It’s no secret that building high-quality, natural-appearing backlinks can help boost your site’s authority, but did you know that poor-quality links can have the opposite effect?
If you have links pointing to your site from gambling sites, porn pages, link farms, or anything similar, it may be time for a clean-up.
Why Should You Clean Up Your Backend?
You’ve Received A Penalty Or Warning
If Google gets in touch, you have a major problem. This is the most extreme situation where you will need to analyse your backlink profile.
Google will warn you of a manual penalty and will consider whether to remove your site from SERPs depending on how quickly you react to removing spammy links.
If you fail to make recommended changes, the search engine could remove you from their rankings and it will be considerably harder to work your way back in and raise your organic traffic levels again.
Your Site Doesn’t Rank As Well As It Used To
Of course, there is another kind of penalty you should probably be aware of. An algorithmic penalty will happen automatically without warning as a result of Google algorithm changes such as Panda, Penguin, Pigeon etc. The first thing you will know about it is a plummet in site traffic and rankings.
These algorithm updates are not widely publicised; however, the industry often swarms when changes are first noticed. So, it’s important to stay on top of marketing news and updates.
You Haven’t Done One In A While, Or Never Before
Sometimes prevention is the best remedy. Regular backlink audits will highlight any suspicious-looking links and allow you some time to disavow them before a penalty hits.
How To Disavow Backlinks
Learning how to disavow links is relatively easy and pain-free, however the process can take some time. On average this can take a few weeks.
1. You’ll first need to make a file which contains only the links you wish to disavow.
2. Then in Google Search Console, head to the disavow links tool.
3. Here you should select your website, then ‘Disavow Links’.
4. Upload your file and follow online instructions.
Please note, being proactive is great, but do not go at this too aggressively. Removing around 10 links at a time and replacing them with high-quality alternatives will ensure a lower impact on performance.
Learn More About Backlinks
Whether you work in b2b digital marketing, content creation, or are looking to get into the industry, learn more about SEO by reading our online marketing magazine.