Backlinks can be a game-changer for your website’s SEO—provided they’re the right kind. Quality links help boost your site’s authority, while bad ones? They’ll drag it down.
Not all links are created equal, so it pays to know which ones to keep and which to kick!
In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to identify and remove bad backlinks so your site stays strong and ranks where it belongs.
What Are Bad Backlinks?
Bad or spammy backlinks are low-quality links from irrelevant websites that don’t add value to your site. Instead, they aim to manipulate search rankings and can do more harm than good.
Google’s algorithm analyzes your backlinks to determine how relevant and authentic they are. While guest blogging to build quality backlinks is allowed and is crucial to enhancing your website’s SEO profile, Google discourages manipulative link-building, especially from non niche-relevant, low-quality sites.
Bad backlinks can lead to your website being suppressed or being removed entirely from search engine results.
How to Identify Bad Backlinks
Bad backlinks can come in different shapes and sizes. Here are common types of spammy links to watch out for:
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Site-wide links: These links appear across all pages, often in headers, footers, or sidebars. For instance, older WordPress sites may have a link to WordPress.org in the footer. This was once a shortcut for earning backlinks, but it’s outdated and unhelpful for SEO.
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Blog comment links: If you’ve managed a blog, you’ve probably seen spam in the comments section—generic responses like “Great article!” or “Love the info!” These usually include links to unrelated sites and are tagged as “no-follow,” so Google doesn’t index them.
- Links from private blog networks (PBNs): These networks are made up of interlinked websites that exist only to generate backlinks. With PBNs, there’s usually a high rate of duplicate content and excessive cross-linking, which Google penalizes.
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Over-optimized anchor text: Normally, backlinks use your website name as anchor text. But if many sites link to you with identical keywords, it can look suspicious to Google. For example, if most sites link to a guide on crypto trading using “crypto trading guide” as the anchor, Google might flag it as manipulation.
Why Should You Remove Bad Backlinks?
Removing bad backlinks is crucial for enhancing your website’s SEO and domain authority. Here are the main reasons why:
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Avoid Google penalties: Spammy backlinks can lead to penalties from Google, causing a drop in rankings or even removing your site from search results altogether.
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Prevent negative SEO: In some cases, competitors may create bad crypto backlinks to sabotage your rankings (known as negative SEO). Disavowing these links helps counteract this tactic.
- Protect your brand reputation: Bad backlinks have the potential to damage your image. Removing poor-quality backlinks helps to improve your website layout and brand credibility.
Here’s How You Can Remove Bad Backlinks
According to Google, if you have a manual action for bad backlinks, you should first try to remove the links from the external site and disavow any you can’t discard. Here’s how that works!
Check GSC and download the issues
To find out if you have a manual action, log into Google Search Console (GSC) and view the issues under the Manual actions section.
Assuming you have a manual action, start by listing all the domains you want to remove. Then, go to your Google Search Console, export all the links, and add them to a spreadsheet.
These are links within Google’s purview, so there’s no need to use a counterparty tool at this stage.
Identify the poor-quality backlinks you want to remove
With your domain list in your spreadsheet, you can start a backlink audit to find the bad backlinks.
But what constitutes a bad backlink, according to Google? The search engine provides a current list of what is considered poor links on its Google spam policies page.
Alternatively, you can use tools like Ahrefs Site Explorer or Semrush’s Backlink Audit tool.
Reach out to site owners requesting them to remove the links
Now that you have identified the bad backlinks, your next step is to collect the email addresses for the domains.
Normally, there’s an email or contact form on the contact page, or you can try using the firstname.lastname@theirdomain.com format. If there is no email available on the contact page, you can use a tool like Hunter to get the contacts or carry out a search on social media.
Whichever channel you use, once you’ve identified the email address, send a short and straightforward message requesting them to remove the poor backlinks. Moreover, you can use a tool like SpyFu to send email to multiple sites simultaneously.
Remember, some site administrators won’t respond to your email, and you will have to disavow those links.
Disavow any links you can’t remove
If you have any backlink that is proving difficult to remove, then proceed to disavow it.
Disavowing carries the risk of negatively impacting your site’s ranking, especially if the wrong links are disavowed. Therefore, ensure the links you add to the disavow file are spammy backlinks.
Assemble a list of all the low-quality backlinks you wish to disavow in a text file that you will upload to Google. Encode the contents of the file according to the detailed guidelines set by the search engine.
Once complete, upload the list of domains or links to the disavow links tools page.
Request a review
Once you have uploaded your file, click the Request Review button on the GSC page.
If Google agrees with your actions, they will discard the manual action.
Otherwise, you will have to repeat the process until the manual action is removed. Before you can see the impact of removing backlinks on your SEO rankings, it may take anywhere from a few weeks to several months for search engine algorithms to revisit your site and archive the updated backlink profile.
With this in mind, there are certain risks to disavowing links without manual action since they can potentially reduce your website traffic. Remember, backlinks still play a significant role in your SEO rankings!
Reach Out for Link Building Services
Tackling bad backlinks alone can be time-consuming, but we’re here to help!
If you’re looking for high-quality, niche-relevant backlinks that genuinely boost your Google rankings, click here to contact us.
