Odd Link Removal Request
-
Unless I'm missing something, having gotten into trouble... the company in question is not doing a great job at link removal.
Here's an email my client received:
Hi Webmaster,
I work for xxxxxxxxxxx and our site has recently been penalized by Google for an unnatural link profile that violates Google's Quality Guidelines. As part of an effort to get back in their graces, we are removing all links to our website so we can start fresh.
We are making changes to our site to build better content for our audience. I am contacting people who have linked to us in the past to remove any doubt that Google views the link or anchor text as overoptimzed or unnatural.
Therefore, I am respectfully requesting that you remove all links to our site on xxxxxxxxxxx including:
xxxxxxx That says xxxxxxxxxx and goes to xxxxxxxx.
I appreciate your past efforts to link to our content, and I am excited to launch our improved content very soon. We understand that this request takes time and effort, but we would sincerely appreciate your help.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask. If you could be so kind as to respond that you have removed the link, it would really help out with my efforts. Thank you in advance!
Best Wishes,xxxxxx
All the details and URLS in the email were wrong. After much back and forth, we tracked down a single link from an infographic -- which I removed.
But is removing all links really the best strategy? Does it ever make sense?
-
We also lightly speculated it could be a competitor falsely claiming to be them and is trying to sabotage their link profile!
-
If they meant it - its probably due to them being frustrated with the reconsideration request. I went through the same thing before until i disavowed everything and the site was released from the penalty. So yeah, a lazy mistake on my part back then but i learned from it, and i wouldnt know any better if i didnt do it
-
I considered this possibility, but given the incompetence of the request (wrong URLs) and the some quick Google research on the person who sent the request (novelist/copywriter)....
...my guess is that sheer incompetence is a more likely explanation.
Looks like the company in question hired the wrong SEO....
...and then hired the wrong person to try to mitigate the damage.
-
Maybe they are telling the webmaster that they are removing "ALL" of their links instead of just the stinky links - like the one on his site.
I bet that is it.
-
Yeah they are absolutely confused, but good on you for taking time out of your busy schedule to try to help out somebody with a Google penalty! This person is clearly a bit misinformed, but it still makes me happy to know that webmasters like you exist!
That said, please don't let your friends send messed up link removal requests like these with incorrect URLs and such. That will just make it harder for all of us in the future. And that is my Public Service Announcement for the day.
-
Myself and Bill Slawski were having a conversation about this on Twitter just yesterday.
It strikes me as laziness - they don't want to navigate through the link profile to identify a good link or a bad link and have just gone "sod it - ask everyone to remove and then we'll disavow if they don't".
Yeah, will probably remove the penalty, but it would also put you so far behind SEO wise. Just laziness if you ask me.
I also don't see why they don't start on a fresh domain if they're doing this, unless they're really attached to their current domain and/or brand.
-
Removing all links is definitely not the way to go but many people are still unsure what constitutes to a good and bad link. That company have gone about it the wrong way though!
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
-
We're looking at providing SEO for a website that has the majority of its incoming links from websites created solely to provide links. Few have bad spam rankings. How worried should I be about those links?
The majority of incoming links to a prospect's website are from website pages apparently created solely to provide links to the website. Few have high spam scores. The sites linking to the main site have versions of blogs with linked text. They seem to be providing positive SEO value now, but I'm concerned they might get noticed and hurt the main site in the future.
Link Building | | PKI_Niles1 -
Should harmful links to your own website be removed?
Upon running a link report on a website, there are often multiple links flagged as bad or suspect that come from a blog that is integrated into the website, which means there are links (set up as article tags) in the site that go to other pages in the same site. They have likely been flagged due to their high frequency. A similar problem is occurring where blogs from a connected site (from an offshoot site of a company that is part of the original) are also tagging their blog posts to link into the original website. Should these links be disavowed? Will these links have an effect on the website if they are disavowed or not?
Link Building | | rachelmanning8880 -
Link building with PDFs
I created a manual for a popular piece of equipment and placed it, as a PDF-file, on my website. The PDF contains a clickable link to the root domain of my website. Other websites have downloaded the PDF and put it on their own website, hosting it themselves. Since Google indexes PDFs, does the link in the PDF count as a regular 'link' from an external website, and does it have comparable value? Can't find any thoughts or studies about this anywhere.
Link Building | | RBenedict0 -
How Long for Penguin Recovery if All Links Were Removed at Once?
Hi, I was wondering if anyone had thoughts on length of time before a Penguin recovery can take place, assuming you removed all the bad links at once? I have a client that has a Penguin penalty, with all the bad links pointing in to a domain, which then redirected to theirs. So, I simply had that domain removed and it now returns a 404 instead of redirecting to the main site. Now all of the bad backlinks do not pass through. All of this happened at once about 5 weeks ago. I was glad to discover such an easy solution, but am wondering how long something like this would take. My initial thought was it would take 2 or 3 months to see recovery, but I was hoping since the issue was fixed so quickly, recovery would be faster. Any experience with Penguin recoveries with all spam links removed (less that 100 links) at once?
Link Building | | wiredseo0 -
Links or Redirect?
My client's company has just acquired another company in the same industry and with that acquisition came two websites; companyname.com and companyname.co.uk. companyname.com has PA13 and DA10, companyname.co.uk has PA15 and DA10. At the moment, the two companies are to be run as separate companies but will become fully merged in time. My client's own website is brand new (PA1 and DA) and I'm wondering what is the best way to use these other two sites to improve my client's search ranking. Should I use the two sites to link to my client (these would be logical and natural links e.g. explaining the acquisition, under new management) or would it simply be better to redirect the domains to the new site? Many thanks
Link Building | | mikecartmel0 -
LINK BUILDING - Does it really matter if the link is not relevant?
Hi guys, I have just done a lot of link buillding and I thought I am just going to link build and I am not going to go after RELVANT links. I have property/real esate website and I have been any kind of link builidng and I have noteced some good increases in rankings.. So my questions is; Does it really matter if the link is relvant to property or real estate if I have got ranking increases? Or will it later harm my site?? Thanks Gareth
Link Building | | GAZ091 -
Internal Linking - 100 plus links
Hi Everyone, I have a question of how the on-page links are being counted. Say you have a page with a warning of having too many on page links (100+). How are all of these links counted? Let's say there are only 5 links on that page. Do the links on each of those pages count too and so on and so forth? I just want to make sure I have wrapped my head around this correctly. Thanks!
Link Building | | dirigodev0 -
Link Building
I've been hearing about going after niche directories, and my question is most of them have a ton of links on any given page. Is it even worth taking the time to approach these sites knowing they won't pass a lot of link juice?
Link Building | | azguy0