Disavow Links & Paid Link Removal (discussion)

[Etna]

Hey everyone,

We've been talking about this issue a bit over the last week in our office, I wanted to extend the idea out to the Moz community and see if anyone has some additional perspective on the issue. Let me break-down the scenario:

• We're in the process of cleaning-up the link profile for a new client, which contains many low quality SEO-directory links placed by a previous vendor.
• Recently, we made a connection to a webmaster who controls a huge directory network. This person found 100+ links to our client's site on their network and wants $5/link to have them removed.
• Client was not hit with a manual penalty, this clean-up could be considered proactive, but an algorithmic 'penalty' is suspected based on historical keyword rankings.

**The Issue: **We can pay this ninja $800+ to have him/her remove the links from his directory network, and hope it does the trick. When talking about scaling this tactic, we run into some ridiculously high numbers when you talk about providing this service to multiple clients.

**The Silver Lining: **Disavow Links file. I'm curious what the effectiveness of creating this around the 100+ directory links could be, especially since the client hasn't been slapped with a manual penalty.

The Debate: Is putting a disavow file together a better alternative to paying for crappy links to be removed? Are we actually solving the bad link problem by disavowing or just patching it? Would choosing not to pay ridiculous fees and submitting a disavow file for these links be considered a "good faith effort" in Google's eyes (especially considering there has been no manual penalty assessed)?

[WilliamKammer]

Just disavow. Don't let people like this extort you. If you want to get him to try and remove the links for free, tell him you're not going to pay him, and instead you're going to submit a disavow, flagging his entire network to Google as unwanted links. You made a good faith effort by contacting the webmaster, but being extorted goes beyond good faith.

[randfish]

I'm in agreement with William. If you proactively submit the disavow file, you should be protected. I'd also think about sending a note via Webmaster Tools to let Google know about the network and that this person is extorting you/your site by forcing payment to remove links. That may help others whom Google might penalize for this in the future if they refuse to pay (and paying it forward like that is a great way to serve the web community and discourage future spam extortionists).

[Etna]

Hey William,

Thanks for the reply. The disavow option seems to be pretty popular from what I've gathered so far - I agree with you about the financial part of the process feeling a little extort-y.

That still leaves the issue of returning keyword rankings back to 'normal'. I'm still wondering what effect physically removing the links (and coughing up the cash) would have versus submitting a disavow file for all low quality directories in the client's profile. Presuming most of the directories have been adjusted algorithmically to provide almost no SEO value - it seems to add more points in going the disavow route.

[WilliamKammer]

Yeah, disavowing should have the same effect as if the links were removed, so you're better off submitting the disavow.

[David-Kley]

Definitely agree with Rand. When you submit your requests, send Google a note saying that the person is trying to get you to pay to have the links removed, possibly even including the email/text that stated he wanted you to pay. I doubt it will take them long to respond. I would NOT pay the person a dime. Submitting the request via the clients webmaster account should take care of the damage.

"That still leaves the issue of returning keyword rankings back to 'normal'. I'm still wondering what effect physically removing the links (and coughing up the cash) would have versus submitting a disavow file for all low quality directories in the client's profile."

Google's disavow tool is made for this. Otherwise, a competitor could submit your site to as many bad places as they wanted, and there wouldn't be anything you could do about it. As long as you submit a complete report of all the links in question, you should be fine.

"We can pay this ninja $800+ to have him/her remove the links from his directory network, and hope it does the trick."

Ninja? More like a clown, lol.

[Etna]

Thanks Rand,

I appreciate the feedback. I think our approach to this issue is more clear now - we'll include some documentation to hopefully prevent others from being extorted.

[KarlBantleman]

Totally agree with everyone here. I wouldn't, under any circumstance, pay for a link to be removed. I was reading a blog post written by Google the other day about it. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/new-notifications-about-inbound-links.html

Matt Cutts says in the post "In a few situations, we have heard about directories or blog networks that won't take links down. If a website tries to charge you to put links up and to take links down, feel free to let us know about that, either in your reconsideration request or by mentioning it on our webmaster forum or in a separate spam report. We have taken action on several such sites, because they often turn out to be doing link spamming themselves."

Google are good at spotting these types of links and not counting them especially if there is a strong backlink profile. I'd just disavow at domain level.

[MarieHaynes]

Definitely just disavow.  John Mueller from Google said in a hangout that you should not be paying for link removal unless for some reason you feel that you have inconvenienced the site owner and feel that you ought to pay for the link to be removed.  In the same hangout a Google employee, Mariya said, "No! Don't pay for link removal!  That's what the disavow tool is for."  I've transcribed the video and given my thoughts on it here: http://www.hiswebmarketing.com/should-you-pay-for-link-removal/