Backlinks are important for a website’s ranking in search engine results. But what happens when you receive a ton of spammy backlinks? It can negatively affect your ranking and reduce the credibility of your website. In this blog, you can read more about when and why you should disavow backlinks.
As an inbound marketer, one of the most important goals is to ensure that your blogs get good quality links from other websites. Having high-quality links pointing to your website can give you a huge boost and improve your search engine rankings. According to Search Engine Land, links are one of the top two criteria considered in Google’s page ranking algorithm.
Related: Free Backlink Checker SEO Tools
While it is true that backlinks are the most significant factor in search engine ranking, your aim should be to get natural, relevant backlinks from quality websites. This is important to maintain a good backlink profile.
But sometimes you may also get spammy, low-quality backlinks — which can do more harm than good. This can get you penalized by search engines and can even affect your rankings.
Thus, it’s important to identify and disavow such backlinks in order to make sure that your website only has relevant and high-quality links. In this blog, we’ll discuss why and when you should disavow backlinks to avoid getting penalized. Additionally, we will also share the five types of links that you should consider disavowing.
Source: Scale
Why Should You Disavow Backlinks?
Getting links to your website is usually a good thing. It is especially satisfying to see your content being shared on social media and other websites. It means that your content is well-liked and considered to be worth reading.
But not all links are good ones.
Some links hurt your website’s reputation and also affect your rankings if they aren’t removed. While good links can help to improve your domain rating, SERPs and increase traffic, bad links can negatively affect these metrics.
Related: Top Ways To Drive Traffic To A New Website
This is why you should disavow backlinks to clean up your backlink profile and get rid of spammy websites with poor content or websites with weak domain authority.
Basically, disavowing a backlink means that you are telling search engines that you no longer want them to count that link for your site.
Google’s disavow links tool allows webmasters to state that they do not want Google to treat a link pointing to their site as useful.
Related: Should You Use A PBN To Build Links?
In other words, it’s a way to tell Google “Hey, I know that you’ve been linking to my site, but I don’t want you to do that, so please disregard those links”.
Google’s Disavowing Tool is a feature that is built into Google Webmaster Tools. If you are not sure what Webmaster Tools is, it is a free service Google provides to give Webmasters a look into how Google is indexing their site, how the search crawlers are accessing their site, and how the search results are being displayed.
Besides Google, there are many other SEO tools such as Ahrefs and Semrush that identify bad links and allow you to remove them in bulk.
Related: Best SEO Tools For Beginners
Since this is an advanced feature, if you are unsure about how to use this tool, you should consult with SEO professionals.
When Should You Disavow Backlinks?
Google is incredibly adept at understanding the types of links. So unless you have been seriously harmed by a lot of spam, you don’t need to seek out the bad backlinks right away.
It is recommended to follow a reactive approach to disavowing links instead of routinely performing this task every three or six months. Also, there’s always a chance that Google may penalize you if you accidentally disavow good backlinks or ones that weren’t causing any SEO problems.
Related: Marvellous SEO Link Building Tools
So, if you’re wondering whether you should disavow backlinks, the best thing you can do is check your Google Search Console.
Are you receiving a warning from Google about unnatural links pointing to your site? If yes, then you can proceed to disavow that website.
Related: Page Experience Report In Google Search Console
Disavowing links might be a good option for you if you received a manual action message in Google Search Console similar to the one below.
That said, the practice of disavowing links is generally considered a last resort and isn’t recommended for regular use.
So before you use this tool, it is a good idea to reach out to the owner of the website. You can usually find their contact information on their website. Then, you can contact them and request to remove the links to your website.
4 Types Of Links That You Should Consider Disavowing
1- Spam Links in Comments And Forums
Adding links to blogs and forums to solely add backlinks is not something Google recommends. Therefore, if you have irrelevant backlinks from comments, it would be wise to add them to your disavow file.
2- Link Schemes
Private blog networks (PBNs) are large groups of blogs and websites that are operated by the same owner in order to create links between them and help their content rank higher on Google.
These link schemes are no longer considered viable white hat SEO techniques. As of 2014, Google began taking steps toward de-indexing them completely. So, consider disavowing links from such websites to avoid Google penalties.
Related: Tips To Improve On-Page SEO
3- Spam Websites
If a site has a lot of outbound links or appears hacked, it should be disavowed. This could also indicate that your site is being targeted by a negative SEO attack. Even if you don’t disavow the links, keep track of what’s happening in your manual actions section on Search Console to prevent any future issues.
4- Expired Domain Links
Having links from a strong website is no good if they’re dead links. Google sees expired domain links as a violation of their webmaster quality guidelines and can penalize you for them.
