When Should a High-Authority Domain Remove a Link?

How many times do you log on to your emails in the morning and find one marked 'Link removal request' or similar? If you're managing or consulting for content-driven, high traffic websites, the chances are good that it will be quite often.

As more and more sites have been hit with link-related penalties, and as webmasters and SEOs have become increasingly aware of the risks associated with their historic link-building practices, the number of link removal requests sent to large, authority sites has grown quickly.

If you're running a high authority domain the correct way (e.g. adding nofollow to all promoted or unmonitored links, creating rich, valuable long-form content, maintaining a healthy link profile, etc) there shouldn't really be a reason for anyone to want a link removed from your site. Of course this isn't your decision though. The requests will come anyway, and as site owners, the proper thing is to take action and remove the link as requested. Or is it?

Should you always act on a link removal request, and what action should you actually take?

Types of removal request

In my experience, link removal requests almost always fall into one of three categories, and I treat each a little differently:

Tenuous or spammy nofollow links

Example: A spammer (or shoddy SEO) has added a spammy link to a site in a UGC blog or user comment. Your site has added nofollow automatically (it should!), but the webmaster wants it removed anyway.

Action: It's highly unlikely that these links are doing anything to hurt the linked to website, but they also aren't links that are useful to users of either site. Remove the links and reply to the request. It's probably also worth revisiting your editorial processes, auditing the historic content, and trying to stop it happening in future.

Overly-cautious link-auditing

Example: Your trusted site is linking to another site in an organic and natural way, but the webmaster (or very often an external SEO from an agency) is conducting a link audit and has requested that you remove a link.

Action: There isn't a 'right' approach to this, but it surprises me how often these sorts of requests are misinformed. If it's a request from a high authority site, I tend to just go ahead and remove the link, and if possible, linking to another appropriate page (which very often ends up being a competitor site). When it's a lower authority site though, I usually go back to the site owners (via their contact us page) to ask for confirmation of the removal. This is obviously more effort, but it's what I would hope for, were the roles reversed.

In most cases, I just get a reply saying 'yes, please remove it' (so I do) but there have been a number cases where the site owners have replied, shocked that their agency has tried to remove their most valuable backlinks. In most cases they have asked me to ignore the request and informed me that they intend to have harsh words with their agency.

As the number of these sorts of requests goes up, it becomes more and more effort to contact each site, but each thankful response validates it as the right course of action in an ideal world.

Emails from other domains

Example: You receive an email from an agency SEO with an email address that doesn't match the site it relates to, asking you to remove a backlink.

Action: Do not remove the links without confirmation. Read on.

A more robust link removal process is required

How often do you get link removal requests from SEO agencies or freelance consultants using their own email address or a free service such as Gmail and Hotmail (emails that look like this example I received this morning)?

How often do you action these sorts of requests?

How often do you consider the possible implications of those actions?

This particular email originated from an SEO consultant using a bog-standard Gmail address. He claims to acting on behalf of a fairly major tourist board.

Negative SEO via link removal requests

I'm personally guilty of actioning a number of removals requested from Hotmail, Gmail and SEO agency accounts, before realising the error of my ways.

I now have zero tolerance for this, and I believe this should be our new industry standard.

When someone calls you from an unknown number, claiming to work for 'the bank,' you tend to treat it with suspicion. We've conditioned ourselves to refuse to give out any information or take any action until the caller has proved their identity. As an industry, I believe we need to starting apply this same level of vigilance to link removal.

The concerning thing is that the above process clearly works well for most SEOs. Doing a quick audit of my recent requests, I can see that over half of the requests I receive come from email domains that don't match the website domain referenced the request relates to. To the best of my knowledge, very few people even question this as a criteria, and I haven't read another blog post which even mentions it.

I was honestly torn as to whether I should publish a post outlining the obvious implications of this, but I feel it needs expressing and addressing.

Imagine you wanted to damage the SEO of another site:

One way would be to get a bunch of crappy sites, point them to the domain, and hope that it hurts the link profile. People have been doing this for years. It's an annoyance, but it can be fought with removal requests and the disavow tool.

The other way to do it would be do a backlink audit of a competitor and start sending professional looking emails to the most trusted domains linking to them, saying you work for them, and asking for link removals. If the domains remove the links without question, the ranking potential of the site could be affected.

I have no direct evidence that it is already happening, but anecdotally, I have strong suspicions based on the nature of some of the requests I have received. I would be interested in hearing from others who have received requests of this nature, and might have more direct evidence.

Due to the logarithmic nature of PageRank, even if only a small percentage of the highest authority domains linking to a site take action based on fake requests, it could be enough to seriously damage the ranking potential of a site. Besides increased vigilance, there is no tool or process to effectively negate or combat this.

What should we do?

I don't profess to the answer, but there are a few things I think we should start with.

Firstly, I believe we need to start treating emails from non-matching addresses as untrusted.

Site administrators should ensure they have spoofing detection on their email inboxes and should employ a zero tolerance policy towards these sorts of requests. No action should be taken unless confirmed by the verified domain owner.

My process is now to contact the sites in question directly using an email in the format below:

Hi there,

I have just received an email from {firstname lastname} ({[email protected]}) asking me to remove a link to your site, from my site {mydomain.com}.

{Firstname} claims to work for an SEO agency you've hired, but I would normally expect an SEO contractor to send requests of this nature from a {yourdomain.com} email address as this would provide proof {he / she} is working on behalf of your domain.

An email from a {webmail.com} address such as this could come from anyone, including one of your competitors. Before proceeding, I just wanted to check this was a genuine request, and not an attempt by a rival business to get good backlinks to your site removed?

If this is all above board and you would like me to go ahead and remove the link, please let me know at {[email protected]} and I will more be happy to do so. If that is the case, I would also suggest setting {Firstname} up with a {yourdomain.com} email address, as that will make the link removal process go more smoothly in future.

If you do not know who {Firstname} is, I would suggest making contact with Google to inform them that you are concerned you may be the victim of a negative SEO attack.

Best regards

{My details}

As owners and administrators of high authority domains, I believe we need to work together on a more robust process for checking the validity of a link removal request.

I would be very interested in hearing what others have to say on the topic…