Should a company remove their paid links if it has not been affected by latest Google updates?

[montauto]

This post is deleted!

[Klarke]

I'd say no, but you want to prepare for the future.  What happened to your competitor may not ever happen to you, because your link profiles will always be different.

So I would suggest that for now you proactively:

-remove only the most obviously paid ones 
-remove the ones that are site-wide
-remove or edit the ones that blatantly use unnatural anchor text.

At the time as you're doing these targeted removals, you work on acquiring more links that are within Google's guidelines.

[XNUMERIK]

The first question you should be asking yourself is "why did our competitor lose his rankings?"

The answer would be something like:

• they acquired too many links too quickly
• anchor text profil isn't natural

If one of the reason was that they got links for site A, B and C that you too have links from, then you would probably have dropped too!

My point is, it is not about the websites you are having links from, it is all about the global link profile and the time taken to acquire those links.

Now, you are also wondering if you should preventively remove those links, my answer would clearly be NO, but it you ever decide to do so, please do it slowly so you don't hurt your rankings too much and try to compensate with other natural links progressively.

And last but not least, we always tell our cutomers to concentrate on getting new links that correct their link profile rather than waste time and effort trying to change things they already have.

Hope that helps!

[montauto]

Thanks for responding XNUMERIK.

Is there a software available that can gives a better understanding of our link profile?

We don't know why our competitor lost rankings so dramatically, but we know they've followed almost every page we have paid links from and they've acquired a link from almost each source right next to us.

After they got dropped by Google we've noticed some drop for major keywords as well ( those are also our most used anchor texts from relevant paid sources ) , but I assume our brand and domain have much more authority within Google that's why we're still holding up.

How can you determine whether an anchor text profile is natural ?

[montauto]

Hello Klarke and thanks for responding!

What would you classify as "blatantly use unnatural anchor text" ?

[XNUMERIK]

There are many tools that can help you see your link profile, none will tell you if it is natural or not, it is up to you and your SEO. Here are the most widely used:

http://majesticseo.com

http://opensiteexplorer.com

http://ahrefs.com

If you want to do it yourself, you first need to understand what a link profile is made of.

A link profile is made up of:

• The types of links to your website (sources such as directories, forums, news articles, press releases, social, etc...).
• How these links were acquired (all in a short time span, or slowly/steadily over time).
• The anchor text (words used) in those links.
• Nofollow links vs Dofollow links
• How many differnt c-class IP
• ...

Let me know if you need anything else.

[Klarke]

I sell pizza in New York, you sell pizza in New Jersey and we're friends.  Naturally, I would link to you as "Montauto's Pizza".   I wouldn't use "New Jersey Pizza".