What is Disavow Links – Complete Guide

Backlinks are one of the most crucial components in developing a successful website. However, this adds to the general sense of ambiguity that surrounds backlink management. Instead than debating the ethics of obtaining backlinks, how about getting rid of them? Is it necessary for the ordinary SEO to be concerned about disavowing links?

Unlike some other areas, Google has been very open about their thoughts on backlink disavowal and its place in your SEO toolset. Let’s look at why you might wish to disavow a link and how you might go about doing so.

Why Disavow Links?

The only Google-approved use case for link disavowal is to deal with fines imposed on your website. Whether you are consciously or unknowingly participating, if you receive a notification from Google concerning “unnatural links,” you will be penalised.

Dealing with Google penalties as they arise is an important part of being a webmaster. If you stick to white hat SEO, this shouldn’t be an issue, but knowing how to maintain a clean backlink profile is critical to your long-term SEO strategy.

Semrush provides tools to manage the entire process of disavowing links from beginning to end, making your life a little easier. With Semrush’s Backlinks Audit Tool, you can connect your Google Analytics and Search Console accounts. You’ll get more accurate backlink statistics this way.

What Is a Bad Backlink?

The great majority of organic backlinks are “good backlinks”—they embody Google’s ideal internet, one in which good material is regularly and freely cited. The majority of them won’t make a significant difference for your site, but they will help you establish a reputation as a reliable, authoritative resource.

On the other hand, “bad backlinks” are nearly usually inorganic (though there are exceptions). Links acquired in bulk from dubious SEO sites and purposeful backlinking schemes via a secret backlink network are two of the worst offenders (PBN). The following are Google’s “link scheme” guidelines.

It’s also feasible to get a link “organically” from one of those ultra-spammy-looking sites that are nothing more than a collection of products and links with no genuine content. Because the link was most likely not put by a human and isn’t beneficial to your site, you can safely delete it.

When to Disavow Links?

If it isn’t obvious, disavowing backlinks isn’t something you do on the moment. It’s a serious move that can have a big impact on your search ranking, for better or worse.

In general, you should only disavow a link if you are certain it is causing you problems. For a more detailed list, see the Google Quality Guidelines.

It’s important to remember that a link from a low-traffic or low-domain-authority site isn’t necessarily a poor link. It’s unlikely to make a significant difference on its own, but every link is a vote of confidence in your site that Google considers.

When You Disavow a Backlink, What Happens?

So, what does a link disavow entail?

It’s a request to Google that such links to your domain be ignored. If the link disavow is successful, it will not be used to determine your position in the search results.

Google is under no obligation to honour your request for link disavowal; their guidance clearly says that sending the disavow file is simply a “recommendation.”

However, they describe it as a tool to correct unethical linking activities or remove the work of a bad SEO you hired in the same material, so you should anticipate them to honour the link disavow rather than being harsh.

Is it possible to undo a disavow link?

Yes, most likely. It is possible to delete a disavow file you previously uploaded, however it is unclear whether Google keeps a duplicate of the list or if the links and their influence on your ranking are immediately recovered. As a result, attempting to manipulate search rankings by link disavowal is a bad idea.

In Google Search Console, How to Disavow Links?

Anyone who has a Google Analytics tracking tag on their website has access to Google’s Search Console tool, which contains data about the site’s linking structure.

From Search Console’s Link Report page, you may perform a link audit. Simply select “More Sample Links” from the large “Export External Links” icon on the top right of the screen. You can save it as any file type you choose.

To identify the links you want to disavow, utilise the Semrush Backlink Audit Tool and prepare a text file (*.txt) to send to the Google Disavow Tool.

However, if you’re doing it on your own, you’ll need to follow a very specific format, which is rather straightforward:

• Each entry must be on a separate line.
• “Domain:” must appear at the start of each entry. (instead of quote marks)
• The filename is unimportant.

Here are some examples of entries you might see in a normal list if you follow these rules:

• domain:spammysite.com
• domain:niche.pbn.com
• domain:blackhat.com/link-to-my-site

You can avoid the hassle of listing each URL individually by blacklisting the entire domain. Furthermore, there are rare situations where you would wish to disavow a single link from a domain while allowing other links from that domain.

If you have numerous accounts, make sure you choose the right one.

Then, in the disavow tool, select the disavow file you already prepared and click ‘Open.’

Google will no longer include the specified domains when assessing the ranking of your pages within the next day or so.

Here are the steps to utilise the Google Disavow Tool in a summary:

Step 1: Determine which links you wish to remove from your website.

Step 2: Make a list of the links you want to disavow. Separate by domain and/or URL.

Step 3: Use the Google Disavow Tool to upload your disavow list as a.txt file.

Disavow Links Quickly and Easily with Semrush

The following procedure appears simple until you realise that we omitted the most difficult step: detecting the poor backlinks.

We know the warning indications of a bad backlink, but when you run the external link report, Google only gives you a list of domains and how many times they linked to you. There is no information to assist you in deciding whether or not the link is worthwhile to preserve.

The only way to find out is to visit each domain manually, which is just not practical for most websites. After a few years, even a modest site can amass hundreds of backlinks. Even if you can recognise apparent spam sites, determining whether a site is part of a PBN or otherwise hated by Google can be difficult.

That’s where the Backlink Audit tool from Semrush comes in.

To gather a list of all possibly hazardous backlinks, I use the Backlink Audit tool (along with an estimation of how bad they might be). Mine is set up to send me a weekly report on new links so that I can quickly identify and remove any backlinks that appear to be particularly problematic.

The Backlink Audit tool from Semrush allows me to quickly gather all of the questionable backlinks and export them to the disavow list. Before exporting it to a preformatted.txt file, ready to transmit to Google’s Disavow Tool, I can choose whether to block certain URLs or the entire domain.

Conclusion:

Now that you know how to use Google’s Disavow Tool, you should keep an eye on your backlink profile and only disavow links that you no longer want. You’re well on your way to upgrading your website with this advice!