Penguin Recover: Remove links vs Burry Links

[reprisemedia1]

The best is to do both. However with those with limited resources, would building more links with branded and naked URL anchor links be a better solution than painstakingly asking every webmaster to remove links.

[OlegKorneitchouk]

Depends on your current link profile.

If you already have high quality links, you should remove bad links. If you don't have high quality links, get those first and then focus on removing links if your rankings don't improve.

If you don't have high quality links and you remove all low quality links, your website probably won't rank anyways which is why you should focus on "burying" links.

[MarieHaynes]

The problem with answering this question is that any answer given is pure speculation.  We've only had one Penguin refresh and the only credible story I've seen of recovery is the story of WPMU.  What that means is that no one really knows what you need to do to beat Penguin.

Many SEO's believe that Penguin is all about the percentage of keyword anchor texted links you have.  If this is the case, then diluting the links with more natural looking ones such as "click here" and your url should, in theory, work.

My gut instinct is that the algorithm is more complicated than just looking at the percentage of keyword anchor texted links.  If I personally were affected by Penguin I would not build "click here" and url links using the same tactics that originally got me penalized.  Those tactics are likely links from low quality article sites, blog comments, etc.

Others may disagree with me but I think that the only links that are going to work to dilute out bad links are ones that are truly naturally earned.  And, it is very difficult to earn links on a large enough scale to reliably accomplish this.

With each algo change Google is getting better and better at distinguishing which links are earned and which are self made.  I really think that in the future, the only links that are going to be effective (and not penalized) are truly earned links.  This is going to make the job of an SEO much more difficult!

[irvingw]

I disagree with creating links over removing links.

If you had a gallon of water with some poison in it would you add fresh water to dilute it before drinking or would you pour out the tainted water first and then add fresh water.

[EGOL]

.....building more links with branded and naked URL anchor links...

If you control the anchor text then these are phony links.