Understanding the Risks of a Troubling Backlink Profile
As an eCommerce business navigating the complexities of Search Engine Optimization, recent challenges have brought our attention to some critical issues. A few months back, we experienced a significant setback following a core algorithm update in March. While we’ve managed to regain some ground in our rankings for key search terms, we’re still not where we’d like to be compared to our pre-update positioning.
Recently, we’ve encountered another hurdle: our backlink profile has been flagged as potentially harmful by SEMRush. Our situation was exacerbated by previous link-building efforts on platforms like Fiverr, which resulted in acquiring links that are now categorized as link farms.
To provide some context, our Google Search Console account shows no manual penalties, which is reassuring. However, I am aware that the quality of backlinks plays a crucial role in our SEO success. The links we’ve amassed from these sites have varying domain authority metrics, with some scoring between 30-60 on Ahrefs, while others are significantly lower on Moz and SEMRush. What’s troubling is that these lower-quality sites exhibit little to no organic traffic, yet they link out to a multitude of other domains—a classic characteristic of link farms.
Given that we’ve invested a considerable amount of money into this link acquisition, I’m now contemplating whether or not it would be prudent to reach out to the Fiverr provider and remove these links. My primary concern is: Will removing these low-quality backlinks have a negative impact on our site? Should we anticipate improvements in our search rankings once these links are eliminated?
Additionally, if these backlinks are detrimental to our online presence, I’m left pondering the ethics and effectiveness of countering this by, hypothetically speaking, targeting our competitors with similar tactics. Would such actions yield any benefits, or would it fall flat?
I appreciate any insights or advice from the community on how to navigate this tricky situation. Thank you for your guidance!