What is Disavowing? and How to Disavow Links

What is Disavowing in SEO?

Disavowing in SEO is the process of telling search engines, particularly Google, to ignore specific backlinks pointing to your website. This is often done when certain backlinks are low-quality, spammy, or harmful, and may negatively impact your website's rankings. Google’s Disavow Tool allows webmasters to submit a list of these unwanted backlinks, signaling that they should not be considered when calculating the website’s authority or ranking in search results.

In short, disavowing helps protect your site from being penalized by search engines for having poor-quality backlinks.

How Does Disavowing Help with SEO?

Disavowing links helps improve your website’s SEO by reducing the risk of penalties from search engines for spammy or unnatural backlinks. Google’s algorithms, like Penguin, are designed to penalize websites with manipulative or irrelevant backlinks. By disavowing harmful links, you:

• Protect your site from penalties: Google’s manual actions or algorithmic updates may punish websites with a high number of toxic or irrelevant links. Disavowing helps prevent such penalties.
• Clean up your backlink profile: Disavowing removes the negative effects of poor-quality links, ensuring your website’s backlink profile remains healthy and aligned with SEO best practices.
• Boost your rankings: A clean backlink profile, free from spammy or harmful links, helps boost your site's authority, leading to better rankings in search results.

When Should You Disavow Links?

Disavowing links should not be a regular part of SEO but should be used strategically in specific situations. Here’s when you should consider disavowing links:

1. Toxic or Spammy Backlinks: If your site has accumulated links from spammy or low-quality websites, these could hurt your SEO. Links from irrelevant, hacked, or shady sites can damage your rankings.
2. Negative SEO Attack: Competitors or malicious individuals might build harmful backlinks to your website to lower its ranking. Disavowing such links helps protect your site from negative SEO tactics.
3. Unnatural Links Warning from Google: If Google flags your site for unnatural links (e.g., in a manual action), disavowing harmful backlinks is essential to recover from the penalty.
4. After a Penguin Update: If your site experienced a drop in rankings after Google’s Penguin update, it might be due to poor-quality backlinks. Disavowing bad links can help regain your ranking position.

It’s important to note that you should not disavow links indiscriminately. Always evaluate the quality of backlinks before deciding to disavow them.

How to Disavow Backlinks with Google’s Disavow Tool

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to disavow bad backlinks using Google’s Disavow Tool:

1. Open a Text File

Start by creating a text (.txt) file using a simple text editor like Notepad. This file will contain the URLs of the links you want to disavow.

• Each URL should be listed on a separate line.
• You can disavow entire domains or specific URLs.

Example of URLs to disavow:

perl

Copy code

# Disavowing spammy links from example.com

https://example.com/bad-link

https://spamwebsite.com/toxic-link

domain:https://www.brainerhub.com/

Use the # symbol to add comments (optional).

2. Start Listing the URLs You Want to Disavow

You’ll need to review your backlink profile thoroughly using tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz. Identify the low-quality or spammy URLs and add them to the text file.

• To disavow individual URLs: Write the specific URL you want Google to ignore.
• To disavow entire domains: Use the format domain:example.com to ignore all links from that domain.

3. Upload Your List to Google’s Disavow Tool

Once you’ve created your list, follow these steps to upload it:

1. Go to the Google Disavow Tool.
2. Choose your website (you must be verified in Google Search Console).
3. Click “Disavow Links” and then “Upload” your text file.
4. Once uploaded, Google will process the file, and those links will no longer impact your site’s ranking.

What to Do Instead of Disavowing Links?

Before resorting to disavowing backlinks, there are other proactive measures you can take to manage and improve your website’s backlink profile. Disavowing should be a last resort, as Google often ignores low-quality links naturally, but here are some alternative strategies:

1. Reach Out to Webmasters to Remove Harmful Links

One of the best first steps is to contact the website owners or webmasters directly and request that they remove the harmful or irrelevant links pointing to your site.

• How to do it: Identify the contact information of the webmaster (often found in the website’s footer or "Contact Us" page). Politely explain that the link is causing harm to your SEO efforts and request its removal.
• Advantages: By having harmful links removed directly, you clean up your backlink profile without needing to disavow them or involve Google.

2. Build High-Quality, Natural Backlinks

Instead of focusing solely on removing bad links, take a proactive approach by building high-quality backlinks. When your website has a strong profile of natural, relevant backlinks, the impact of a few bad ones diminishes.

• How to do it: Publish high-quality content, write guest posts, collaborate with industry influencers, and share your content on reputable platforms.
• Advantages: Building quality backlinks increases your domain authority and improves your SEO, while also mitigating the influence of poor-quality links.

3. Monitor Your Backlink Profile Regularly

Prevention is always better than cure. Regularly monitoring your backlink profile using tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, or SEMrush can help you spot potentially harmful links early before they become a problem.

• How to do it: Set up regular backlink audits to identify any suspicious or low-quality links. If you catch harmful links early, you may be able to avoid needing to disavow them altogether.
• Advantages: Staying ahead of potential issues reduces the risk of penalties, and you can quickly take action when necessary.

4. Focus on Internal SEO and On-page Optimization

Sometimes bad backlinks won’t drastically affect your rankings if your on-page SEO and internal link structure are strong. Ensure your site’s technical SEO is solid, optimize your content for the right keywords, and improve your user experience.

• How to do it: Regularly optimize your meta tags, improve site speed, enhance mobile usability, and ensure proper internal linking between pages. Additionally, create authoritative and engaging content that meets user intent.
• Advantages: Strong on-page SEO can buffer against negative SEO attacks and help maintain your rankings, even if you have a few poor-quality backlinks.

5. Let Google Handle the Bad Links Automatically

Google’s algorithms, such as Penguin, have become quite adept at ignoring irrelevant or low-quality backlinks. Often, there’s no need to disavow links because Google may already discount them.

• How to do it: Focus on creating quality content and building a solid SEO foundation. Let Google’s algorithms handle the small number of bad links naturally.
• Advantages: Saves time and effort by relying on Google’s ability to ignore harmful links.

6. Address Negative SEO Issues Directly

If you're facing a deliberate negative SEO attack where someone is building spammy backlinks to harm your site, you can still address it without disavowing links immediately. Monitor the attack, document the links, and if necessary, combine manual outreach with disavowing to ensure you’re protected.

• How to do it: Use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to track the influx of bad links, document the issue, and take action by either reaching out to webmasters or using the disavow tool if necessary.
• Advantages: Proactively managing negative SEO attacks can stop the damage before it seriously affects your rankings.

Conclusion

Disavowing links should be a last resort after you’ve exhausted other methods. Regularly auditing your backlinks, removing harmful ones manually, and focusing on building high-quality links will strengthen your website's SEO naturally. By taking these proactive steps, you can manage your backlink profile effectively without immediately needing to turn to Google’s disavow tool.

Disavowing harmful backlinks is a valuable tool in your SEO strategy to protect your site from penalties and maintain a clean backlink profile. While it should be used cautiously, knowing how and when to disavow links can help keep your website healthy and improve rankings over time. Always monitor your backlinks and focus on building high-quality, natural links to avoid the need for disavowing.