Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Link Detox and Link Removal
-
I have a question about which links to remove after running a link detox from Link Research Tools.
First a little back story. I had had an SEO company link building for one of the websites I own. But I have recently stopped working with them.
In the last month my rankings have near dropped off the charts. I have just recently gotten access to Google webmaster tools and noticed an unnatural link warning from back in March.
So yesterday I ran link detox and it reported 19 toxic links, 120 suspicious links, and 24 healthy links.
It's rather obvious that I should remove all of the toxic links. They all from sites that have been deindexed by google.
But my question is a about the suspicious links. What should my criteria be for removing them? Am I better off removing them all and leaving my site with only 24 healthy links or should I personally comb through them and remove only the worst of the worst so that I leave my site with a few more links?
I'd really like to get the site ready to resubmit to google as soon as I can.
Thoughts?
-
Hi everyone,
I'm doing some bad link cleaning. And am following this nice guide: https://moz.rankious.com/_moz/blog/bad-backlink-analysis-using-moz-link-explorer
And there it says that "Because we aren't concerned with nofollow links, you will want to set the "follow" filter so that we only export followed links. "
So does it really mean that I don't have to worry about nofollow links, even though they would be spammy, or some weird stuff like drug perscription anchors which for sure won't help me? Or is it better to disavow those as well? (I would assume so).
-
You are totally correct, Adam
I simply use DA as a guide line for whether or not the website, as a whole, is 'OK' - not as a definitive rule. You certainly can get a spammy link from a high DA website but I haven't found that to happen very often at all. I suppose I use it in the way that I used to use toolbar PR - not as a rule, but a guide line. Thank you for your insight. Again, you are totally correct, I should not have been so vague.Cheers, and thumbs up
-
Billy gave you some good advice, but I disagree with him on one point. Domain authority doesn't necessarily have anything to do with whether a link is dangerous or not. You can get a spammy link from a domain with high authority or a great link from a lower authority domain.
You want to get rid of links that Google will view as intended primarily to manipulate search rankings instead of providing value to the user.
Some factors to consider:
- Is the link from a page or site that is relevant to mine?
- Does the link make sense for / provide value to the user?
- Does the link use my target keyword(s) as anchor text? (Too many keyword anchor texts is a problem.)
- Is the link purchased?
- Is the link near or with spammy links?
- Is the link from a low quality directory, forum signature, blog comment,
- Is the link from a page of duplicate content?
Hope that helps!
-
I would suggest taking the time to go through them. Check the domain authority and the actual content on the exact page that links to your website. Suspicious does not necessarily mean that it is a bad link - although most of them probably will be. If the page that links to you has content that is relevant to what your website is about and if the linking website has decent domain authority, I would put that link in the 'keep' pile. Even if out of the 120 you only end up with 25 links that you keep, it could make a difference in the positive.
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
-
When conducting a link building strategy does it matter the country the link is from?
We are a UK business and if we have links mostly from US based blogs and websites does this penalise us. The links are from relevant websites and topics. Should we be focusing on .co.uk sites
Link Building | | Caffeine_Marketing1 -
Backlinks vs External Links vs Referral Links vs Outbound links
Hello all, I was just wondering if you could explain the difference between all the links above? I'm confused as they all seem to be the same or similar and I would just like to clearly know what distinguishes them from eachother. Thanks for your help, Jayne
Link Building | | NCOREGSEO0 -
Back link from site with DA of 72 to a website domain. Clicking on the link redirects to our website not the attended one.
Hi,
Link Building | | JIMBO16
I've ran a back link check and discovered a good back link to a site which then gets redirected back to my company's website. I have a feeling that an old SEO agency has purchased a small website which has a decent link back from a relevant organisation with a high Domain authority and then redirects the domain to our website to get the link juice. What are your thought on this? Is this really bad practise and possibly damaging? Thanks, Jim0 -
Internal Linking - Post links vs Side Bar Links behaving differently
Hi, I have a question regarding the internal linking behavior. My website is www.hindimeaning.com which is approx 3 years old. I have approx 450 posts. Now i have a widget on right sidebar "Popular posts". A widget below my posts "Related Posts". And a simple html CSS menu above the posts (I removed menu around 6 month before so currently it will not show.) I crawled my site with moz crawler (same are the result from google crawler as well) and it shows menus links as internal links. While sidebar widget "Popular posts" and "Related Posts" are not showing as internal links. If we talk theoretically what i learn till now is "every link on a page behaves as internal link". Then why the widget links are not showing as internal links. Thanks, Mahesh Kumar
Link Building | | chaudhary04890 -
What is a good ratio of total links to linking root domains?
Is 100 total links for every linking domain too high? I suppose I could also look at ratios of sites that are doing well in the rankings.
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Does blocking domains help remove bad links?
I have affiliate websites that are harming for one of 2 reasons: 1. They are on adult websites (and I don't want to be in a bad neighborhood) or 2. They are using a Frameset (so their content appears identical to mine and I am getting "credit" for all their junk links) I cannot get these websites to remove our links so I have blocked their IPs on our production firewall. Is this an effective method or should I do something else with these links?
Link Building | | theLotter0 -
Text Link vs image link?
Which passes most link juice a text link or an image with the correct 'alt' attribute? Do the pass the same amount or is one more valuable than the other?
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
Does linking to a subdomain give link juice to the main domain?
I have a few domains that I'm going to use for link building, will the link juice from the sub domains transfer to the main domain?
Link Building | | Vsky0