As much as backlinks can potentially help your site, there’s also a dark side to backlink SEO that could be killing your ranking. I’m talking about getting as many backlinks as you can as fast as you can, without really knowing what the website is about.

For years, you could buy backlinks from mass directories that had the most random collection of links you’ve ever seen. In the olden days, search engines would just look at the number of backlinks you had and determine, you must be a pretty popular site. This is no longer the case.

Google is able to determine the relevancy of sites; they have been doing this for a long time. That directly link you bought with all the random backlinks is a red flag for search engines now. They know what you’re doing and they will punish you for it.

Over the years you may have gained a lot of these types of links and are now confused as to how you can possibly disavow so many at this point. Well, don’t worry too much, there are tools that can help you fix this issue and get you back on track to better organic results.

Dealing with Bad Backlinks

Google’s disavow links tool allows you to ask Google not to take certain links into account when assessing your site. You might be wondering, “Is it OK to use this tool, and is it always necessary?”  

If you noticed like 20,000 links to you domain in Google Search Console from a few unethical websites, then its times to get these squared away, as soon as possible.

The thing about bad backlinks is that they may not even be your fault. You could be the victim of black hat SEO. This is a form of SEO where a competitor will link your website to irrelevant or unethical websites to sully your reputation in the eyes of Google. The crazy part is that it actually works. That’s why it’s crucial to stay up-to-date with your backlinks. You need to ensure that you’re not being targeted and that your links have something to do with what your website is about.

The short answer is that if you have thousands of links and you’ve done little to no work acquiring them the correct way, then you definitely need to use this tool. If you don’t want those links, then disavowing them doesn’t hurt. The tool even allows you to disavow at a domain level, so if they only come from a few domains then simply disavow that whole domain.

If you need help disavowing backlinks that are hindering your organic SEO, then call the experts at Vissina today.

Categories: SEO Blog