Removing Bad Links To Your Client Sites With The Google Link Disavow Tool

So, what is this all about?

You've heard of "The Google Slap", "Google Penguin", "Google Panda" right?

Ok, well Google have obviously been penalising sites that have bad links directly pointing to them.

What some unscrupulous webmasters also did, was point these backlinks directly to their competitors sites (not very nice) which is kind of under hand, but surprisingly it works.

So, what Google have done is set up a tool which allows you to flag these links (that you feel are suspect) and actually asked them to be ignored. Yayeeeeeee, right?

Erm, maybe....


Note: "WORD OF WARNING"

Now, before you follow the sheep and start removing all of these links. Be sure to check whether you or the client have actually ordered these spammy links. You know the ones, the automation type ones from Fiverr.

If you have (and you know who you are ). Then go back through your Fiverr gig purchased (or relevant spammy backlink service) and ask for these to be removed first, BEFORE you use this tool!

This is from Matt Cutts himself. He suggests that using the tool may not have any effect for several weeks or even months, so you need get the ball rolling yourself.

Speaking to few people, this tool hasn't looked at the sites submitted favourably, so I'd say use this at your own risk. Do your due diligence here since there have been differing reports coming out from different webmasters.

If you want to bite the bullet, here's what you do:

1.If you access to your client's Google webmaster dashboard, login. If you don't, ask them for access.

2. Go ahead and visit good ole Google here - https://www.google.com/webmasters/to...vow-links-main

3. Get a list of the links you want removing and place them in a txt file (notepad file). This can be a combination of comments and/or instructions to Google, domains to block, links to block etc etc

"There are only really three options at this point:

#1 Use “#” for comments (very helpful later)
#2 Use full URLs on their own line to block a specific page
#3 Use "domain:" followed by a root or sub-domain to entirely block it

Proceed with extreme caution using option #3 – you’ll end up disavowing every link from that domain, even the potentially good ones. Google has also suggested that, while they’ll usually honor sub-domains, it’s a bit open to interpretation. So, if you have terrible links from one sub-domain and great links from the root domain, I’d be very careful."

Disclaimer: Extract from SEOMOZ

4. Upload your txt file.

Like a say, be careful if you use this tool. Try removing some of the links yourself (contact your backlink supplier and asked for them to be removed).

5. Look, some of us use these services, my only bit of advice is to point them to web 2.0 properties like Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger blogs etc and not directly to your client's site.

Since the paint is still wet with this update, I'll subscribe to this thread and try and give you guys some updates.



If you got something out of this post, I'd love for you to press that magic "thanks" button