SEO Questions

[UPRJon]

We have our website: http://www.upr.com

We had bought this from Union Pacific Resources back in 2000 (maybe a few years earlier).

Tons of our incoming links to our website are entitled "Union Pacific Resource".

if you do a search on google for union pacific resource, http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navc...acific+resource (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2005-45,GGLG:en&q=union+pacific+resource)

We are number 3 out of 60,000,000. Obviously we sell racing supplies and not oil.

Quetion:
Is it better to keep these links out there even though they say Union Pacific Resource?
Do we contact people and have them delete them // change them // risk losing them?
All of our incoming links are from non-related websites, is this hurting us more then not having the link?

So many questions, so little time!

Thanks you smart SEO people.

_ Jon

[bhartzer]

There's not much you can do about those links that are pointing to you. So, I wouldn't worry about them. However, what you can do is request different listings for Yahoo! and DMOZ and make sure you're in the right categories.

The links that are already pointing to you are a bonus; you'll need to get additional links with different link text in order to rank well for the phrases that are related to your business.

Most likely if you contacted the owners of the previous links (if you can contact them) you risk losing those links because those people linked to the old site, not your new site. So, I would just leave them alone.

Consider those old links a bonus and work on getting new relevent links to your site. I don't think those old links are hurting you at all.

[UPRJon]

Hey good deal bhartzer. Thanks for the speedy reply.

I just thought google had some kind of "relavent site" factor and it could possibly hurt us.

after all its a 3 letter domain :)

[bhartzer]

I don't think those links will hurt you. They won't necessarily help you rank for what you want to rank for, but they won't hurt your site's rankings. In fact, some would argue that since the whois record changed those old links are discounted or ignored by Google anyway. In other words, you "started fresh" when you bought the site.

You'll need relevent links to your site that are related if you want to rank for certain phrases. So, if you want to rank for 'red widgets' you'll need links from other 'red widgets' sites.