How to Use Google’s Disavow Tool Correctly

Handwritten checks. Pay phones. Link penalties.

Do you see the pattern?

I’m talking about things that most people don’t think exist.

But they actually do.

Okay, maybe it’s not that surprising that checks and phones still exist. But for some reason, people think link penalties are outdated too.

There are legitimate reasons why people think this, and I’ll go into those in a minute.

For now, keep in mind that link penalties still happen.

Because link penalties are still around, you need to constantly audit your link profile to make sure it stays clean.

That also means you’ll need to become a master at using Google’s Disavow Tool.

Disavowing links is an important part of any backlink strategy.

Unfortunately, it’s often the part that I see people put the least effort into.

So in this article, I’ll show you how to use the Disavow Tool. I’ll tell you when to use it so you don’t waste any time disavowing links that don’t need it.

Ready? Let’s get started.

Why and when should you disavow?

First, let me address these two questions.

If you don’t already know what disavowing a link is, it’s basically telling search engines that you don’t want them to consider certain links when crawling your site.

Why would you ever want to eliminate a backlink from your site?

The more links that are pointing to your site, the better, right?

Not always.

There are some links that will hurt your site’s SEO if you don’t remove them.

The #1 reason you should disavow a link is because it’s spammy or low quality.

Unfortunately, many sites fall victim to these kinds of links.

There are a few categories of bad backlinks:

• Sites set up just for links
• Obviously spam sites
• Links in spam comments
• Backlinks from sites in your non-target country/countries (e.g., a backlink from a German site when your audience is in the U.S.)

You might be wondering why this is such a big deal at all.

In Google’s words, “a link from a site is regarded as a vote for the quality of your site.”

Good backlinks can raise your Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) scores, increase your visibility in search engines, and help you rank better.

Bad backlinks do just the opposite. They harm your SEO and cause you to lose ranking.

With that said, you shouldn’t go disavowing links left and right.

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