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Nothing can physically remove them but the webmasters that own those websites, so: 1. You need to craft a well organized pitch email that doesn't offend the webmaster, and asks them politely to remove the link. Bank on this taking at least 3 total emails, and in many cases, you might get no response. PM me and I can send you a script or two that has been effective for us. 2. No too can remove those links for you externally. Hope this helps!

Strengthening the home page with inbound branded links, and mixed commercialized / brand links from editorial / high quality sources builds authority, which as Perfect007 mentioned, distributes 'weight' throughout the website. This improved domain authority tends to move relevant associated topics within the website up in rankings more than non-related areas. For example, the more tightly knit the homepage is to the categories that comprise it, the more inbound link building to the homepage impacts those pages. At the same time, link building to strategic inner pages moves the needle as well, and reinforces authority to associated related sub categories and 'sister' categories in the website. As a basic rule of thumb, competition being equal - the further apart your inner categories are insofar as relations, the more authority you need to build at the base level (root, homepage) in order to move inner categories forward. Hope this helps.

Hi Neville, Article links are pretty low value most of the time, so instead of answering that question can I suggest you look at guest blogging instead which while also sometimes lending itself to low value links and content is at least usually a step up from article spinning sites. Check out this recent post on guest blogging, lots of good info in there and then rework your articles a bit to be suitable for your selected blogs. You will need to be creative in your blog selection and your communications with the owner to ensure best results but needless to say if the process of publishing the article/post and getting the link does not involve real communication with a real person then 9 times out of 10 that link is going to be pretty much worthless in the best case and potentially penalty inducing in the worst. Also, take it easy on the keyword links! Any decent blog will usually insist on only a branded author bio link, something to keep in mind. My two cents!

Now that we're talking easter eggs... is that the only known easter egg implanted / found in moz.com? :)) I love easter eggs. All year through.

Sounds like it. You said: Before our company started doing SEO for this website, they hired a company that generated a large number of backlinks that Google would probably now see as spammy. Penguin targeted low quality links (and seemed like you have them). Prune those links out and see what happens. Also, focus on reducing/eliminating any over-optimization (specifically anchor texts/kw stuffing and etc). I'm sure other mozzers will weigh in, but at face-value, that is what I'm guessing.

Thanks Carla and Shailendra, Let me give a few more details that might help. Although we're marketing an article, we're looking simply to strengthen the DA of the whole site. We want to get abut 30 links to the article of various strengths and thus bump up our DA. Also, not one of the dozens of sites I've come across have an article on the topic, but it would be very useful to many of them. What can you tell me about how this works, whether it's guest posting, and what's involved?

Yes. Your categories are very broad/general so have some good long tail keywords in your products to convert.

Hello there, Just to be clear are you calculating 'total links for every linking domain' as follows - total links divided by linking root domains? EG if you had 1000 links from 10 linking root domains you'd have an average of 100 links from each domain. If so, I'd say that figure might indicate that you have quite a lot of sitewide links from domains. Now this in and of itself might not be a problem, however if those links are from sites which are off topic or low quality and/or those links look like paid links they may cause you problems in the future. I'd definitely advocate taking a look at the link profiles of other site which rank well in your niche to see if your link profile looks anomalous by comparison. I hope this helps, Hannah

Hello. Sent you a private Moz message and commenting here just to let you know in case you do not have email notifications set up. I look forward to the opportunity to see if we are a good fit for what your business needs.

Hi there, Link building is about earning popularity and authority endorsements by your audience --as a consequence of having effectively connected with them, they have found your site, services and products useful--, so if your Website is targeted to a specific audience in a country then, although is true that search engines will also take into consideration links from any other sources, what is natural and consistent with your site targeting, is that these links come from the country audience that the site is targeting. In order to implement this, identify which are the most popular sites, blogs, media in your industry for that country --and in general for that country too--, who are linking to your competitors in that country, who are your industry influencers in that country too... by doing this you will likely better understand and identify a scalable link building strategy to better connect with your audience in that specific country. I hope this helps!

I would not worry about this link and I think it will help more than it will hurt. A few natural blogroll links should be totally fine. It is when you have tons of sitewide links that it can become a problem because it would look unnatural to Google. One thing you can check is your ratio of total links to followed linking root domains in Open Site Explorer compared to your competitors. E.g. 10,000 total links/200 followed linking root domains = 50 to 1. If your number is a lot higher than similar sites in your niche, you may want to reduce sitewide links to bring your ratio down and reduce risk of a penalty.

Thanks for the quick response. I think I will go for the change since it doesn't make sense to me.

