I have thousands of pesky no-follow backlinks from one rogue pingback - help!

Hi,

To improve my DA and overall SEO, I’ve just started checking backlinks for my site (I’m a relatively new blogger and this is my first website). I don’t have many dofollow backlinks yet (am working on that!) but I’ve just realised that I have literally thousands of no-follow backlinks from one pingback (here: Is shaming the ‘pill-shamers’ shutting down debate? | Discursive of Tunbridge Wells )!

I linked to their article in one of my posts and they gave an automatic pingback. But because their blog has gone very quiet, my comment is still the most recent one several months later!

They have a “recent comments” widget in their sidebar, which shows my pingback as the most recent comment – on every blog page people visit! This has resulted in over 2,200 no-follow backlinks from one pingback, and as a small blog this is the vast majority of my backlinks. They all have the same anchor text, as they’re duplicates of the same thing.

Should I try to get the pingback removed, or is it not likely to be an issue?And if they don’t respond to me asking them to remove it, what options do I have?

Sadly I can't use new (non-linked) comments to push my pingback off the "recent comments widget" as they're apparently not monitoring the site and approving new comments (have tried!)

Many thanks if you can help!
Kate