The Ranking Effects Of Removing Mass Outbound Links

[Pjman]

I have an old site that I started as a directory years (2001) ago. I have as of late added tons of content that is much better than what it is linking out to.

I was going to remove all the outbound links that are not near the quality or use of the content I now have on that site.

We're talking about removing 9,000 outbound links spread over 500+ pages.

What kind of ranking changes should I expect?

[dvduval]

An intermediate step might be to depreciate that content by keeping it online but not linking to it from the hopepage. Then build a structure around your new and improved content.

I did this successfully and saw the pagerank increase on the last update after one site had been zeroed out.

[Pjman]

I have been slowly removing links without any problems in SERPs. On pages I use to have 40 outbound links, I reduce them to about 10. So far so good.

I'm just removing any links that are not on proper with my content or better.

It really is for the users.

[goodroi]

I find its more dangerous to swap out old links with new links. Simply deleting old links has never caused me problems. Of course I have never taken this to the extreme that Pjman is testing. Good luck with the test!

[Pjman]

@goodroi

Thanks! Great point about placing new links. I think I'll do it in 2 swoops.

Phase 1) Remove Current Links That Are Not On Par. Keep On Par Links.

---Wait 2-3 months---

Phase 2) Add new links that provide value.