Clean up bad links or start again?
-
I am looking to take on a new client but when I looked at their current backlinks they have 420 low quality spammy irrelevant backlinks, all with keyword anchor text and no branded links at all. The site is still ranking well at the moment but I don't expect this to be the case long-term. Would you try and remove the old links and then disavow any that you can't remove or would you start again on a new domain? Not sure which way to play it!
Thanks!
Karen
-
Thanks for taking the time to respond, I really appreciate your responses.
-
Morning Karen,
As mentioned if its working why make even more work for your self and start again? It's always too easy to look at links accuse them of being spammy because they don't relate to your site. It doesn't take too long to remove links really and if you start to work on good SEO along side this your then making the site better from both ends so to speak.
A site will always have a variety of links its normal and what Google expects. I tend to leave some low end links on sites I work on because if you have all high quality sites pointed it can look just as bad if you have lots of low quality one's.
Remember starting a new domain can take months to go any where where as your domain is already ranking and already known, the general public won't know it has spammy links all they will know is its in the SERPS. If you wanted to you could do both start a new one whilst keeping this one afloat then redirect so you sort of get the best of both worlds though you would still have a drop in rankings.
Hopefully there are some insights and ideas above that you will find helpful, I wish you the best of luck in what you decide and as always I recommend you research into what you are about to jump into!
-
Thanks Christopher, all but one of the links are spam, and the one that isn't spam is an easy to get link anyway. All the links I have checked are on poor quality blogs, the blogs aren't in the clients niche, there is a lot of duplicate content and they are poorly written so that they don't actually make sense! Link building at it's worst!!!! Ahhh!
-
Hi Karen, it depends. Are all the links spammy or are there some good links as well? Given that the site continues to rank well and without additional information, I'd be inclined to try and clean it up and create some new compelling content. If it does get hit then you can reassess, but again, it depends in part on the value of the good links.
Best,
Christopher
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
-
Are Millions of back links from 3 domains bad?
I have a client that has 4 individual domains with duplicate content mirroring certain sections of the main site as well as the home page. I understand the duplicate content issues but have a different question that I would like advice on. I am seeing 3 of these domains back linking to the main domain causing over 5 million backlinks. Is this bad and can it hurt rankings? One domain has 3,215,658 backlinks and another has 1,553,947 backlinks. I have experienced this in the past with a different client, where sister companies back linked using the exact same anchor text caused over 5 million back links. This client experienced a drop of their top 2 keywords where they dropped from # 1 & 2 positions in Google SERPs to the 82nd position. Appreciate feedback
Link Building | | dctomten0 -
Spammy links
Hi I was reviewing a clients link profile and found a lot of the links they have pointed at their domain have the anchor text "Buy Viagra" or "buy viagra online" and similar. Now the website has absolutely nothing to do with this kind of business so no doubt these links are spammy. To my knowledge the website has not been penalised by Google so far. Is it best to disavow or just leave alone? Kind Regards
Link Building | | TheZenAgency0 -
Removing bad/poor quality links from the site
Sometime back my site was penalized due to unnatural artificial and deceptive links. Then we got removed the penalty by uploading file in Disavow Tool. Bad links are decreasing gradually now . What i am concerned to ask is that: 1: For how long i should wait till Google removes all the requested bad links 2:Second, i believe there are still many bad links that I dont want to keep. How to remove them now onward? Should we send Google a reconsideration request for removing the remaining bad links (site has been recovered already and no more under penalty banner) Tanveer
Link Building | | Sequelmed0 -
Need referrals on expert to clean up "unnatural links" and submit reconsideration request
I just received a manual unnatural links penalty. I was shocked because other than maybe five links many years ago, I've not done anything to get links. The site is very powerful in it's own right and buying links is unnecessary. My first thought was a competitor has done the link spamming on my behalf, any my site is very profitable and the competitors are plentiful and ruthless (i.e. steal my content and use it) since we are #1 for our search term. I took a quick look at my links (via webmaster tools) just now and yes, in the last few months there are tons of links from very bad looking sites that are I've never heard of. It's obvious I've been purposefully hit by a competitor. (What's it called when they do this?) Does Google understand at all that this stuff goes on? Do they even care? On the eventual reconsideration request, if I say that I honestly didn't do those links, would they even believe me or even care? I have read several articles on what to do now. But this is so important to my income stream that I don't want to screw anything up trying to fix it, and I want to get it right the first time. Every day is very expensive to me. So, I'd like to get some recommendations on any experts that can handle this professionally and swiftly. Please let me know of anyone trustworthy that won't rip me off, and if you are such a professional yourself, please let me know. Thank you
Link Building | | bizzer0 -
Link removal
We were hit by penguin and have been going through the process of removing bad links. Things were looking up but then wasa 20% jump in our bad links. They all seem to be related. There are over 100 different domains that all seem to go back to mbiz. examples include http://www.5stone.com.cn/Literature-holders-.html http://www.building-stone.com/Display-furniture.html http://www.china-tombstone.com/Display-exhibition-products-.html It looks like they have automatically gathered data from google to create these pages. I would hope that the guys at Google are clever enough to be aware of these sorts of links. But if not I need to get them removed. I have tried whois but I cant find out how to contact these guys. Has anyone got any bright ideas? Thanks
Link Building | | Discountdisplays0 -
Link from a non existing page- is it bad?
If Google Webmaster tools is showing a link to my site and when checked, that page doesn't exist (404 error), does that mean anything? Is it bad?
Link Building | | Personnel_Concept0 -
Link-Building
Hello, I have been doing link-building for my website since 2 of January. However those links are not in the Open Site Explorer. For example I have the DMOZ website pointing to my website and I cant see it in open site explorer! Why?? Tks in advance!
Link Building | | PedroM0 -
Linking from Blogs
Hi I like to link from blogs on similar keywords on a regular basis but I am thinking about changing tactics as it can appear monotonous and un natural. What are peoples experiences in linking from blogs ?
Link Building | | onlinemediadirect0