To protect your website’s online reputation and search engine ranking, it’s important that you know how to remove bad backlinks. Bad links can come from anywhere, notably spammy websites, directories, and malicious software. Leave them unchecked, and these links will hurt your site’s online visibility and its standing on search engines.
Luckily, eliminating bad links from your website can be done through a series of tasks. In this article, we’ll talk about these steps to ensure you properly spot and remove any faulty links. We’ll also provide a couple of tips to prevent them from reappearing in the future. Let’s get started!
Identify Bad Links
First, you need to identify which of your website’s backlinks are causing issues. Start with the links coming from spammy websites and low-quality directories. Moreover, you should look for any sites that have previously been penalized by Google.To make this task easier, you can rely on tools like SEMRush and Moz Open Site Explorer. These tools are terrific for checking backlink quality, and most of them come in free versions.
Analyze All Your Links
At the same time, you might want to analyze the rest of your website’s backlinks. This will come in handy should you decide to audit your entire backlink profile. And it’s a great way to check which techniques are working best, allowing you to replicate it in future campaigns.Now there are two ways to analyze your website’s backlinks: manually or with link analysis tools. To ensure you properly evaluate all the links, you need to employ both techniques. When picking the link analysis tool you’ll use, make sure it can show you the following:
- List of your backlinks
- List of unhealthy or dead backlinks
- Domain Authority (DA)
- Page Authority (PA)
Notify the Webmaster
Once you’ve identified all the faulty links in your website, you need to contact the webmaster hosting it. Chances are, they’re unaware of the problem. By reaching out, you can notify them about the issue. This allows them to address it as soon as possible.Most webmasters provide their contact details on their sites. But in case they don’t, you can simply use tools like Hunter.io or WhoIsHostingThis. The first helps you find any email addresses connected to the website you want to contact. The second one provides details aside from contact information, including IP address and hosting provider. Additionally, you can consider talking to the website’s customer support.Once you’ve identified who’s in charge of the website, send them an email with your request to remove the faulty links. Include a simple, brief explanation why this action is necessary.
Have nofollow Tags Added
At the same time, you can ask the webmaster to change any bad links found to nofollow attribute. This tag basically tells search engines not to follow or include the links when crawling and indexing your pages. Adding it will help keep your SERP ranking stable, as well as lead to other benefits.So have the webmasters change the bad links to nofollow tag as they evaluate them for removal. This can be done manually, and with a bit of basic HTML knowledge. Nofollow tags can also be added through link editors, which varies depending on the CMS you use.
Request Disavow From Search Engines
Most webmasters usually respond quickly whenever you ask them to deal with broken or unnatural backlinks. But there are still times when they’re either unwilling or unable to remove the bad backlinks themselves. If that’s the case, then you can have the search engines disavow the links instead.Again, the quickest way to disavow bad links is through Google Search Console. First, you list all the bad links to your website in a text file. Then you go to the disavow links tool page, select a property, and upload your text file. Google will then do the rest from there.Keep in mind that it takes time for Google or other search engines to disavow bad backlinks. Search engine webmasters tend to review these requests intensively before taking any action. In some cases, they’ll even deny your request.
Blacklist the Source
Even if you know how to remove bad backlinks from your website, it won’t matter if the source keeps linking to you. They usually do this by using the same faulty landing page but with a new anchor text to make it look different. unchecked , this will lead to you going back to square one.Unfortunately, there’s no easy solution to this problem. The best thing you can do is put these websites on a list and report them to search engine admins. Then you have to refer to the list whenever you encounter a questionable backlink.
Monitor Your Rankings
After having the faulty backlinks removed, disavowed, or nofollowed, check for improvements in your website’s rankings and traffic. Done properly, you can expect the results to show within several weeks or a few months.Bear in mind that it will take time for search engines to pick up on these changes. As you probably already know, rankings and traffic are influenced by several factors other than the backlinks you have. The quality and relevance of your content will come into play, too, as removing links there can be tricky. In short, you need to be patient while monitoring your backlinks and waiting for the improvements to show.
Ask the Webmaster for More Help
While waiting for the results, you should stay in touch with the webmaster throughout the entire process. That way, they can lend their assistance whenever any issues pop up.Knowing how to remove bad backlinks is a two-way street and the links built can affect the rankings of both party’s websites. So they’ll probably be just as anxious as you are in having any link problems resolved.
Avoid Paying For Bad Link Removals
That being said, you should avoid paying just to have faulty backlinks removed. If the webmaster asks you for any fees just to have any link issues fixed, then you’d be better off asking Google to disavow it instead. Then include the website on your blacklist to avoid links from them in the future.Also, you need to avoid third-party paid services that offer to remove bad links for a fee. These so-called experts are usually scammers. They’re probably even working with some of the websites that gave you the bad links in the first place.If you want to have bad links properly dealt with, then you need to give the webmasters and search engine admins time. Rest assured that they’ll do their job in making sure your rankings stay stable.
Get Rid of Bad Links Through These Steps
Knowing how to remove bad backlinks may be time-consuming and tedious, but it will definitely keep your website’s rankings stable. Through the steps outlined above, you can get rid of any spammy links whenever they pop out.Are you having a hard time dealing with bad backlinks on your website? Don’t hesitate to call Reach Digital for help!Our team is always eager to work with clients who want to improve their online presence. Aside from providing good solutions for various SEO issues, we also offer preventive measures to keep them from returning.Contact us now if you want to learn more.
