Is this organic search sketchiness worth unwinding?

[94501]

Started working on a site and learned that the person before me had done a fairly sketchy maneuver and am wondering if it's a net gain to fix it.

The site has pages that it wanted to get third party links linking to. Thing is, the pages are not easy to naturally link to boost them in search.

So, the woman before me started a new blog site in the same general topic area as the first/main site. The idea was to build up even the smallest bit of authority for the new blog, without tipping Google off to shared ownership. So, the new blog has a different owner/address/registrar/host and no Google Analytics or Webmaster Tools account to share access to.

Then, as one method of adding links to the new blog, she took some links that originally pointed to the main site and re-directed them to the blog site.

And voila! ...Totally controllable blog site with a bit of authority linking to select pages on the main site!

At this point, I could un-redirect those links that give the blog site some of its authority. I could delete the links to the main site on the blog pages.

However, on some level it may have actually helped the pages linked to on the main site.

The whole thing is so sketchy I wonder if I should reverse it.

I could also just leave it alone and not risk hurting the pages that the blog currently links to.

What do you think? Is there a serious risk to the main site in this existing set up? The main site has hundreds of other links pointing to it, a Moz domain authority of 43, thousands of pages of content, 8 years old and Open Site Explorer Spam Score of 1. So, not a trainwreck of sketchiness besides this issue.

To me, the weird connection for Google is that third party sites have links that (on-page-code-wise) still point to the main site, but that resolve via the main site's redirects to the blog site. BTW, the blog site points to other established sites besides the main site. So, it's not the exclusive slave to the main site.

Please let me know what you think. Thanks!

[GastonRiera]

Hi there,

There are 2 exits here, and you've pointed them:

1. Reverse those links
2. Leave all as it is now.

On one hand, if you aren't confortable with those links, just reverse all.

On the other hand, you've said that the main site has a lot of links and it those 'unnatural links' will not make harm and that the satellite blog has really few conections to the latter. I'd say that there isnt, almost nothing, risk. So, i'd leave as it is now.

Hope it helps.
GR.

[94501]

Thanks, Gaston!

Any other insights, folks?

Mike

[MattRoney]

Hi 94501! Did Gaston answer you question, and if so, would you mind marking his response a "Good Answer?"

Otherwise, how else can we help?

[94501]

Well, I like Gaston's answers on these boards and at the same time was curious if that seemed like the concensus.... leave it cause no real risk.

[BlueCorona]

I agree with the two methods that both you and Gaston have pointed out.

The downside to reversing those links is that the domain authority could drop a bit—which could impact their rankings on the SERPs. If this happens, the client might think you are doing something wrong and causing their rankings to rank when, in theory, you were trying to help get rid of any sketchy links. In my opinion, I’d keep them. They’ll make your work perform better. Disavowing them could yield worse results than what their former SEO provided. If that happens, you're playing defense and blaming.

Hope this helps!