Drop in Rankings After Removing Links
-
So I removed some links to a particular homepage for one of the sites we own, this page had A LOT of links pointing to it using exact match anchors. And for the most part the links were coming from low quality pages/content. After removing a good chunk of them I noticed are rankings went down from around 8-9th two weeks ago to 21 as of today. Has anyone else had a problem like this before?
I'm thinking about restoring some of these links now to see if I can recover some of that. Any thoughts on doing this?
Thanks
-
Update on this issue........
I ended up restoring a few of the links I removed but none of the truly crappy ones. It seems though I was just needing to be a little patient. This latest algo update shot be back up to 8th after I had dropped to 30th (after removing a ton of links). So it seems those links were still passing pagerank even though they were total garbage and didn't offer any value whatsoever. I think this is evidence that Google's quality standard when it comes to links definitely went up. Which I guess goes without saying but it's good to have proof. I also hadn't done anything else to the site for the last couple months other than remove those links so there shouldn't have been any other variables at play.
-
I see, Anthony provides some good insights below.
Removing inbound links from other domains thus effects your overall inbound links which then can have an impact on your natural ranking. Restoring them will probably fix the immediate issue. BUT! There is a fine line here that should be discussed.
You don't want to become a victim of link manipulation this can be done by buying a crap ton of domains making some generic content and point them back to one another or just one, creating an internal link ring or link funnel. This will eventually get you penalized. Now, owing a handful of sites and pointing them to one another is perfectly acceptable. An example being Pepsico pointing to Pepsi, Mt. Dew, Taco Bell, Quaker Oats, Tropicana ect.. these are all companies they own. In fact our company owns 3 branded websites, but we were careful only pointing to relevant pages when it suits the user's experience. You may have been benefiting from a form of this, which is why your rank dropped whence you removed the links.
Hope that makes sense.
Don
-
I've done this to several of our other sites and haven't seen a ranking increase or decrease. They have all continued to have roughly the same amount of organic traffic. So I'm assuming these links were really doing nothing from an SEO standpoint and probably a ticking time bomb ready to go off when the next major algo update rolls out.
I may have just gotten a little overzealous when removing them on this particular site. It was for a pretty significant keyword so I'm tempted to maybe restore at least some of them and see what it does.
-
I meant links to the homepage of a site from other sites that we happen to own.
-
Removing backlinks, especially ones with money anchor text, will most definitely cause your rankings to decrease. I can only assume you did this because you viewed the links as spammy or something that could eventually cause you future ranking problems at an algorithmic or manual level. If that is the case, you probably made the right decision if you are hoping this site will rank for the long-term.
Instead of restoring those links, try to find a way to create a few new ones that you feel are safe for the long-term.
-
Rankings are dynamic. Moving 1-3 spots from day to day or even hour to hour is actually common and not really concerning. Now dropping from page 1 (rank 8), to page 3 (rank 21) would be something I would certainly want to to watch.
When you said you removed the links to your homepage from lower ranking pages.. my first question is why? Were they redundant links? Ie you can click a banner or home page button instead? If not, then you are creating orphan pages which from a useability standpoint is not good. A user should always be able to get to your homepage or any main topic pages very easily and apparent. Just look at this forum, even in edit post mode I can still get to Moz.com homepage in 1 click.
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
-
To Remove or not to Remove?
Howdy! In the midst of communicating with Google because of a robots.txt issue, we had a bit of a backfire of sorts and received a notice of unnatural links. It's not a horror story or anything. It's seems more like, "Hey, before we address your other issues, here is something you should clean up" although I don't dare put words in Google's mouth. A few years ago we hired an SEO company which shall remain nameless who did some anchor text blog posts for us which at the time, we had no idea was an issue. There aren't an enormous number of these links hanging around, but checking our anchor text, in OSE, we saw that there are around 50 or so. We decided to use removeem.com as an easy way to request removal of these links. However, on first run, removeem returned a large number of anchor text links beyond just these obvious ones that are actually natural links from users, fans or those that sell their goods on our website. Examples of these anchor text links would be: "DEMO" or "Find My Products Here" or "Home Page" http://www.mysite.com/goodstuff/foryoutubuy/html We are a media selling site and we do have a lot of download sites that attempt to "share" content and link back to us via a DEMO link, etc. While these aren't the greatest sites in the world, they are nevertheless natural links. Heck, they are pirating our goods, shouldn't we at least garner the link juice from them?!!? 😉 So, questions: Should we remove all of these links as removem.com suggests or only remove the ones that are unnatural and clarify with google that these other links are natural? Thanks for your help! Craig
Link Building | | TheCraig0 -
Removed Link
After I have removed a link, how long does it take for it to be reflected in Google WMT?
Link Building | | raph39880 -
Link Removals (DA Damage?)
Hi, I am now working on a website with some rubbish links in their profile, which were created by the previous SEO Company. They are footer links from unrelated business websites. All authority from these links have been removed by Google during the latest updates and our SEOMOz DA went from 37 to 35 after the past Penguin update. My question is: Should I get these links removed or rather will we see any advantage to getting the links removed? Or should I just focus my efforts on getting a better link profile together using content? What I don't want to happen is to remove these not great links and then see a decrease even further of the authority. Thanks
Link Building | | brightonseorob0 -
Back Link: Is LinkedIn keywords in profile good Link building strategy?
I distribute industrial products B2B with e commerce. I have a personal profile on LinkedIn. I listed the products I sell and I could have all my partners and associates list my web site on their profiles. Do search engines review LinkedIn personal profiles or company profiles and is it a good marketing strategy to have my web site, keywords, and my two largest selling products on LinkedIn?
Link Building | | Wales0 -
Link building
i want to ask a question. i am sure this is kind black hat seo. look at this web site http://www.199999dollars.com/ if we also create website like this and put a banner as domain for sale and in the footer put back links to our domain ? thanks
Link Building | | idreams0 -
Whats with these links
I have a competitor
Link Building | | AlanMosley
that has shot up lately taking number one spot for various keywords when I look
at his links in Open Site Explorer I find many links that are links to downloadable
objects, not web pages. A few
examples, if you click on them, do not open who knows what they are. But what
the story, how are these links to his site, anyone know anything about this. Thanks http://wolfet.co.uk/etmain/mitchelldown.pk3 http://www2.dupont.com/Tyvek_Weatherization/en_US/assets/downloads/cad_fluidapplied/FA-S-201.dwg?Action=livre_or&start=24750&forum=alainfrancois http://mobile.earthcam.com/download/EarthCam%20Mobile%20v4.0.msi?faq&page=39560 -
A good link builder / link building agency for Spanish content
Hi, I am looking for a good link building agency or freelance to execute a link building strategy for the next months. The content is in Spanish. Could anyone recommend me a good agency or a good link builder for Spanish content? Thank you very much! Jorge
Link Building | | jorgediaz0