Hi there, I am in the process of cleaning up inbound backlink profile for my new site. Previous owner used quite a few sponsored links from dropped domains, so I have a lot of junk there. I am obviously removing all links from de-indexed domains, but want to get your opinion re domains that got Google's manual action (i.e. have decent DA but their PR is down to zero). I am hesitant to remove links from these domains, as many of them seem quite legitimate... I had manual action against one of my domains 5 months ago and it was lifted (i.e. PR and SERP were restored) as soon as I fixed the problems and filed reconsideration request... Any views on this? Should you remove the links from domains hit by Google's penalty or wait and see if they recover?
Hi, In my experience, when google hits it is no so easy to recover. When happened to me I Obviously had to remove the "bad" links, but also other links than, at least in my opinion, where good, maybe over looked overoptimized (bu not for me)... If I where you I would remove the links to recover faster and "better"
Analyze the metrics if you think some might be good. After that start disavow them. Never say never with Google.
I disagree, you can easily recover domains that have been hit with manual penalties. A manual penalty means that you got caught cheating and need to work on fixing that issue by removing the paid links. Sure it takes a bit of work but you can recover rankings 100% after removing a penalty. My site had a penalty, lost nearly all rankings. Hired a link removal company (http://linkdelete.com) and removed my bad links. Filed a reconsideration request and now I have better rankings than before. While it's disheartening to receive a penalty it's actually the best thing to happen in comparison to an algorithm penalty.
If the links are coming from penalized domains, they better to remove these links as your website will be affected by the domain penalty, in the same time build good back links as a replacement.