How do you know which links to remove after an "unnatural links" message?

[djbaxter]

How do I know which links to remove when I get an "unnatural links" message?
11 Feb 2013

Google Webmaster Tools says I have "unnatural links," but gives little help as to which specific links are bad. Since I have never purchased links, I don't know which ones to have removed, and I'm scared of removing good ones, which will hurt my traffic.

[video=youtube_share;gEBJeqvJReg]http://youtu.be/gEBJeqvJReg[/video]

 

[scottfanello]

Minstrel,

Do you think it's possible to also add new links to diversify your backlinking and help with this issue? It seems it's better to just keep going and try to get quality links (i.e. real referrals from others in your field or interested users) instead of worrying about grey hat links from the past.

 

[djbaxter]

If I got a letter/email from Google or a message in Webmaster Central, I'd take it seriously and try to do something about whatever it was that Google didn't like.

On the other hand, under normal circumstances I don't worry a whole lot about link building. I've always (i.e., since 1994) tried to put my focus on content and the long term and let links build themselves.

I do think a lot of people are panicking and misinterpreting these "unnatural links messages" though. Lately, I'm getting emails from people referring to an "unnatural link" message and asking that I remove a link to them from one of my sites. Since any links on my site are related links from a (to some extent) authority site, I think they're shooting themselves in the feet. I even had one saying they'd had a warning about unnatural anchor text from too many links with the same anchor text and asking that I remove the link. Frankly, it's not worth my time and effort to debate the issue but in the anchor text case I would have been happy to change the anchor text if requested to do so.

 

[scottfanello]

Thanks Minstrel! I did get a note from Google's webmaster central but it was about think sites and not so much about the quality of my links. I was building mini-sites on specific topics. Even though the articles were all unique, quality content I still think Google hates sites with only 5 pages of content. Of course, who knows really. In the end I've abandoned that strategy and intend to focus on building a much larger blog on one topic. So I'm in this game for the long haul. Thanks again for you response. 1994 is impressive! I wish I would've started back then. I had a lot of friends "making money with tech jobs" but they were just doing IT. They weren't building businesses and when things changed in 2000 most of them got out of it. Wish I knew you then for inspiration!

 

[easydomains]

Thanks for posting video. So, when a web master notified about unnatural links. The example is get was outsourced & now web master don?t have any control over that to eliminate those links. What should he do then?

 

[djbaxter]

Disavow links - Webmaster Tools Help

Webmaster Tools - Disavow Links

 

[djbaxter]

See the excellent article by Kim Krause Berg (cre8pc) at No. I Will NOT Respond to Your Disavow Link Paranoia. Bug Off! | Cre8pc, by Kim Krause Berg, Usability & User Interface Analyst, Internet Marketing Ninjas.