Disavowing backlinks is telling Google to ignore harmful backlinks that point to your website. These toxic backlinks can also hurt your rankings, and ruin your SEO efforts. If you want to protect your website’s credibility and not get penalized, you have to manage your backlink profile.
In this guide, we’’ll explain why you should disavow backlinks, how to find bad links, and how to clean up your profile. Spend a little time read to improve your SEO strategy and site performance.
What Is a Backlink Disavow?
Toxic links, or spammy/bad backlinks, are links from low-quality websites that hurt your site’s SEO. Bad links make your website look less credible to search engines such as Google. Therefore, your website can be reduced authority and rankings.
Many bad links are the consequence of black hat SEO practices like buying backlinks, using private blog networks (PBN Backlinks), or participating in link exchange schemes.
Disavowing backlinks is a critical strategy for addressing bad links. In any case, you must tell Google to disregard such bad links to protect your site’s credibility and avoid penalties. Moreover, you also should add more high-quality backlinks and apply an SEO strategy which will lead to long-term SEO success.
When You Should Disavowing Backlinks from Your Site
When you maintain a strong backlink profile and protect your website’s SEO performance requires disavowing backlinks. Below are three situations when you should consider disavowing harmful links:
- Google Manual Action or Penalty: If you see that you’ve received a notification in Google Search Console for toxic backlinks, you should disavow them and get your rankings back.
- Sudden Drop in Rankings: Links can be toxic and result in a sharp drop in search engine rankings. You check a backlink to find spam links you can disavow to get back visibility.
- Unnatural Link Patterns: Backlinks from irrelevant or harmful sources, such as gambling sites linking to a gardening blog, harm credibility. Disavowing these links can prevent penalties and maintain relevance.
The Benefit of Disavowing Backlinks
Disavowing links is essential to maintain your website’s authority and protect the website from the negative effects of toxic links. Below are three key reasons to disavow harmful backlinks:
Safeguards Rankings in Search Engines
Bad backlinks will lower your rankings as they indicate poor quality or manipulative practices. Search engines like Google may interpret toxic links as a sign of low-value content, which may harm your visibility.
Preserves the Credibility of the Website
Link removal associations with harmful or irrelevant sources help maintain your site’s reputation. The preservation of the website step highlights your commitment to ethical SEO practices and trustworthy content.
Stops Penalties
Low-quality backlinks can lead to severe penalties from Google, and severely damage your authority and visibility. Disavowing backlinks helps keep your SEO profile clean and competitive.
How to Disavow Backlinks with the Google Disavow Tool
You can use Google’s URL disavow tool to disavow backlinks can help protect your website from the bad effects. Here’s a detailed step-by-step guide to ensure you do it correctly:
Step 1: Create a Text File
First, you open a plain text editor like Notepad. A notepad text file will serve as your disavow list. You make sure the file is encoded in UTF-8 or 7-bit ASCII because Google only takes that. you need to save the file with a “.txt” extension to use the disavow tool. You don’t use formats like Word documents because Google won’t process them.
Step 2: Add URLs to the File
Carefully list all the URLs you want to disavow to the file. You add one URL per line and always include “disavow:” before each URL. For example:
disavow:spamwebsite.com
You can’t disavow a whole sub-path or part of a site, so only include specific URLs. If you want to disavow an entire domain, you can use the “domain:” operator, such as:
domain:spamwebsite.com
You add comments to your file can be done by starting a line with “#.” If you want to know why some URLs were included, these comments won’t be seen by Google, but they might help you track them. For example:
# Links from irrelevant sites that are spam
Step 3: Upload Your File to Google’s Disavow Tool
You sign in to your Search Console account and go to Google’s Disavow tool. From the dropdown menu, you select your website. Then, you click on “Disavow Links” and upload your text file. Note that uploading a new file will overwrite any previous disavow lists.
Step 4: Wait for Processing
The file will take Google several weeks to process. However, during this time the disavowed links will still show up in your backlink reports. You wait for the disavow request to start working and for your site’s ranking to stabilize. Moreover, If you want to increase the authority and credibility of your website, you should concentrate on developing high-quality backlinks.
Which Type of Backlink You Should Disavow
There are not all low-quality backlinks have to be disavowed. Many spammy links can be automatically filtered out by Google. However, some backlinks are very harmful and should be removed. Here are the types of backlinks to target for disavowal:
Spammy Links
Spammy Links are from sites replete with irrelevant content, too many ads, or harmful software. Spammy Links are clear red flags and can seriously damage your site’s credibility.
Irrelevant Websites links
Search engine optimization can be confused with backlinks from unrelated websites. For instance, a car parts site that is connected to a bakery has zero link relevance. Therefore, the backlinks won’t help your SEO or your rankings.
Paid Links or Link Schemes
Links acquired through paid schemes or link exchanges violate Google’s guidelines, which can lead to penalties. When disavowing backlinks, you don’t have to deal with manipulative tactics aimed at hurting your rankings.
Low-Quality Directories and Link Farms
Low-value backlinks (link farms) built by automated networks can damage your site’s SEO. Disavowing backlinks removes them from your backlink profile and cleans up your backlink profile.
Unnatural Anchor Text Links
Over-optimized or stuffed with exact match keywords anchor text can be a signal of manipulative practice. Unnatural anchor text links should be disavowed to maintain a natural and ethical backlink profile.
The Difference between Good Backlinks vs Bad Backlinks
You need to know the difference between good and bad backlinks to keep your SEO strategy strong. Here’s a quick comparison to help you decide which backlinks to keep and which to disavow.
| Feature | Good Backlink | Bad Backlink |
| Source Website | Relevant, high-quality website in your niche | Irrelevant, low-quality, or spammy website |
| Content Relevance | Content on the linking page is related to your site | Content on the linking page is unrelated |
| Link Placement | Link appears naturally within the content body | Link appears in the footer or sidebar |
| Anchor Text | Natural, descriptive anchor text with a few keywords | Over-optimized, keyword-stuffed anchor text |
| Link Building Method | Earned naturally through content creation | Paid links, link schemes, or irrelevant guest posts |
| Overall Website Health | Authoritative website with good traffic | Low traffic, penalized, or insecure website |
A good backlink comes from a relevant, authoritative site and naturally fits within high-quality content. Good backlinks help your site’s rankings by showing Google that your content is valuable.
However, the bad backlinks are from low-quality, irrelevant, or spammy sites which tend to be the product of manipulative link-building practices.
Final Words
Disavowing backlinks helps you protect your website from penalties and maintain strong search engine rankings. You should take time to remove harmful links from your site. Moreover, you should add more high-quality backlinks to boost your website credibility and SEO strategy. Today, let’s start auditing your backlink profile and take control of your site’s future. Need help with the process? Please contact Jeenaminfortech now for more service details.
