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Slander on SEO

Q

I’ve recently been looking at my Webmaster Links within the Tools sections, specifically the part that says what anchor text is linking to my website. I’ve noticed that I have links from really strange sites with search terms such as “The worst wedding photographer in Yorkshire” etc etc, when I click through to the sites I can’t find the links. It’s really annoying. I’ve not had any clients that would do something like this, I can only imagine it’s another photographers seo company playing games. Is there anyway I can remove these links or get Google to discount them?

A

Hi Chris, Thanks for your question. This is a bit of a tricky one for a couple reasons:

  1. It's a bit hard to say for sure if the links that are out there are actually hurting you. I did a quick search for Worst wedding photographer in Yorkshire, and didn't find anything pointing back to you. However, when I modified the search to an exact phrase, with quotes "Worst wedding photographer in Yorkshire," Your site came up automatically. The issue is this is a term that no one searches for. I checked the search volume (how many people search this term), and there is absolutely no volume. So you can be safe that no one would actually find you with that term.
  2. On the flipside, as strange as it sounds, the links may be helping you. SEO basically boils down to Links and the Keywords you use on your site. If there are a number of links out there that have been built by these other people, it could be helping you rank for the keywords you have on your site already. So before you go to work on disavowing your links, or contacting webmasters to remove your links, you may think carefully about doing so.
Now if you're absolutely sure you want to get rid of these links, there is a process to do so. First, you'll want to contact the webmasters of the sites that are linking to you, and ask for the links to be removed. Even though there's a bit of work involved, this is the preferred method, as it will completely remove the link with the anchor text on it. The fallback method is using the Disavow Link Tool in Webmaster Tools. You can follow the instructions here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en This will have Google not acknowledge the links you choose to disavow. But the links will still be out there. There's no shortcut. I hope that helps you decide what you do with your bad anchor-text links.