It's time to delink inbounds urgently - but how?

[Whitey]

Over the last 10 or so years the temptation to take a paid link here or there, and/or build lots of links across crappy sites has been sucked up up by multitudes of webmasters across the globe. Now those sites are in trouble in the SERP's.

Some of those site owners would be reluctant to cull all links, as this will also create big trouble. Site's that embarked on this strategy, that i've seen, have tanked correspondingly.

Links to cull, i believe are:

-overuse of same anchor text
-overuse of links from crappy websites

Links to engage are from high quality sources, connected to reputation. Not just Toolbar Page Rank.

Now here's the catch. Lot's of you have great links mixed in with crappy links pointing to the same URL's. You can get those links changed.

What's the strategy? Do you let go the site ? Do you change the URL's ? What is the checklist and actions for dealing with this ?

[seogenx]

Ok, what's the conclusion? I read a lot about Penguin, ranking drop, Negative SEO etc. People need solution, they don't like to go deep into the how Google Penguin affect their site, the threat of negative seo etc. So, I figured out some actionable steps to be taken care after finding bad links pointing to your website,
- contact webmaster via email once you find bad links (use these, rmoov.com, linkaudit.co.uk tools to find contact info for each links, etc.)
- Find Domains have highest links pointing to your website from Google Webmaster Tools and check them in opensiteexplorer for link quality.

[cnvi]

A lot of site owners are going to drive themselves crazy removing, or trying to remove 'bad' links. But after all that, their sites rankings won't improve.

This is what we are currently seeing and in most cases it's hurting the site's traffic, not helping it.

Negative SEO almost always will not hurt a site's rankings, it simply won't help it. There is alot of time being wasted out there removing relevant links that helped brand the site within its realm of interest. As the dust settles many of these sites will be entirely dependent on traffic from search engines. They will have killed years of branding. And for what reason? Because they fear they might get an over generalized email from the almighty G?

Unless you bought links in high volume from known irreputable sources, "removing links" is a huge goose chase and utter waste of time.

[slartythefirst]

cnvi - I absolutely agree. Look at this way though, the SEO industry will always be packed with those that "do" SEO rather than "think" SEO. They need to make money, so they scare their clients into believing they need a "Link profile clean up" or whatever else they want to call it. There's good money in scaremongering, apparently.

[cnvi]

Here's one from yesterday afternoon. Client called in freaking out over what she did about six weeks ago. Some of her friends were receiving the dreaded link leter from G (she did NOT get the link letter herself) so she wiped out her entire links pages (partners in her wedding industry niche). She was ranking just fine before she removed about 240 links that she had acquired through relevant link exchange over about 6 years (do the math thats only about 3-4 links a month). As a result of this she lost most of the linkbacks when her link partners found out she dumped her links pages. Her rankings dropped from top 10-15 to about page 5. Not to mention the traffic she got from the links themselves - thats all gone.

She told me yesterday her sales are now in the toilet. She is so distraught she told me she is on medication. I try to educate these people before they make drastic decisions but some are so freaked out they just make crazy decisions without thinking it through. And all because so many of you have decided to let G tell you precisely how you should obtain links without defending time tested ethichal practices such as relevant link exchange within your realm of interest.

People slow down and don't be so quick to change something on your site just because G (or someone else) tells you to.

[martinibuster]

I agree, cnvi. This error can happen to anyone. I've seen several situations where a web publisher believed they had an issue that was being talked about in forums and blogs and it turned out to be a completely different issue with their site, or something else external of their site.

[Whitey]

Unless you bought links in high volume from known irreputable sources, "removing links" is a huge goose chase and utter waste of time.

@cnvi - true, but there's more to the reputation analysis and the actions you need to take.

You could have a lot of similar anchor text with poor brand to anchor text ratios raising alarms at Google.

You could have sitewide links in enormous quantities, doing the same.

What was reputable, may no longer be reputable in the context of the updated algo adjustments.

What's the chance that webmasters will respond sufficiently to a request to take down the links [ as you say - unlikely to be successful ]

Do you wait for the dissavow tool to be released ?

I think claims like this need deeper thinking and consideration to stronger strategies in order to deal with it. Is your site page affected ? Is your sitewide affected? How do you balance the remedy ? Is it worth it economically ?

[Rosalind]

What's the chance that webmasters will respond sufficiently to a request to take down the links [ as you say - unlikely to be successful ]

Low. What you're actually saying if you make a post-Penguin link removal request is "I don't judge your site to be of sufficient quality to link to mine". For anyone who is aware of what Penguin means, it's offensive. That's no way to appeal to a site owner's ego. If you get it wrong and they're actually running a decent website you'll never get a valuable link from that source again, and if you're right about the site's quality they're probably getting a ton of similar requests from panicked webmasters.

[martinibuster]

If you get it wrong and they're actually running a decent website...

From what I've seen in the past year from people coming to me for advice on fixing what they broke, virtually every rotten link came from a rotten website. Of all the rotten backlinks I have seen in the past year, I honestly can't recall having seen one on a decent site. They consistently have a lot of negative signals. Burning bridges is not a top concern in the enterprise of getting true 100% nnatural links removed.