Romove Old Bad Backlinks?

Yeh, this is good practice to remove backlinks unrelated to your niche as it will add credibility to your site because only related links are pointed to your website. Moreover, chances of unnatural link warning from google will also be reduced.

To remove bad or unwanted links, rename the URL to which backlinks exist.

Saw a plugin on the WSO section that does that I think, but can't remember the name. Try the search function, maybe you'll find it.

Tbird, unfortunately removing such bad links is generally a PITA (except for web 2.0 sites where you can login and delete the links without a problem).

And I haven't seen many positive results from doing so since April (although it is not my personal experience, just what I've been reading from other people's posts here and in other forums).

The thing is that, removing those bad links "may" remove any penalty (if there is one) on your customers' sites (you can apply for reconsideration to Google if they sent you an unnatural link warning); but you need to remember that removing those links will not get the rankings back.

If you remove all the links that got your customers the rankings in the first place, they will have 0 links and will not rank for anything meaningful. You (or they) will need to get new links to regain rankings.

Plus, if you can find out the dates your customers lost their rankings and match them with known updates, you may find the real problem. If it's Panda, it'll be about content, if it's Penguin, it'll be about off-page. If it happened very recently, it can also be due to the EMD update.

Getting rid of bad links will certainly help in Rankings. Its not just non niche links but try to remove all bad links. Link profile must look natural.

A seo optimization consultant will determine which of them may be effecting your positioning more and remove of those links that may be causing penalties or effecting to your website marketing negatively.
A specialist will delete old or paid links that can be causing harm to your site will contact owners and seek removal.

After Penguin and Panda Updates There are many Sites Comes under Effect and Loss their Ranking like they are not in Ranking anymore . Only Those Website get Effected , have Bad Back-links and over-optimized .
Yes Its Good Step to Remove those Bad Back-links and Generate Quality Back-links Naturally .
Also Makes Back-links with Brand name and general Words . Don't be keyword Specific .

Penguin and panda is not totally about backlinks. Sites are getting affected with several reasons. But if you really feels that those backlinks are hurting you then its really a good time to deploy Google Disavow links tool. You would need to figure out the unnatural links from the list you see in WMT and analyse those to separate the unnatural ones and simply request Google using Disavow tool to uncount those link from the backlinks count. But beaware before doing this as this might affect your ranking further. You must realize the exact problem which resulted in sites low ranking.

I agree with grgmathew. Google Disavow might help you disregard the bad links in your client's website. I just read some info about it here in the forum as well earlier. It says that Google will be able to de-value those bad links through the Disavow service.

Here's one of the threads about it. It contains some useful links about Google Disavow.
Site BOMBED with Bad Backlinks? GOOGLE DISSAVOW Service Introduced

Hope that helps.

Hi TBird,

I think that removing links from sites that have nothing to do with your niche won't necessarily have much impact in getting your rankings back.

You mention that you got ranked by getting backlinks on forums and Web 2.0 sites that did not have anything to do with the niche.

Your loss of rankings might not really have to do with your backlinks coming from unrelated sites, but it might be because of other factors, like repeated use of anchor text penalty, and such.

Overall, I think it's not a good idea to remove backlinks. As long as your links are not coming from really bad, adult sites that is...

I'd like to quote an article:

Is Google Still Counting Links From De-Indexed Sites? >> URL GEL, The Nearly Ultimate URL Spinner, Backlink Manager & Anchor Text Software Tool

It talks about how Google is probably trying to use the loss of rankings to trick webmasters into removing their backlinks.