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I need to remove around 800 bad links, probably about 500 domains as a very rough estimate.  These were built by a previous link building company.  Here some example domains:

http://globalweddingblog.com
http://theweddinginsider.net
http://www.couturefashionissues.com
http://www.topfashionlabels.com
http://weddingworldnews.com
http://www.savingsdistrict.com
http://bestfemalesblog.com
http://mylatestfashion.com
http://lastfashion.net
http://womansonlineblog.org

I have already tried emailing a hundred or so with a manual link request - with zero outcome.  Hardly surprising when you consider the types of sites they are.  I've had a quote for a link removal service, but I'm not sure if it's wise to pay someone to do this work - not sure what resources/tools they would have above and beyond what I can access and there could be increased risk.

Any advice?

I need to signficantly boost the content on the category pages on my ecommerce website.  Currently, they're pretty thin, with some only having approx 50 words of unique content.  In the past, I've intentionally kept the content on these pages quite light, to keep the aesthetic a certain way.  It's a fashion-based site, so it's very much about the visual.

However, with the introduction of Panda, I need to change this mindset.  But, there must be slightly more creative ways to boost the content to stop the pages looking too text heavy.  I'm not talking hidden text or anything, but ways to break it up in different blocks on the page to make it look natural/relevant, while keeping it looking great.

Anyone have any good ideas? Or, any links to ecommerce sites that have employed brilliant methods?

Thank you, I'll probably go with the header and footer approach or just the footer.

Thanks guys.

... In particular Facebook likes for social proof and credibility?  (We have 1.7k likes, more than most competitors).

Aimed at the higher end of the market, I've tried to keep the aesthetic a bit more pared down.  But, perhaps this needs to be made more prominent?

Thanks Greg, I've just been mulling everything over before responding and posting further.

Your last post gives me a glimmer of hope. Congratulations on recovering the site, you must have been seriously pleased that it paid off.  I must admit, though, that everything else that I have read on Moz and elsewhere suggests that I should do the whole emailing (probably several rounds), documenting and then disavow thing.  Do you have any links that you can possibly share, please?  Just want to ensure that I'm doing the right thing, before embarking on it.

As a general update, since my last post, I have:

• Scrutinised traffic trends in Google Analytics against Penguin/Panda update dates. There really aren't any sudden drops that I can pinpoint, but more continual erosion over time.  Like your situation, I have also seen rankings plummet for certain keywords only.   Due to over use on exact match in anchor text, undoubtedly. But, these keywords didn't necessarily yield high search volume, so hard to see trends with these too.

• **Ran a Link Detox report. ** This shows -

  • 78 toxic links (6.6%)
  • 759 suspicious links (64%)
  • 347 healthy links (29.3%)

• Had a quote for link removal from a different SEO - unsure whether to outsource this or do it myself.  The quote seems reasonable (and a lot cheaper than the original SEO's quote).

• Arranged a telephone call with an industry PR company, who can maybe assist with gaining earned links.

So, moving forward, I'll look to get a quote for a site audit.  (Thanks for your links, I'm UK based though so probably would be best to use someone in the same country).

Any other options to consider?  Should I do the link removal myself (using Link Detox and rmoov) or outsource it to someone who's done it before (not sure how successfully though)?

I've spent the last few hours just reading up on disavowing. (This by Marie Haynes, who contributes on MOZ, has some eye-opening articles on it).

Based on this, I think it might be just too risky to use the disavow tool. I haven't read any success stories with using the tool, and think it could even harm my site.

Thanks, I have read through the information on the link that you sent over. Sounds fairly simple on the face of it, although I was under the impression that you had to demonstrate that you had made the effort to have the links removed prior to going down the disavow route. Perhaps this is no longer the case?

Re: desperate measures, I'm not quite there yet, but if I spend a whole chunk of cash (investment level, certainly, for my business) and it doesn't work, then that would probably be it really, very sadly.

Thank you, replied.

It's tweaked/refreshed continually, albeit at a pretty low level.  I'm certainly not blogging every day, for example.

Thank you.

