natural (stupidly, for the last year we have mainly only been trying to rank the home page). I already have links on most UK directories - since the links I need are really just safe links (they don't need to have power), can anyone suggest the best/cheapest source of link-building that I could use to point more links to other pages on the site, to balance the site's overall profile? A press release, perhaps? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zakkyg0 -
Linking to one of my own sites, from my site
Hi experts, I own a site for castingjobs (Site1) and a site for selling paintings (Site2). In a long time, I've had a link at the bottom of Site1, linking to Site 2. (Basicaly: Partnerlink: Link site 2). Site1 is for me the the only important site, since it's where Im making my monthly revenue. I added the link like 5 years ago or so, to try to boost site 2. My question is:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KasperGJ
1. Is it somehow bad for SEO for site 1, since the two sites have nothing to do with each other, they are basically just owned by me.
2. Would it make sense to link from Site 2 to Site 1 indstead?0 -
Sitewide Footer Links & Sister Sites
Hi We have a number of sister sites across Europe - the sites are under a different domain name, but have a very similar layout & product offering. When looking at duplicate content, they are flagged as being a moderate risk with similar content - we don't duplicate product content, however it's similar. We also link to them in the footer in a drop down - not anchor text links - however this is still seen by Google. I don't think I'll be able to remove links to our sister companies, but should I implement the Href lang if the sites are slightly different? Or find another way to link to them? Here's an example http://www.key.co.uk/en/key & https://www.manutan.fr/fr/maf
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Blog On Subdomain - Do backlinks to the blog posts on Subdomain count as links for main site?
I want to put blog on my site. The IT department is asking that I use a subdomain (myblog.mysite.com) instead of a subfolder (mysite.com/myblog). I am worried b/c it was my understanding that any links I get to my blog posts (if on subdomain) will not count toward the main site (search engines would view almost as other website). The main purpose of this blog is to attract backlinks. That is why I prefer the subfolder location for the Blog. Can anyone tell me if I am thinking about this right? Another solution I am being offered is to use a reverse proxy. Thoughts? Thank you for your time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ecerbone0 -
Do links to a domain that re-directs to my domain pass link equity?
Hi guys. We've recently taken control of a third-party site and we're going to set up a domain re-direct so any traffic comes to our site. With any existing links that the third-party site has, will these pass link equity to our main site through the redirect? Thanks, Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kevinliao0 -
How to properly link network of microsites and main sites?
Law firm has a main brand site (lawfirmname.com) with lots of content focusing on personal injury related areas of law. They also do other unrelated areas of law such as bankruptcy and divorce. They have a separate website for bankruptcy and a separate one for divorce. These websites have good quality content, a backlinking campaign, and are fairly large websites, with landing pages for different cities. They also have created local microsites in the areas of bankruptcy and divorce that target specific smaller cities that the main bankruptcy site and divorce site do not target well. These microsites have a good deal of original content and the content is mostly specific to the city the website is about, and virtually no backlinks. There are about 15 microsites for cities in bankruptcy and 10 in divorce and they rank pretty well for these city specific local searches. None of these sites are linked at all, and all 28 of the sites are under the same hosting account (all are subdomains of root domain of hosting account). Question, should I link these sites together at all and if so how? I considered making a simple and general page on the lawfirmname.com personal injury site for bankruptcy and divorce (lawfirmname.com/bankruptcy and lawfirmname.com/divorce) and then saying on the page something to the effect of "for more information on bankruptcy go to our main bankruptcy site at ....." and putting the link to the main bankruptcy site. Same for divorce. This way users can go to lawfirmname.com site and find Other Practice Areas, go to bankruptcy page, and link to main bankruptcy site. Is this the best way to link to these two main sites for bankruptcy and divorce or should I be linking upward? Secondly, should I link the city specific microsites to any of the other sites or leave them completely separate? Thirdly, should all of these sites be hosted on the same account or is this something that should be changed? I was considering not linking the city specific sites at all, but if I did this I didn't know if I should create different hosting accounts for them (which could be expensive). The sites work well in themselves without being linked, but wanted to try to network them in some way if possible without getting penalized or causing any issues with the search engines. Any help would be appreciated on how to network and host all of these websites.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | broca777110 -
How can I remove duplicate content & titles from my site?
Without knowing I created multiple URLs to the same page destinations on my website. My ranking is poor and I need to fix this problem quickly. My web host doesn't understand the problem!!! How can I use canonical tags? Can somebody help, please.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ZoeAlexander0 -
Link Acquisition - link building
When using Site Explorer to find out my competiters links so I can do some link aquisition SEO do I look for the "inbound" links or or "linking domains"? Also, what filters should I choose? I want to make a spreadsheet as Rand suggested in his video and start to prioritize my link building.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | musicforkids0