Do I even bother to remove links

[McTaggart]

Hi,

I'm noticing increasing numbers of scraped directory links pointing back to the websites I manage. Much of this info appears to be scraped from a well known (and respected) directory.

I don't build links to an of the websites I manage - and none have more than 200 linking root domains currently - not that many.

The problem is I focus on quality links and the scraped links are incredibly weak on the whole. Diluting the quality links.

I've noticed a certain paranoia in the SEO community about removing / disavowing links, and yet I'm tempted to ignore the rubbish (unless part of a major negative SEO push) and just get on with the job, focusing on quality content that drives natural links, and social media work.

[McTaggart]

The other thing I'm finding is advertizers just don't understand the purpose of nofollow - and are not using the tag very widely in the UK at least.

For example, I've just been looking at a tourism sector website. 80% of their links (140) are directory and advertizing links - some generic and some specific to the tourism industry - a half-half split.  Only around 10% of these directories/advertizements are using nofollow links.

I guess I SHOULD contact every single one and ask for a nofollow (which will NOT be easy - I've tried it - you get a lot of confused responses I can tell ya!) on the advertizing links anyway, but again... is this time well spent. And if competitors in the same industry have a similar backlink profile (which they do, locally at least), does it really matter!

[ProjectLabs]

As long as the low quality links are relatively low then I wouldn't worry about it. It is natural to have some spammy sites that link to you. Google probably ignores these sites. These spammy sites probably wouldn't respond to a link removal request anyways.

In the case of sites that are not adding the no-follow to advertisements, the most likely scenario according to Matt Cutts videos I have seen is that Google would disable or reduce that site's ability to pass Page Rank. The links therefore wouldn't help you but shouldn't hurt you either.

[McTaggart]

Thanks for your useful response. Yes, I'm thinking it's a numbers game. If a company goes very aggressively after ad links or directory links (and even less obvious types of  link - too much blogger outreach, for example) I guess they're asking for trouble.

To be honest, I don't even tell people what back-linking anchor text I want either, from journalists or bloggers for example. I just let everything flow naturally. I feel far more comfortable that way.