When you wish to make a strong website, backlinks prove to be rather handy. But managing the links could be challenging, leading to a certain level of uncertainty over their presence. Let us just ignore the ethics behind getting the precious backlinks. What if you wanted to get rid of them? Do you think an SEO person should be bothered about disavowing any links?
To be true, Google has been quite clear about its views on backlinks disavowing. Let us read why you may have to disavow any link and how you can do it.
Disavow Meaning And Tools
What Is Google’s Disavow Tool?
Definition: The Disavow tool comes under the Google Search Console. It allows the websites to reduce the value of any inbound link. This helps the websites to prevent any kind of link-based penalties from being imposed on them.
Google wants to put an end to link spam, and imposing an organic search penalty is a part of this. Therefore for businesses, the disavow tool becomes a crucial tool for the websites to be imposed with any penalties.
Why Do Online Businesses Disavow Links?
The primary reason behind disavowing the links is to ensure that any “bad” links do not hamper the website’s reputation. Bad links could be created because of many reasons. Competitors could use them to gain over you in the rankings. Unknowingly users may talk about you on a low rating site and create a bad link. Google’s algorithms may change such that a link that was useful earlier could be a problem.
Whatever be the reason behind their creation, wrong links could damage companies. The Disavow tool could stop this damage from escalating further.
What Is A Bad Backlink?
A vast majority of organic backlinks are “good”- they are a part of the perfect internet scenario that Google wishes to achieve. Most of these good backlinks may not do any significant wonders for your website, but when it comes to its reputation, they portray you as a high authority and trustworthy source.
On the other hand, “bad backlinks” are mostly inorganic in nature. Two classic examples of such links are those you purchase from shady SEO websites and the backlinking schemes that use a private backlink network.
It is also possible that we are “organically” able to get a link from the spammy sites which just have a list of links and no content as such. Such a link was maybe not added by a human and is not very helpful for you, so you can think of removing them.
Bad backlinks are part of another malicious strategy called a Negative SEO attack. Right now, everyone knows that it is not wise to buy multiple backlinks as Google can penalize you for that. Instead, you could damage your competitors by buying such backlinks and pointing them to their domain so that they are punished instead.
In such a case, the victim of a negative SEO attack has to disavow all such unwanted backlinks.
Disavowing Links: How To Get It Right
1. You can begin by making a list of your backlinks. Though they are many ways to do that, you should use tools like:
Businesses must use any two of these tools to get maximum coverage.
2. Now that you have a complete list of backlinks, you should start by identifying bad backlinks. However, there is no shortcut method to do that. Many online tools could find the link’s value, but they can also give some false positive backlinks just because the host website is new.
3. The best way of analyzing your backlinks is to go to each one of them and find out if the link is of any use. If you think it is and Google mostly won’t penalize it, then don’t disavow it. On the flip side, if the website looks fishy, you should remove the backlink.
4. If you have decided that you have to remove a link, contact the site’s owner and ask them to remove it. Try contacting them at least three times and make a note of all these attempts you made. This should be sufficient for you to get the link removed.
5. In case the site’s owner does not respond or says he won’t remove the link, you may ask Google to disavow it for you. Also, show them the documents where you requested the other website to remove your backlink and they did not accede to your request. Whenever disavow recommendations are provided with documents, Google is quick to respond and fulfill them.
What To Expect After You Disavowed A Backlink
So, what do you think the link disavow will do?
It is like a request to Google to ignore all these links to your website. If they complete the link disavow, it will not be considered against your website when Google determines the ranking for your website in search results.
Google doesn’t need to honor the request you made. They mention clearly in your documents that your submitting the disavow file is taken only as a “suggestion.”
But in the same document, they have also mentioned disavowing as a tool to fix up any wrong backlinking practice or fixing the efforts of an SEO guy, so primarily they will honor this link disavow suggestion you made.
Is It Possible To Delete The Disavow File?
Yes, maybe. It is possible to delete the disavow file you uploaded previously. But we are not sure if Google maintains a copy of this list or immediately removes these links, thus benefiting your ranking. Therefore, we think any modifications made to a link disavowal is not a great idea.
