How to Remove Spam Backlinks Effectively and Easily
Removing spam backlinks is an important task for maintaining the health and reputation of your website. Here are some effective and easy ways to remove spam backlinks:
Identify spam backlinks: The first step is to identify the spam backlinks that you want to remove. You can use tools such as Google Search Console, Ahrefs, or SEMrush to identify these links.
Contact the website owner: If the spam backlink is coming from a website that you know, you can contact the website owner and ask them to remove the link. You can provide the URL of the page where the link is located and ask them to remove it.
Disavow the link: If the website owner does not respond or is not willing to remove the link, you can use the disavow tool in Google Search Console to tell Google not to count the link as part of your website's backlink profile. This will prevent the link from affecting your website's search rankings.
Use a link removal service: There are many link removal services available that can help you remove spam backlinks from your website. These services use automated tools to identify and remove spam backlinks.
Monitor your backlink profile: It's important to monitor your backlink profile regularly to identify any new spam backlinks that may have been added. You can use tools such as Ahrefs or SEMrush to monitor your backlink profile and identify any new spam backlinks.
Have you ever applied all the on-page SEO best practices but still can't improve your rankings? This can happen because the backlinks are not of high quality on your website. Therefore, you need to know how to remove spam backlinks and detect them quickly.
Backlinks are off-page SEO elements that you need to get to increase domain authority. However, backlinks with poor quality can actually hinder a website from getting high rankings. Check out the following guide to find out good and bad backlinks and how to remove spam backlinks.
What Are Spam Backlinks?
Spam backlinks are all forms of links obtained from other websites using methods that are not in accordance with the Google Webmaster Guidelines and aim to manipulate the website's ranking in the SERP.
Backlinks that fall into the spam category will not increase the domain authority of your website. This backlink will actually lower your ranking or even make your website unable to be found on search engines because it is considered a form of violation.
To avoid this, you need to follow the guidelines provided at Google Webmaster if you want to get quality backlinks. You also have to understand how to find out and how to remove spam backlinks. The reason is, you can get spam backlinks without you intending or knowing it.
Characteristics of Toxic Backlinks
Google will provide sanctions in the form of decreased ranking or even blocking for websites that try to manipulate their ranking in the SERP with backlinks. However, what are some practices that Google considers to be a form of backlink manipulation?
Before knowing how to remove spam backlinks, it's a good idea to first identify the following characteristics of spam backlinks:
Backlinks from websites that have not been indexed by Google.
Backlinks from websites that are made specifically only to provide outbound links.
Backlinks that come from websites with irrelevant topics.
Backlinks obtained from blog comments and clearly promote the website.
Backlinks with anchor text that uses commercial words or target keywords.
Backlinks that are on every page of a website.
Backlinks that are in the website footer and hidden.
Backlinks marked as sponsored links.
The Effect of Backlink Spam on Websites
Figure 1: Illustration of a website's organic performance which has decreased due to spam backlinks. You need to know the effect of spam backlinks on websites and how to remove spam backlinks.
In the past, spam backlinks were a common practice for website managers. This method has proven to be effective for increasing website ranking. However, in 2012 Google launched their algorithm update called Google Penguin.
This algorithm targets websites that use unnatural links so that many websites experience a drastic decrease in ranking and traffic. Now, there are still websites that practice spam backlinks even though the implementation is getting more difficult.
What will happen if you practice spam backlinks and manipulate website rankings?
Accepts Manual Action for Unnatural Links
Google has a special team dedicated to dealing with webspam. The task of this special team is to conduct a review to check for spam backlinks on every website indexed by Google. If a website has spam backlinks, the Google team will provide a manual action for that website.
Manual action can only be given if your website violation is known by the Google team. However, your website can still get a manual action if a competitor or user provides a spam report, is detected by an algorithm, or is in a niche where there are lots of spam backlinks.
You'll receive a notification in Google Search Console (GSC) when you get a manual action. If the spam backlinks are gone, you can send a request to the Google team to remove the manual action.
Affected by Algorithm Update Effects
Google regularly updates its algorithm with the aim of filtering websites with unnatural links and readjusting rankings in the SERPs. Websites with unnatural backlinks most often experience a decrease in ranking due to algorithm updates.
Unlike the manual action, you will not receive a notification or send a penalty cancellation request if your website is affected by an algorithm update.
Backlinks are not considered by Google
Figure 2: Illustration of a Google search page. Your website will not get ranking if it uses spam backlinks. Therefore, the use of spam backlinks should be avoided.
Backlinks obtained by manipulation will not be considered by Google and cannot increase website ranking. This is because Google's algorithm can distinguish links that come naturally from those that don't.
Therefore, if you intend to buy backlinks obtained by spamming, then you need to reconsider. Buying spam backlinks will only cost money.
How to Know Spam Backlinks
To avoid manual action and algorithmic penalties, you must understand how to find out which spam backlinks are on your website. There are several ways to find spam backlinks, one of which is to use GSC. Here's the explanation:
Use GSC
The easiest way to find spam backlinks is to use GSC. These tools are provided free of charge by Google to assist website managers in monitoring website performance organically, one of which is related to backlinks.
You can find out what websites provide links to your website. To check, please follow the following guide:
Open your Google Search Console.
In the menu section, select 'Links' which is located above 'Settings'.
Select the 'Top linking sites' section.
You will see a list of websites that provide links.
Find websites with spam backlink characteristics as previously described.
How to Remove Spam Backlinks
After knowing that there are spam backlinks on the website, of course you want to delete them immediately. However, have you found out how to remove spam backlinks?
Search advocates from Google say that currently website managers don't need to worry about spam backlinks because Google's algorithms can recognize unnatural links and will automatically ignore these links.
However, there are several conditions where it is necessary to take action to remove spam backlinks. This condition is partly due to the large number of spam backlinks directed to the website and these backlinks cause the website to receive manual action.
If these two things happen, then spam backlinks must be removed. For that, you need to know how to remove spam backlinks.
There are several ways to remove spam backlinks that you can do:
Ask the Website Owner to Remove the Link
How to remove spam backlinks on this one takes a little patience. This is because you have to contact the website owner and wait for their approval to remove the links. Of course, you can only do this if the website lists their contact.
Use the Disavow Links Tool page
If you're having trouble with how to remove spam backlinks before, try using the Disavow Links Tool Page. How to remove spam backlinks is much easier than the previous method. Here are the stages:
Use Notepad on your computer to list the links to be savvy.
You can disavow only specific domains or pages. To disable a domain, use 'domain:' at the start of the link (domain:example.com). For specific pages, you can immediately include a complete link with http/https.
Each URL must be on a different line. There cannot be two or more URLs on a single line.
If so, save the file in txt format (registerdisavowlinks.txt).
Open the Disavow Links Tool Page, then select a property or website in the 'Property list'.
Hit the 'Upload disavow list' button and select your txt file.
If so, all you have to do is wait for the disavow process carried out by Google. Typically, the process will take several weeks.
That's an explanation of what spam backlinks are, their characteristics, the impact they have on the website, as well as how to find out and how to remove spam backlinks. If you want to get quality backlinks without having to do spamming, you can use backlink services from cmlabs which can increase the domain authority of your website.