How do I stop Spammy links?

[Dekoda_Jones]

I've just taken over a clients site, and they are clearly being penalized for theier previous agency having purchased from a link network.  They have thousands of low value links.

Once I have identified them, how do I stop them?  Is there a code, or a blocker or something that I can use to reject the links?

Thanks in advance guys.

[GregFindley.co.uk]

Hi Joshua,

As far as I know there's no way you can control links pointing to your site (part of the argument with negative SEO) so all you can do is try and contact the sites to have the links removed. If they are that low quality it hopefully wouldn't be too long before the links are dis-counted, or the sites in question are deindexed.

I think every site will have a % of low quality links just because of the nature of content crawling sites and such, so I would focus your time on building good quality links and outweighing them in % terms.

Hope that helps!
Greg

[Cornel_Ilea]

Hi Joshua,

Take a look at these

http://www.webpronews.com/google-will-soon-ignore-links-you-tell-it-to-2012-06

http://searchengineland.com/live-blog-you-a-with-matt-cutts-at-smx-advanced-123513

Conel

[Andropenis_Australia]

Apparently google MAY be bringing in a link reporting tool in WMT. cant wait for the day.

But when you are talking thousands of links it would be no easy task.

I have been thinking about blocking specific IP's in htacess in regards to trying to combat spam links, not sure if it would work though, but you would surely be telling the bots you don't trust the site/domain.

Apparently the only thing to do is to submit a recon request, admit to G you've been caught up in some promis by an SEO company, and tell them you have tried to get them removed but you can;t, but when you are talking thousands of links......you may want to seriously consider starting form scratch if the recon request does not get accepted, at least keep the site on the back burner in the hope google does come out with the reporting tool and that way you will have a nice clean site half way developed too.

All the best.

[Cornel_Ilea]

I guess they will create a 'report link' and 'report domain' tool as well.

Cornel

[Andropenis_Australia]

Not sure about the domain report option, but if enough webmasters report links from the same domain you can be sure that it will get deindexed/blacklisted soon enough.

Updowner, you will be one of them.

[KeriMorgret]

Just a quick note that Google has recently said they ignore links from UpDowner already.