A good link-building strategy is key to ranking high in search engines – internal linking helps to point Google’s crawlers in the right direction and understand your site’s hierarchical structure. In contrast, a backlinking strategy can build your site’s credibility.
The problem is that not all links are the same, and some backlinks are actually bad for your website’s rankings. That’s where Google Disavow may come in handy.
If you want to learn more about the Google Disavow tool, when it might be useful, and how to check backlinks to website for a positive SEO strategy, keep reading.
Google Disavow Meaning
Disavowal meaning is the denial of responsibility for something. Google Disavow refers to the disavow tool that was first launched in 2012.
It is a feature in Google Search Console that involves asking Google to remove specific backlinks pointing to a website. If a website has some low-quality or spammy backlinks, they may use this tool to tell Google to ignore those ones.
This process is only a suggestion – it does not guarantee that Google will ignore those backlinks.
What Are Bad Backlinks and Why Do They Occur?
To understand what bad backlinks are, it first helps to know the backlinks meaning.
Backlinks are essentially links on other web pages pointing to your website. They are like votes of confidence, telling Google that your website is more authoritative. As such, they lead to higher rankings.
Bad backlinks are spammy or unnatural links that typically come from low-quality, spammy, or manipulative web pages. If these point towards your site, that can signal to Google that you’re participating in black hat SEO link tactics, which harms your rankings.
There are a few scenarios that might result in your site acquiring bad backlinks.
- Your Past SEO Tactics: Good SEO strategies have changed over time. In the earlier days, manipulatively acquiring web backlinks could actually help you climb the search engine ladder, so you may be experiencing bad backlinks from tactics you used to use.
- A Lack of Knowledge: Some website owners may not realise that acquiring multiple bad backlinks does more harm than good. Some may use them to try and rank quickly by buying backlinks or using an automated tool.
- SEO Attacks: A malicious SEO attack may be to blame. Some competitors intentionally acquire bad backlinks to their competitors’ websites to cause rankings to drop. While this isn’t as common as it used to be (as Google has improved its ability to identify malicious SEO attacks), it can still happen!
- Accidental Occurrence: In some cases, a spammy website might simply link to your site without your approval or consent. This has nothing to do with your own poor tactics or an attack; it’s just an unfortunate circumstance.
Identifying Bad Backlinks
Before you learn how to remove bad backlinks or how to disavow backlinks, you’ll want to know how to identify them in the first place.
Google Search Console
You can check backlinks of a website through the webmaster tool Google Search Console. After signing into it, look to the left of the menu and click on “Link.” This will show you a sample of your links and include a spam score. While it doesn’t go into too much detail, you can export the links to a spreadsheet to analyse further.
Other SEO Tools
There are other SEO tools to check backlinks on a website – many of which offer more in-depth analysis compared to website master tools like Google Search Console. Some of these include Semrush, Moz, and Ahrefs. For example, Semrush has a backlink audit tool that provides a toxicity score for every single backlink, which is very useful.
Need help locating your backlinks? Check your backlinks here.
Knowing What to Look For
You can review your own backlink profile and learn which are bad by knowing the red flags to look for. Here are some signs of a bad backlinks:
- Links from low domain authority sites
- Links from irrelevant websites (for example, a pet advice blog linking to a tech agency)
- A link from poor quality content (AI-generated content or a blog with little value)
- A link from an outdated website
When Should You Disavow Links?
Have you used a backlink SEO tool and found low-quality backlinks you’d rather get rid of? Don’t be too hasty.
It is important to know that the Google Disavow tool is not to be used without real thought.
Once you disavow links, it cannot be undone. Plus, the process itself can be risky as if you disavow a link that isn’t legitimately harmful, you could lose a genuinely useful backlink that could have been helping your site rank higher. In turn, you could see your search performance drop.
It is also worth noting that Google’s algorithms have evolved greatly over the years, particularly since the disavow tool was first launched in 2012. These days, Google often already ignores low-quality backlinks, so using the disavow Google tool could be a waste of time.
Plus, Google itself has been clear on its stance that websites should not use the disavow tool unless absolutely necessary.
That being said, there are certain times when disavowing backlinks does make sense.
After Receiving a Manual Action
The most appropriate reason to use the link disavow tool is when you have actively received a manual action from Google. Manual actions are penalties given to websites that have violated Google’s spam policies. Manual actions are determined not by any Google bot, but instead directly by a human reviewer.
After receiving a manual action, you can submit a reconsideration request, but this won’t necessarily lead to it being undone. If the manual action is due to spammy backlinks, using the Google Disavow tool may be the best step.
You Have Found Bad Backlinks and Disavow is Your Only Method
If you have found bad backlinks – and you are sure that they are spammy/low quality – then disavow may be a good option. However, make sure the disavow tool is your only method, as you could find that contacting the site is enough to get the link taken down, and this would be a better option.
Steps to Take Before Using the Disavow Tool
You want to know how to get rid of bad backlinks that may be impacting your rankings, but you don’t want to use the disavow/disenvow tool on a whim. Follow these steps first.
