Have You Ever Removed a Backlink Because It Was Too Irrelevant?

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Priya_Motwani

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We usually talk about getting more backlinks, but I rarely see people discuss removing links that don’t really make sense for the site.

Have you ever looked at your backlink profile and decided that a link was doing more harm than good simply because it was completely unrelated?

Curious whether people here actually evaluate links based on relevance, or mainly look at authority and traffic.
 
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Relevance is worth looking at, high authority link isn't automatically useful if it's completely unrelated.

Focus more on removing obviously spammy or unnatural links rather than deleting every link just because it's not perfectly niche relevant.
 
I’ve found that relevance is useful, but I wouldn’t judge a backlink based on relevance alone. A link from a broader industry site can still make sense if the surrounding content provides a legitimate reason for the reference. I’d be more likely to investigate or remove a link when it is completely unrelated, sits in low-quality content, or appears to exist only for SEO purposes.
 
Yeah, I’ve definitely cut links from random spammy directories or unrelated niches because they diluted my site’s topical authority and looked like low-effort link farming.
 
I'd suspect not doing this was probably one of the main reasons why my blog network was hit very hard with the first infamous Google Panda update back in March 2011.
 
Priya_Motwani said:
We usually talk about getting more backlinks, but I rarely see people discuss removing links that don’t really make sense for the site.

Have you ever looked at your backlink profile and decided that a link was doing more harm than good simply because it was completely unrelated?

Curious whether people here actually evaluate links based on relevance, or mainly look at authority and traffic.
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Relevance is for sure a factor I consider, not just DR and traffic. I don’t think I would disavow a link just because it is irrelevant, but spam and manipulative links are always worth taking care of.
 
LuciferLeads said:
Yeah, I’ve definitely cut links from random spammy directories or unrelated niches because they diluted my site’s topical authority and looked like low-effort link farming.
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+1! Same here man, same here.
 
LuciferLeads said:
Yeah, I’ve definitely cut links from random spammy directories or unrelated niches because they diluted my site’s topical authority and looked like low-effort link farming.
Click to expand...
The more success I've had is when I make the Web 2.0 site really work before putting a couple of good links in and letting it get indexed by Google. Social media sharing may assist with discovery but not as an indexing strategy,
 
i never once removed a Backlink Because It was not Irrelevant its always working well for me
 
I cut backlinks that have no relevance to my niche no matter how well they may be performing. Anything that directs irrelevant traffic to my niche is consider a spam by my standards. For backlink that is not performing, if it's relevant to my niche, it stays there. It might have potential tomorrow
 
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