Removal of all low PR links

[Cocoonfxmedia]

I have a lot of old directory links which where done years ago, most I think will be effecting my site. Is there away to find them all ie through open explorer and then remove them in one go?

[TommyTan]

Yup, Don't mass delete.  If you don't have a lot of links, check each link and see if it is a good site that links to you.  It is possible that the site that linked to you may not have high PR but that site is a niche related to your site.  Those can be good to generate quality traffic.

[Cocoonfxmedia]

Thanks to both of you, I am going to look at some of the sites and then disavow.  I think a mass deletion could be the wrong step.

[TommyTan]

Hi,

If you believe that you have been penalized because of those low PR links, you can use the disavow tool and ask Google to not consider those sites.  However, you have to use this tool with care.  You should only use it if you are sure those sites affected you.  Why?  Even if those sites have low PR but they are not the reason for your decrease of rank and if you removed them, it might actually lower your rank more because you lost those low link juice.

Check out the Google Webmaster blog on how to use the disavow tool http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-new-tool-to-disavow-links.html

First, determine what is the real cause.  Not all Low PR sites' link will harm your ranking.

Hope this helps.

[irvingw]

The only way you can remove links to your site is to reaching out to the directories and asking them to remove your links. Are they all pointing to your homepage, if not you can 404 the internal URLs and that is the best way to drop links all in one shot. If they are to your homepage then it is a time consuming manual job involving tons of email requests to webmasters.

You can also used Google's disavow tool, but that is only recommended for sites which have already incurred a penalty.