I am a bit confused and stressed right now. I am managing an agency website and it currently has around 260681 dofollow backlinks coming from the footer sections of different websites the team has worked on mostly ecommerce stores.
These links appear as Made by Agency Name with a website URL and the team has access to those sites where designers added them.
Since this is a very large number of backlinks I am concerned about the SEO impact. What should we do in this situation from an SEO perspective. Are there any side effects risks pros or cons of having so many footer backlinks.
I have read mixed opinions. Some say it helps with authority while others say it can look spammy or manipulative especially for search engines like Google
I do not want to make a mistake by removing everything suddenly or keeping something that could hurt rankings long term.
Has anyone here handled a similar situation. What would be the safest way to deal with this without damaging current rankings.
Would really appreciate honest advice from people with real experience.