My last SEO actually generated some reports using link detox. He thought it was a good tool. But, he never did any link removal. (That was never his remit). He forwarded a list of links to me to action. I started to email the 'webmasters' but never got anywhere - literally nothing from a couple of hundred emails.

I should add that the first link building company went bust. I think all the links they built were perhaps on a blog network, e.g. Wordpress 'blogs' with no real person managing them. Which is a problem!

If link removal requests are going into the ether, what options do I have?

Saying the link removal requests don't work, I would go down the disavow route. If (big if) I manage to successfully disavow, is there a chance my rankings could get worse??

Sorry, I'm asking more questions now. Any further guidance much appreciated.

It's a brand (which is pretty established now) so can't really start all over.

Sorry if I've not been very clear. I'm not particularly concerned about industry blog links, it was more that I was just trying to convey link volume. (But not very well, admittedly).

No unnatural links warning in Google WMT.

Nor was there a sudden plummet of traffic either, as far as I can tell.

I have a small online business that has suffered through Google updates over the past year.  Turns out that the links built by a previous SEO were harmful - yes, it's the usual story, I know.

I've been in touch with an SEO about link removal/link building and have had a proposal.  It's not cheap and I would need to dig deep, but it'll certainly be worth it if things work out.  If it doesn't, it'll probably become impossible to continue the business. Personally speaking, it's a sorry situation.

For link removal, the SEO's proposing to contact the webmasters followed by disavowing, if needed. There's 15k links, but I think a high percentage of these are from industry blogs that I sponsor that have site wide links.

Have you heard many success stories about outsourced link removal?

For link building, they will be targeting industry websites and blogs.  The thing is, I know most of the industry bloggers anyway, and can probably reach out to them myself, if I can develop the right high quality content that they will want to feature.  Call me a cynic, but I'm not sure how the SEO can do this.  The quality of content on these blogs is extremely high as it's a very creative/visual industry that I'm involved in.  I'm just not sure how much scope there is for a third party (with no knowledge of the industry) to do this effectively.  That said, there's blogs that aren't directly related to my niche, and I suppose there's possible opportunity there.  Maybe??!

If the link removal is a good idea, am I better off trying to build links myself and combine that with the link removal service?

Now been reindexed. Thank you.

Thanks Chris, yes, that's a good point that Google still has knowledge of these pages.  At least that's one positive.  I guess I will need to be patient.

Thanks very much.

Generally speaking, how long does it take for Google to recrawl/reindex an (ecommerce) website?

After changing a number of product subcategories from 'noindex' back to 'index', I regenerated the sitemap and have fetched as Google in WMT.

This was a couple of weeks ago and no action yet.

Second question: Does Google treat these pages as if they're brand new?  I 'noindexed' them back in April, and they were ranking ok then.

(I had noindexed them on the back of advice from my SEO, due to concerns about these pages being seen as duplicate content).

Help!

Thanks, I think I'll just leave these for now as it's only three sub categories that have the 'tripling up' of links.  Appreciate you both taking the time to reply.

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, the same link is displayed three times in the navigation menu (so two repeats)!  There are 3 of these featured menu items in total.

I thought the official line from Google was no to nofollows for internal links?  Has this changed?

Thanks, I have regenerated the xml sitemap.  Fingers crossed it doesn't take too long to see the pages fall back into the index!

As it happens, my developer has since emailed back to say that there is a canonical link for each category but it points to itself. Is that a problem?? He can't tell me.

Thinking about it, I'm unsure about manually adding a canonical link for each product/category.  I'm concerned about errors creeping in over time, with URL changes, etc. With hundreds of products, I think it won't be too difficult for this to happen.  Plus, the XML is automatically generated, so don't think the URLs will match. Have you had encountered these problems before?

Thanks for taking the trouble to answer.  I have now made all categories 'index, follow'.

No canonicals are automatically added to category pages, so can't use this technique.  Thanks for the suggestion, though.

Should I 'Fetch as Google' in WMT?  If so, is it best to add the URL for every single category that I've updated?  Or, just wait?

Appreciate your help, Lynn.