If you know anything about SEO, then you’ll probably know of the importance of backlinks. That’s when you get a link to your website from another website. This is a solid badge of endorsement in the eyes of Google (and other search engines), and that means it can help to push your website up the search results page. And when it comes to building your online presence, there are few things more important than having a good search engine ranking!
However, while you should generally have a favorable image of backlinks, it’s not as if every backlink will be good for your website. In this blog, we’re going to look at how & why to disavow toxic backlinks. Just by taking a few simple steps, you’ll find that you’re able to improve your SEO ranking. And in an age where that’s more important than ever, that might just have a big impact on your website.
What’s the Problem?
First of all, let’s have a look at what exactly the problem with backlinks is. Most backlinks are good, because they’ve been vetted by the person putting together the content, and they’ve been included for a reason. The link makes sense, and it benefits both the person supplying the content and the website that’s being linked to.
However, not all links will have been vetted in the same way. Sometimes, there’ll be spammy pages that have nothing other than links — and if yours is one of the links mentioned, then that’ll be a mark against your site since Google won’t respect the page. It’s not just spammy links that you should be wary of, however. Sometimes, a website that is problematic in some way — let’s say, they host controversial topics — will backlink to your site. That can create an association with that page that you may not want.
When To Get Rid Of Them
Essentially, you should get rid of any links that don’t boost your SEO in any way, or which you just don’t want to have. You’ll hope to have as many links as possible for your website, but the truth is that the quality of the links is more important than the quantity. It would be much better to have five links on high-ranking, authoritative websites, than thirty on low-quality pages.
How to Get Rid Of Them
Before you can get rid of bad backlinks, first you’ll need to find out where they are. Fortunately, Google has made this process pretty straightforward. To begin with, you’ll want to register your site with Google Search Console, which is frequently stylized as GSC. This is a tool that’ll allow you to see where all the backlinks to your website are. Also, since Google can alert websites that they’ve received a strike because of a bad backlink, you’ll know straight away when you need to take action.
But that’ll be unlikely. Most of the work will be done by you. Once you’re in the GSC console, you can download a file that’ll show all the websites that are linking to your site. From there, you’ll need to determine which ones are available and which are not. There are a few things that you can look at.
First is relevance. If the linking page has little to do with your content, then that’s an irrelevant connection. You can also look at the overall quality of the website hosting. Does it look legitimate? If yes, then there’s no problem — but if it’s a no, then take action.
Once you’ve discovered the bad backlinks, then you’ll begin the process of getting rid of them. Thankfully, Google has made it straightforward to have bad backlinks removed. The easiest step is to simply contact the website directly and ask for them to remove it. People throw links in for all kinds of reasons, and there’s every chance that they’re happy to remove the link.
If that doesn’t work, then you can upload a disavow file to Google. This is the process of telling Google not to pay attention to any links coming from the URL that you’ve specified.
What Happens After?
Once you’ve uploaded the file, Google — and the others — will mark that site as ‘NoFollow,’ which means that they’ll no longer impact your SEO. The links will still be there, and they’ll even show up on your GSC dashboard, but don’t worry — the negative impact of the link will no longer be there.
Be sure to proactively manage your links so that you don’t harm your SEO!
