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
-
How many links per week/month should a link building campaign acquire?
I am running a linkbuilding campaign for my company. I am mostly focusing on guest blogging opportunities and responding to emails from HARO. How many links would I have to acquire each week or month to be considered doing a good job over a 6 month or a year time period? Thank you,
Link Building | | fersu0 -
Linking between properties
I own 3 domains. One is my blog, one is my photography business site, and one is my graphic/web design site. They are all hosted on the same VPS account. I link between each site. Also, since the links are either in the nav, footer or sidebar, all pages from one page link to the homepage of each other. Is this an issue for SEO? Should I not be doing this? Would it be beneficial to use a no follow link instead if I'm to keep them?
Link Building | | studio35design0 -
Internal Linking
OSE only shows me as having 24 internal links on my home page. My internal links and total links are far less than my competitors, some of whom have 1700 on a single page. My site is www.CenterCityTeam.com and an example of a competitor with far more internal links is www.McCannTeam.com. 1) How do I get that many internal links on a page and 2) do I even want to?
Link Building | | frankdefazio0 -
Total Links vs Google Webmaster Site Links
I am interested why the numbers between SEOmoz and Google are so different. In SEOmoz we only show 17,000ish links from 190ish domains. In Google, we show 200,000+ links from 370 domains. Why is there such a dramatic difference?
Link Building | | webspecdesign0 -
Linking to a site in the US from a site in the UK - Good, bad or not important?
Would linking to a site in the US from the UK do harm or good if the site being linked to is industry related? i.e. a UK web design company linking to a US web design career site.
Link Building | | Tone_Agency0 -
Links I am not Building?
Hi All, I check webmaster multiple times on a daily basis, and I noticed some links that I have not worked on and look a bit spammy, is it possible for people to purposely pont bad links in my direction? If that is the case is there a way for me to remove them myself? Also the number of total backlinks are very different in Webmaster and my Open Site Explorer, is this normal? Thanks again !
Link Building | | TP_Marketing0 -
Outbound links
Hi there, i know inbound links are what hold the main value in terms of link building but if i have an inbound link from a big company such as ITV or BBC and they have put an article on their site linking back to mine, would it be beneficial if i made a comment on my site and then link back to their article or will this not really help? Sorry as you can tell im very new to seo! thanks anthony
Link Building | | anthonybriant0