Best way to remove unwanted links

[airnwater]

Hello,

The site I work with has a number of unwanted, unrealted and just generally spammy sites linking to our site.  What is the best way to ask them to remove the links (formal notice asking to remove or more of a "hey, can you get remove this for us as a favor" tone)?  Do you have any tips for getting rid of these links?

Thank you!

[NakulGoyal]

I just responded to this exact question. Here's my answer and a link to that question:

Honestly, my advice would be to grab a list of your backlinks using both Google Webmaster Console as well as the OpenSiteExplorer and merge them into a spreadsheet and get rid of all the duplicates.

Next step would be to identify which of those links are spammy and you'd be better of having them removed. This is in my opinion the hardest part depending upon the volume of sites/links.

Then hire somebody to find email addresses of the websites where you want links removed. Finding something on the page and if nothing else, using whois. I would then send an email to each one of those contacts and in a quick short email, tell me the URL where the link is located and your site URL. Tell them to remove the link right away since you have received a Google Warning. I would imagine this taking care of a good portion of those links. I would send another email in a week and then again for a total of 2-4 times to see if you get a response and get the link removed. When nothing else worked, offer then $10 for the link removal and that should gain their attention. If that does not work either, I would suggest you move on.

I hope this helps. You could get somebody on odesk.com or a similar site to get all the labor intensive work done.

[SteveOllington]

Christoph put a really decent video out on how to identify spammy links, that should help

http://www.linkresearchtools.com/case-studies/link-networks/

[Chenzo]

You might run into stubborn webmasters that just don't reply or tell you to fly a kite - so I came up with something that seems to work like a charm.

I inform them in less than 3 sentences that your site has been taking over by a trojan/virus/something scary and that it seems to be attaching itself to any and all sites that are linking to "me" so tell them for the safety of their site and any google penalization please remove the link and actually ask them to "let you know"

A great call to action and has been working for me

-Chenzo

[KeriMorgret]

That is certainly an interesting way of asking for a removal, but I could see a potential for it backfiring as well -- having people talk about your client having an infected site, for example.

I suggest reading how Ryan Kent dealt with removing links, and keeping very detailed records of the attempts to remove links, and his ability to get part of the penalty lifted in this Q&A at http://www.seomoz.org/q/does-anyone-have-any-suggestions-on-removing-spammy-links