We published a YouMoz a while back from someone who did this for pool cues. In his own words, he writes "Before you grumble 'yeah, but I sell the most boring stuff on the planet' consider this - we write hundreds upon hundreds of unique descriptions about 58" long pieces of wood and each of those pieces of wood does the exact same thing." http://moz.com/ugc/ecommerce-content-doesnt-have-to-suck He doesn't share link metrics in the post, though you could run an OSE report on the infographic that he cited. As the head editor for YouMoz, I try to keep an eye out for things like this that people do, especially if it's a non-SEO industry. I'll come back to this question if I think of any other posts that have good examples.

Hi Mathew, There are many different sources one can go to for outsourcing link building. Manual Link Building offers top-listed link building services, as does SEO Overflow; both services specialize in building links through tried-and-true methods like directory submissions, press releases, and content distribution. However, as stated before, it may be more fruitful to research the Moz community more thoroughly and discover the link-building strategies of your contemporaries. If one is not familiar with the link building resources used or if you do not have measures to check the quality of the links, then outsourcing may not be worth the time or the effort. A great guide to building links on your own can also be found at Quicksprout, which may help to illuminate your strategy without having to outsource your link-building.

That's great news. Thanks for the update.

I would never advise a sitewide link. It's a primary metric in my determination in paid links. Additionally, a sitewide link is not contextual, and can drag the wrong co-citation metrics into it. (if there are other somewhat unrelated links in that same section) I would suggest: 1. Writing an incredibly awesome post that will resonate VERY well with that audience 2. Pre-promote the post if possible in order to determine some support and / or test whether it will "fly" 3. Ensure the post is stellar. Use the 21 types of content guide by CMI to ensure it is awesome and fits those criteria. 4. Ask this person to publish, promote in their SM. Promote in your SM. 5. Outreach to further influencers and site owners in that niche and ask them to link to that post. Hope this helps! ~Todd

Hi Adam, Before I go forward and really through and take a lot of time with it. And I have run through a couple test. Can you tell me if you have received anything from Google saying that you have a penalty of any sort? I have run your domain through a very basic search for malicious back links basically telling me if there are keywords in the anchor text or not gotten this as a result Via only 1 data source, we estimate about 1704 links with suspicious anchor text ignoring 1978 safe links automatically. Some of these may need to be removed! http://www.removeem.com/faq.php#suspicious I can see that sixteen-nine.net URL has been detected by open site Explorer http://www.sixteen-nine.net/2013/06/24/android-digital-signage-closer-adserve/ AdServe [No data] 43 Yesterday 12:09 am When checking the URL above I get an error when using regular open site Explorer however it is found using fresh open site Explorer. So it was just indexed http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.sixteen-nine.net%2F2013%2F06%2F24%2Fandroid-digital-signage-closer-adserve%2F I get No Data Available for this URL You have a couple of very strong URLs pointing towards your domain. However you also have some that are very hard to detect if they are negative or not. Without spending a lot of time For instance hear the results of one of your URLs that are making your domain now this evening oversight and everyone does make mistakes. So I would not say this maliciousness anyway shape or form however it will not help people click on the link because of the description below and the keywords really don't matter at all. URL http://paddorsl.com.au/index.php/functions/host-a-murder-theme-parties 70 Page Title - Host a Murder Theme Parties 29 Meta Description Joomla! - the dynamic portal engine and content management system 65 Meta Keywords joomla, Joomla Please let me know if Google has said anything and I will continue to search. Sincerely, Thomas

Hey! Here's a useful list of ecommerce tips like you requestedTips to Optimize Your Ecommerce Efforts•Choose the Right Platform :  one that or allows you to implement SEO features•Unique Product Descriptions : Don’t take product descriptions straight from the manufacturer, avoid duplicate content penalties•User Interaction : encourage user activity through reviews and comments•Duplicate Contents:  use canonical tags” and pagination tags to let search engines know how to deal with the pages with similar products/ contents•SEO Friendly URLs : if it is easily understood by users, it will also be understood by search engines•Rich Product Snippets : give search engines context about your content to improve click-through-rates in search results•Trust Seals: such as MasterCard, Better Business Bureau, and VeriSign Trust•Get Social: using social platforms and share buttons will only increase the chances of users ending up on your websiteIf you are interested in more details there's a full blog posting at: eyeflow.com/tips-for-optimizing-on-page-elements

Thanks! I was curious all of my competitors 'best links' (when looking at OSE) seemed to be footers as well.

Hi Tracy, I'm glad to be of help to you. You can always run different background link checks using. http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ Moz (Open Site Explorer), Ahrefs, Majestic SEO, Raven Tools & SEO Spyglass. You get free access to open site Explorer with your subscription to Moz.com I hope this is of help sincerely, Thomas