Conduct a Comprehensive Backlink Audit:
First, conduct a comprehensive backlink audit to check the site’s backlinks. As mentioned further up, you can do so with Google Search Console or with another professional SEO tool.
Check site backlinks here.
Identify Bad Backlinks:
Next, identify which backlinks are causing harm to your website. Be sure that they are actually low-quality or spammy backlinks, as you don’t want to disavow any good ones.
Try Manually Removing the Link:
Before using the disavow tool, the first step to remove backlinks for a website is to ask the linking website to remove it for you. To do this, find the contact page on the linking website and send a professional and friendly email asking them to remove the backlink, providing all the necessary information, including where the link appears and the URL it links to.
You can then track these requests to see if the website owner responds. If they decide to remove the backlink – great! If not, consider sending a follow-up email.
If this has not worked, then it may be time to use the disavow tool.
How to Use the Disavow Tool
Before you use the disavow tool, ensure:
- You have conducted a backlink audit
- You have attempted manual link removal
- You have identified bad backlinks
Now, you can move on to using the tool, which involves creating a disavow file.
Google Search Console has the disavow tool. You’ll need to create a file to submit here. You can either use an automated tool to create this list or do it manually.
If doing it manually, ensure that each entry is on a different line and begins with “domain:.”
It helps to blacklist an entire domain instead of listing each URL one after another if you have multiple poor backlinks from a single site, as this will save you some time.
Once you have created this file that contains a list of the backlinks you want to disavow, upload the list as a .txt file into the Google disavow tool. From there, you just need to wait for Google to use this list and then ignore the backlinks you have provided, keeping in mind it doesn’t work 100% of the time – a disavow file is simply a suggestion to Google.
Acquiring Good Backlinks: Some Extra Tips
After learning how to get rid of bad backlinks, you may have other questions like how to backlink, how to create a backlink, or how do you get backlinks to your website.
Website backlinks are a good way of signalling to Google that you are a credible and authoritative site. Plus, after getting rid of multiple backlinks with the disavow tool, you may be itching to acquire ones that actually make a positive difference. Here are some tips for doing just that.
Start an Outreach Strategy
A good SEO strategy involves outreaching, which is the process of reaching out to other website owners and asking them to link to your content. Of course, be selective with which websites you contact, as you only want authoritative sites linking to your site. Choose sites that are similar in theme to your own, for example.
Fix Broken Links
Do you ever find backlinks that are broken? Fixing those could help you climb the Google rankings, so reach out to the websites that have the broken links and politely ask them to fix them, supplying the correct URL.
Claim Unlinked Brand Mentions
If you notice a website has mentioned your brand but they have not linked to your website, reach out to them and offer up your URL. Most websites will be more than happy to add the link.
Analyse Your Competitor’s Backlinks
SEO tools can help you glimpse at what your competitors are doing, which informs you of strategies you could be using! For example, if you notice that there are sites linking to your competitors, that shows a gap in your backlink profile. You can learn a lot from why those sites linked to your competitors and not you (and then adapt your strategy).
Write Linkable Content
If you want authoritative websites to link to your website, you need to create content that is highly linkable! There are some characteristics of linkable content, such as:
- Content with infographics (such as charts and maps)
- Original content
- Content backed up by research and studies
- In-depth content
- Newsworthy content
Your goal is to become the definitive source for other websites, so always aim to write genuinely compelling and high-quality content that aids other pieces of content on the web.
What is Disavow? Final Thoughts
We have defined disavowing, going into its purpose, and when it is useful. You have now learned:
- How to check backlinks for a website
- When to use (and not use) the disavow tool
- How to use the disavow tool
- How to acquire good backlinks
Keep in mind that conducting a backlink search and finding bad backlinks doesn’t mean you should rush to use the disavow tool – it must only be used as a last resort!
Need Help with Your SEO Strategy?
Do you want to conduct a thorough backlink search? Perhaps you want to extend beyond checking website backlinks and would like to develop an all-encompassing SEO strategy that helps you climb the search engine ranks and become more visible to your audience, in turn increasing your revenue.
If so, you are in the right place. Here at Click Intelligence, we pride ourselves on our SEO know-how; we have over 20 years of experience in the digital marketing industry, meaning we have refined our practices and can deliver tangible results to our clients – results that stand the test of time. If you are interested in working with us, book a free consultation today.
Yes, it works. You may see a dramatic change or not notice much at all. The Google Disavow tool is handy for clearing up a backlink profile that has spammy or low-quality links affecting your website’s search rankings. Still, Google advises that the tool should be a last resort.
The question ‘what does Google’s link Disavow tool do?’ is simple to answer. This tool enables you to devalue links that are harming your website. Google may inform you of links or penalties in the Google Search Console, and you can rectify them by contacting the linking website or using the Disavow tool to reduce their impact on your SEO.
The majority of websites won’t have too many issues with bad links. Even low-authority links add some benefits to your profile. However, youu need to take decisive action when spammy links start to affect traffic and your search engine rankings. If you’ve received a manual action from Google, then the disavow tool may also be necessary to clean up your website.
