Do you know how important it is to build high-quality backlinks to improve your site’s ranking in Google results? But sometimes, for various reasons, our site may encounter a series of spam and poor quality backlinks.
These links not only do not help the ranking of the site, but they can seriously damage our SEO and cause the ranking to drop and even penalize the site by Google.
So, what to do now? How can you get rid of these harmful links and save your site’s SEO?
Fortunately, Google has provided webmasters with a tool called “Disavow Tools” that can be of great help in this regard.
To read more comprehensive article, what is a backlink? read the
What is the Disavow tool?
Imagine that your site has been artificially and unnaturally linked by a person or company in the past with a large number of spam backlinks from dubious and unreliable sources in order to increase the ranking.
Not only is this not useful for you, but it can lead to the site being fined by Google and its rank dropping sharply.
Disavow tool is designed exactly to solve this problem. This tool allows you to tell Google not to count certain backlinks and use them to evaluate your site.
In a way, by using this tool you are announcing to Google that “These backlinks are not about me and I am not satisfied with them!”.
When to use the Disavow tool?
Using the Disavow tool is not always necessary for all sites. In general, it may be a good time to use this tool if you experience the following:
- Sudden drop in site rank : If you notice that your site’s rank has dropped unexpectedly, it could be a sign of spam backlinks.
- Receive a warning from Google : If Google has warned you that your site has used unnatural methods to increase its ranking, you should definitely use the Disavow tool.
- Existence of spam backlinks: If backlinks from invalid, spammy or irrelevant sites are directed to your site.
- SEO attack: if spam backlinks have been injected into your site from your competitors’ SEO. You can also read the article What is negative SEO to learn more.
- Purchased backlinks: If you have artificially purchased backlinks to increase the rank of your site. If you need more guidance on buying backlinks, refer to this page.
- Backlinks from unrelated sites: If the backlinks are received from completely different sites from the topic of your site.
- Backlinks from websites with inappropriate content: These websites may contain illegal, inappropriate or harmful content.
- Backlinks that you have not been able to remove manually: If the website owner is unwilling to remove the spam backlink, you can use the Disavow tool to ignore it.
We have already talked about different types of backlinks in a comprehensive article , which you can read if you wish.
How to use the Disavow tool?
Steps to use Disavow Tools
Is this tool too difficult to use? No! In general, the process of using Disavow Tools is as follows:
- Identifying problematic backlinks: The first step is to identify the links that we want to ignore. You can do this by using different SEO tools. Tools like Ahrefs , SEMrush, Majestic, etc. will help you to see a complete list of backlinks on your site and identify suspicious links.
- Checking the validity of backlinks: After you have the list of backlinks of your site, you should check the quality and validity of each link. See if the links are from valid sites related to the topic of your site or not. Things like DA (Domain Authority) and PA (Page Authority) can help you in this review.
- Creating a disavow file: After you have prepared the list of suspicious links, you must create a txt file and paste the addresses of these links into it. In this file, write each link address on a separate line.
- For example:
domain.com/page1 domain2.com/page2
- For example:
- Sending the file to Google: The last step is to send the txt file to Google through the Google search console. Visit the Disavow section at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links and upload the TXT file and make sure the file is uploaded correctly.
Important points in using Disavow Tools
- Before using Disavow Tools, make sure you really need to. Unnecessary use of this tool may damage your site’s SEO.
- Just put suspicious links in the disavow file. Avoid putting good and valid links.
- Check the backlinks of your site regularly and update the disavow file if needed.
- After sending the disavow file, wait for its effect on your site’s rank. It may take a few weeks or months for Google to fully affect this file.
Do Disavow Tools Always Work?
It is true that Disavow Tools is a useful tool, but it can never completely solve the problem of spam backlinks. In some cases, Google may not affect this file or its effect is very small.
In short, Disavow Tools is a useful tool that can help you get rid of spam backlinks and maintain your site’s SEO.
But before using this tool, make sure that you have complete information about it and know the important points of using it.
I hope this article has helped you to get more information about Disavow Tools and how to use it.
Remember that improving SEO is a continuous process and you should always be looking to improve and update your SEO strategies.
Finally, if you think that the decrease in your site’s ranking is due to the use of low-quality backlinks, you can use our site’s SEO services so that our experienced experts can check and solve this problem.