Best way to clean up a nasty backlink profile?

[LukeMontgomery]

A new client of mine sadly has a TON of terrible links (3800 links from 1500 domains) which are pointing to landing pages that have been created specifically for manipulating engines. Besides contacting these sites and asking to have the links removed the only solution I can think of it to delete these pages and let them 404. Obviously I am not thrilled about that but I'm not sure what else to do. Does anyone have any other ideas for how to clean up this backlink profile? Thanks

[NakulGoyal]

Honestly, I think you gut is telling you the right thing. And thankfully you answered the question yourself.

The fact that those pages were created to manipulate rankings (as in doorway pages?)

If that's the case, and there are external links to those pages, I would do exactly what you are thinking. Delete those pages and let them be a 404.

Did your client also receive the unnatural links google penalty notice ? If that's the case, then it's a no brainer to do this right away. You could also try to find if there are link networks involved and if there are certain webmasters who control multiple website specially when you say 3800 links from 1500 domains. I would atleast try to get "some" of them removed or atleast have some effort. If there's a way to send a blanket email to all of the 1500 domains, it's well worth the effort of atleast trying.

I hope this helps.

[ypl]

Nakul,

Thank you for clarifying this question. We are also in the same situation.  It is so good to have someone in the field to offer advice.

[VivaArturo]

If you have 404 errors when Google crawls your site does this not also impact your rankings?

[AdiRste]

No, 404 errors are a natural part of the Internet.

[irvingw]

Definitely remove the pages from the server and 404 them, you are lucky they linked to internal pages and not the homepage or you would have many many hours of reaching out to webmasters on your hands.

This is a simple fix. and 404s are ok if the 404's are not a result of dead links pointing to no longer existing pages on your site. external sites 404ing to you is fine.

[LukeMontgomery]

Thank you everyone for the comments and confirmation. Now I just have to break the news to the client that we are going to have to delete those pages haha. Wish me luck