Having good backlinks is crucial for your website in many ways. Not only does it help you earn better rankings on search engines, but it also boosts your reputation to a certain degree. Thus, it’s equally important that you know how to remove backlinks that aren’t doing their job.
Now there are a lot of things to think about when removing bad backlinks. So to make your life easier, you can stick with the three main points below:
How To Tell Bad Links From Good Ones
Backlinks can either make or break your website, so it’s highly recommended that you know how to check if the ones you have are good or bad. Below are ways to do just that:
- Check if your website recently received a manual actions penalty from Google’s Search Console.
- Check if your site’s current keyword rankings have been affected in case search engines like Google made upgrades to their algorithm.
- Regularly inspect your backlink profile using Ahrefs and Google Search Console.
- Do the naked eye test (i.e., click on the backlink and inspect the website it points to). Believe it or not, this is a great way to Identify shady backlinks.
- Conducting manual search queries on Google and other engines to see if the anchor text in the article or page can be found there.
- Use backlink analysis technology to detect toxic domains, particularly Ahrefs, Majestic SEO, and cognitiveSEO.
- Check the content or page’s keyword density (if it’s heavy, then it’s a sign that black hat strategies are employed).
How to Get Rid of the Bad Backlinks
So now that you know how to spot a bad backlink, time to tackle the task of getting rid of ‘em. To keep the process simple, stick with the steps below:
Gather All Your Backlink Data
First, you need to compile all your website’s backlinks into a list. Make sure to get all the details you need per each link. As with detecting bad backlinks, you can leverage tools like Ahrefs and Google Search Console to gather all the necessary data. Once you do, proceed with analyzing each link’s performance.
Find The Sources of the Toxic Backlinks
Another great thing about tools like Ahrefs, Monitor Backlinks, and SEMRush is that they’ll help you find where all those bad links are coming from. This ultimately enables you to have them repaired, removed, or disavowed. Just bear in mind that each app uses varying metrics when determining how toxic a backlink is. So try using more than one tool whenever you can to make sure you’re really dealing with a bad link.
Request Backlink Removal from Webmasters
Once you’re done gathering all your website’s bad backlinks (complete with their sources), you can proceed with getting rid of them. Contact the source’s webmaster and request to have the backlink to your website removed. With that said, you should know that your request will probably get ignored by the site’s admin. However, making this request regardless will help you defend your website from Google and other search engines (thus avoiding getting penalized). And even if the webmasters ignore you, you can still have the bad links disavowed.
Send a Disavow File to Google
So in case the webmaster ends up ghosting you, turn to Google’s ‘Disavow Links’ tool to resolve your bad backlink problems. List all the bad backlinks your website has in a text file, then send it to Google for review. To ensure the file has all the data you need, use Ahrefs or Google Search Console. Once you’ve submitted your request, all that’s left is to wait for Google to do its job.
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Focus on Getting More Good Backlinks
Removing all the bad backlinks to your website isn’t enough if you want it to enjoy good rankings. You need to replace them with quality links, too. And here’s how:
Create Ultimate Guides
Ultimate guides are something readers love searching for, regardless of their age. By making sure your website provides this type of content (with the right keywords strategically inserted), it will help you catch Google’s attention in a more positive way.
Recreate Outdated Resources
You can also consider recreating some of your site’s old, outdated content. Add changes to the piece’s topic, removing data while simultaneously retaining any information that’s still relevant.
Employ Skyscraper Technique
Alternatively, you can look for a high-performing article (whether in your page or a guest post you made) and build up on it. Similar to recreating outdated content, craft an article that’s significantly better than the one you find, then have the old one replaced.
Look for Broken Links
Or you can simply look for a good article that has a broken link. Once you do, notify the webmaster about the broken link, then suggest a link to your article or web page as a replacement.
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Get Rid of Bad Backlinks Immediately
Bad backlinks won’t just damage your website’s rankings; it will also impair your brand’s reputation. So always check your ages and articles to see if any of them carry bad links. And make sure to have them removed and replaced once you’ve spotted them.
