What is the best way to remove a link that redirects to a spammy site?

[Total-Design-Shop]

I've got a new client and I'm trying to clean up their backlinks. There are several links that all redirect to this spam site http://www.expert-lender.com. All of the websites appear to be real, i.e. http://www.sammorganhomes.com/ but the actual links i.e http://www.sammorganhomes.com/wp-fav/backup/supplement/semitruckleasing.html are in a sub-directory and redirect to the spam site.

I don't know if these links were from the previous SEO company or if they paid someone to create these or if these sites have been hacked. Can anyone tell me what is going on here and what should I tell these site owners?

[Travis_Bailey]

If the links don't point to your client, there's little to no need to tell anyone anything - other than out of courtesy. You would do better telling their host's technical support, however. Hosts tend to hate this stuff more than site owners for some odd reason.

But yes, the example given looks like the result of a hack. Now that doesn't mean the links weren't paid, per se - but the hack is the end result. It wouldn't surprise me if whomever did the hacking later pulled the links and pointed them elsewhere.

You could follow that rabbit hole to the end of the internet. Instead I would focus on links that actually point to your client's site. And that is if it appears the links have harmed, or definitely will harm the site.

If you feel the need to continue, gather as much link information as you can from open site explorer, Google and Bing Webmaster Tools, Majestic SEO and/or aHrefs. Once you have a mess of spreadsheets in-hand, prune duplicate links. Then, feed it into Cemper Link Detox.

Link Detox should be able to flag the obvious stuff. But they also still put out some false positive/negatives, so you still have to judge links individually. During the judging phase, I always use a Linux machine. You never know when you'll hit something that executes script - then your machine is totaled.

[JaneCopland]

Hi there,

Sorry, can you clarify - are you saying that your client supposedly has links on pages like http://www.sammorganhomes.com/wp-fav/backup/supplement/semitruckleasing.html, but that those pages redirect to the spam site?

[Total-Design-Shop]

Thanks Travis and Jane.

These links are showing up in Open Site Explorer for my client, so I don't know what is visible when crawled, but there is an immediate redirect to the spam site when I open the link in a browser.

[Travis_Bailey]

Long story short, the page isn't cached in Google, but it does redirect - so odds are the actual link is gone. Your client's site content was probably scraped. In another example, whoever did this also scraped content from another site.

Scraping is pretty common, and it would result in backlinks if the scraper didn't totally remove all of the links. The scraper/hacker likely didn't choose sites strategically, rather they likely just targeted vulnerable sites.

If you run into live instances of your client's stolen content, there is always the option of a DMCA takedown.

Edit: I just revisited my response and found that even the Web Archive link redirects. I took a look at the source code after stopping the browser before the redirect, I haven't found anything in a timely manner. Suffice to say, that's odd.

[MarieHaynes]

I usually see this kind of link when I'm doing backlink cleanup for payday loans sites.  Not sure how they happen, but I usually do deal with them rather than ignore them. When I come across these I usually disavow both on the domain level.  So, you'd do the following:

domain:sammorganhomes.com
domain:expert-lender.com

If you don't have a manual penalty then you don't need to worry about getting the links removed.  (I recommend removing what you can easily remove and then disavowing the rest.)  If you do have a manual penalty, you can try to find contact info and if you can't contact them, don't sweat it...just document in your spreadsheet that you have tried to find contact info or send emails and didn't get a response.  Google knows you can't contact every site that links to you.

[Total-Design-Shop]

Thanks for the response and I appreciate the information.