Should I remove links that are not related to my niche and could be spammy?

[ffreesr]

Our site ranks #2 for our primary search term.  Compared to our competition in position #1, we out score them in all of moz metrics except in Moz trust- which we only trail by .3.  I've read a lot about Google reducing the impact of backlinks and specifically the influence of anchor text for keyword ranking. However, many state that to increase domain authority you need to get more quality backlinks.

Here is my dilemma:  Do we remove backlinks from our link profile that are not in our niche in an effort to increase our moz trust score.   Some of our backlinks are from unrelated businesses that could be considered spammy like a poker site - even though the page still has a high page authority.

Currently, we have a significantly higher number of linking domains compared to our competition.  Would it be beneficial to "clean up" our link profile or do we risk losing domain authority from a reduced number of links?

[anthonydnelson]

It's hard to say what to do without knowing the size of your site's backlink profile, but here is my best shot given the information you've provided. If you are currently ranking #2, I would not get rid of any backlinks at the moment, unless they are 100% against Google's TOS (paid, hidden, etc). However, I would also be really focused on acquiring more relevant and natural links to make sure your overall backlink profile looks solid and should survive future algorithms/inspections.

As your backlink profile gets stronger, consider removing poor backlinks gradually for increased SERP stability.

Don't worry about Moztrust. It's just a metric, and not one used by Google.