How to Get Rid of Bad Backlinks

Getting a website or other online resource rank high in search results is the main aim of every website owner. Some people still believe that organizing a proper linkbuilding campaign is the only thing one needs to make the online resource rank high.

However, this is far from sufficient. There is one factor that can spoil even the best linkbuilding strategy. This factor is called bad backlinks. You need to know how to identify bad backlinks. Removing harmful links is also a crucial part of any SEO strategy.

What Are Bad Backlinks?

Though, before you start with looking for every bad backlink, let us check what actually are bad links. Not so long ago, Google and other engines counted just the quantity of all the available links to rank a resource. However, everything changed in 2012, when Google Penguin was introduced. This algorithm has changed the approach to linkbuilding practices completely.

Some links now can be classified as bad, unwished ones. They indicate to Google that you might be using unfair techniques to make your site rank. Google takes very strict measures and might either move your resource to the end of search results or even ban it. In any case, the consequences for your business will not be beneficial.

Links types that might lead to the penalties and the blocking of your resource are the following:

• Private Blog Networks (PBN), any links placed there: some companies have a network of sites and various blogs and use them for linkbuilding. Thus, your backlinks are not located on reliable resources but instead, on a specially created network. This is a black hat linkbuilding practice and Google forbids it. You can detect such resources by similar keywords, excessive linking between different resources from the same network, and similar.
• Links that are placed sitewide: those are normally footer links, for instance. There is nothing bad in such links on themselves. But before Penguin was introduced, site owners were abusing this practice. Thus, if you repeat them on every page, you for sure will get problems with search engines.
• Links located in comments on different blogs: when you are reading a blog, you might notice that a plethora of comments contains links. Such spam comments used to be a real problem for bloggers but now, this issue is solved: in a blog, links are commonly nofollow ones. These links are now absolutely not considered by search engines for the ranking of your resource. Though still, check bad links to blogs, too.
• Check bad backlinks from irrelevant of invaluable directories: normally, links from correct directories are quality ones. They are accounted positively for ranking purposes. However, not all directories are the same. Thus, note please that any links from irrelevant directories or those that don’t have any value online are considered as bad.

If your links are constantly used with some kind of an anchor that is excessively optimized: for example, if you have a gift store, and in every text, you post a link with the anchor «handmade gifts», Google will not like it. On itself, the anchor is fine, just don’t use it in every post, otherwise, it will be identified as suspicious.

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How to Eliminate Unwished Links

Thus, we have checked why unwished links exist and what they are. Our aim is though to learn how to identify and remove bad backlinks. You might want to use a backlink checker to find bad backlinks. To do so, just provide the site URL. The tool starts searching. It generates a list with all the online sources that are linked to you. Their DA also will be shown.

Now, the most time-demanding part of the way. You would need to check every single link manually. Revise the content where this backlink is mentioned. Does it provide any value for your resource? If not, then, they shall not be there.

Don’t forget to check such a feature as the spam score of the resource where the links are detected. If it is above normal, your link there influences your rank in a negative way. And this is something you definitely don’t want to happen.

Websites with a very low Domain Authority might also be not the best option for you. However, check the content. Maybe you will like it and for some of such resources, you might even make an exception.

Now, when you have arranged everything to identify bad links, your aim is to eliminate them. For that, write to the website masters. Ask to eliminate the mentioned links from their site. Be polite. Don’t be too impatient, let them 5−10 days to reply to your request.

If a webmaster replies with a promise to eliminate your link, it can be perceived as a positive result only partially. Make sure to recheck after some time whether the link is still present. If it is not available anymore, your efforts have brought the wished results.

What shall you do though if webmasters did not reply? In that case, check bad links once more. They might have already eliminated the links and that’s it. If though this hasn’t happened, how to get rid of bad backlinks then? Send your mail once more and allow several days for the webmasters to reply. Still no result?

If your efforts to get in touch with the webmaster haven’t resulted in the wished links removal, you still have a solution. Send a request to Google to disavow the bad links you have detected.

To send such a request, compile the list of unwished links. Then, send this list by uploading it in a special tool called Google Disavow Links. That’s it, Google will never ever consider them for any ranking.

Final Thoughts

Thus, there are backlinks that are very positive to your SEO, and there are those that either don’t bring any value at all or even can influence the ranking of your site. Keep under constant control all that is happening with the links, all of them. Even though it might be time-demanding and laborious to look for bad links and eliminate them, but without this, even the most carefully linkbuilding strategy will never bring a wished result.