Dealing with Penguin: Changing URL instead of removing links

[inhouseseo]

I have some links pointing to categories from article directories, web directories, and a few blogs. We are talking about 20-30 links in total. They are less than 5% of the links to my site (counting unique domains).

I either haven't been able to make contact with webmasters, or they are asking money to remove the links.

If I simply rename the URL (for example changing mysite.com/t-shirt.html to mysite.com/tshirts.html), will that resolve any penguin issues?

The link will forward to the homepage since that page no longer exists.

I really want to avoid using the disavow tool if possible.

I appreciate the feedback. If you have actually done this, please share your experience.

[csfarnsworth]

Sorry it will not change things for you.
Two scenarios.
First if you delete the old page it will still remain in the index but it will be 404(not found) page.The link juice will exists. 
Second if you do not delete this page rather redirects it to new page the link juice still exists.
You have to disavow the URL with have low quality inbound links.

[crackingmedia]

Changing the URL doesn't remove the link to your domain and if Google has previously identified it as a spammy link they will know from their site cache that the link previously went to another URL, so I don't think you are going to disavow your site of anything by doing that.

Is there a reason you don't want to use the Disavow tool? With only 20-30 links affected it will take no time to put them into a text file and submit them to Google.

Peter

[NakulGoyal]

Honestly, the ones that you can pay to remove, pay them and be done with it. There's a lot of companies that were out there and still exist before Google's disavow tool even existed. Worst case scenario, just submit a reconsideration request after you have done what you can and move on. Spend your time and money building new content and enhancing existing content and whatever else is part of your online marketing strategy. I wouldn't worry about these 15-20 links out there. Don't let those 15-20 crappy links haunt you. You did your best in trying to remove them.

Also, if you were to change your URL, it will technically work for your URL, but not for your domain. As others said, the links will not point the benefit to your tshirts.html page but will to your domain name. Also, the redirect in case you delete the page and redirect to the homepage will actually hurt your homepage. So I would let it be a 404 if that's the route you'd prefer.

[inhouseseo]

Have you used the disavow tool before?

If so, how many links and what was your experience?

[inhouseseo]

Have you used the disavow tool before?

If so, how many links and what was your experience?

[crackingmedia]

Hi, no I haven't needed to, so to be fair to you (which doesn't come across in my original reply to you - apologies), you are right to be cautious.

My thinking, based on what you said "I either haven't been able to make contact with webmasters, or they are asking money to remove the links", was that if you have done those things then you have done what Google asks in trying to mitigate the issues. In other words, you have demonstrated you have tried to do the right thing.

In that case, then disavow is an option for you, but maybe, in hindsight, with 20-30 links affected that represent <5% of your backlinks, then you should do nothing and concentrate on further offsetting their impact by growing more good links.

What I wouldn't do is pay for them to be removed. IMHO, for sites that are trying to earn money from holding sites to ransom then that only encourages more sites to ransom. If the site is asking for payment as a sort of "administration fee" (which I still think is unreasonable) then maybe ask them one more time. If the links are genuinely bad and the host site(s) have more than just yours, then they are endangering their own site by keeping them.

I hope that helps.

Peter