I knew better, but did it anyway. Should I keep these backlinks?

[vernonmack]

Out of desperation (lack of time and knowing we were way behind competitors on backlinks) - I went to Fivvr and ordered 50 "high quality" backlinks. I know there are no shortcuts, but this weak little voice push through and said, "Just maybe...it's so cheap, what's the harm?" Well, I should have listened to the rationale voice which is typically so much more assertive!  What to do now?

*Note - I haven't had time to review them all, but at 1st glance, it appears they are off-topic, spammy blog comments - snapshot of links: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9d23c93o1ryrhv1/Screenshot 2016-09-21 11.49.26.png?dl=0

1. Check each page to see if the rank suggested is correct and leave links with legit high page rank?
2. They are all garbage, try to remove them immediately - is this even possible?
3. Watch to see if rank is positively or negatively affected, then go about taking them down if needed?

Other suggestions? (Besides don't do that again, stupid.)

[OlegKorneitchouk]

I highly doubt you can remove them - best case disavow them.

At this point, if you are willing to roll the dice, see what kind of effect the links will have on your rankings. Understand that those links are textbook spammy and should be treated negatively (they are irrelevant to your website, have lots of spammy outgoing links) but Google makes mistakes.

It is probably a matter of time before those links will be considered negative/poor and likely to hurt you down the line. However, it could be months/years before that happens.

If you are already ranking well some some terms and are scared of losing rankings, i'd disavow them now.

[AndrewMe]

Google clearly states that buying backlinks breaches their guidelines and you are at very high risk for penalization. For $5 you are guaranteed to have got yourself a package of automated craplinks and you have made a pretty good case for deserving penalization. You can save yourself by disavowing the links.

Here is Google's guide for disavowing backlinks:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en

And here is a guide for using the disavow tool:
https://moz.com/blog/guide-to-googles-disavow-tool

[WebPT]

Oleg and Andrew beat me to it. But I would also recommend disavowing them to protect your site. Other option before going to the disavow tool, is to reach out to the sites and ask them to remove the links.

Hope that helps!

[vernonmack]

Thank you all. Please do not think that I am not completely ashamed. Will follow advice to disavow. Punishment served in time lost... that probably could have been used EARNING 10 real quality links.

[becole]

Oleg is right, you should disavow them. Google won't know (most likely) that you did them--unless your social media ID is tied to them. But, nonetheless, I would disavow them.

If those links are only a small percentage of your overall links (less than 1 percent of total links) then you probably won't see any changes, and they will probably not hurt your rankings. But, if they're a large percentage of your links, then you might want to get them removed completely.