So, you’ve found yourself tangled in a web of not-so-great backlinks and you’re itching to clean it all up? Relax. In this article, “How Can I Remove Backlinks?” you’re about to embark on a little journey of behind-the-scenes SEO magic. Backlinks, those pesky or precious connections your website has with others, can sometimes do more harm than good. Whether they’re from spammy sites or perhaps a bit too plentiful, getting rid of these little mischief-makers can do your site a world of good.
Understanding the Importance of Backlinks
Backlinks, also known as inbound or incoming links, play a significant role in the world of SEO. They refer to the links that point towards your website from another website. So, if you’re wondering why these are important, think of them as votes of confidence. The more you have from reputable sources, the more search engines, like Google, will trust that your content is valuable and worth ranking higher.
The Role Backlinks Play in SEO
When it comes to SEO, backlinks do quite a bit of heavy lifting. SEO loves them not just because they lead to better organic ranking, but also because they help your website become more visible and easily discoverable. Backlinks let search engines know that other websites find your content valuable, making them more likely to push your site up the rankings. In short, if your content has a good number of high-quality backlinks pointing to it, search engines will deem it as important content and this could significantly improve your rankings.
Positive and Negative Impacts of Backlinks
Not all backlinks are created equal, though. And here lies the catch. Good, high-quality backlinks can boost your SEO. These are links from reputable sites that are relevant to your content, thus signalling trust to search engines. However, low-quality backlinks from suspicious or irrelevant sites can bring your SEO down. These negative backlinks make you look less trustworthy in the eyes of an algorithm and can lead to a drop in your site’s rankings, and in some cases, even result in penalties from Google.
Identifying Unwanted Backlinks
You may now be wondering how to identify these harmful backlinks that can hurt your website’s rankings. Well, you’re about to find out.
How to Identify Harmful Backlinks
Whether it’s from a negative SEO attack or an old black hat SEO tactic that you weren’t aware of, harmful backlinks can come from many different sources. Identifying them might seem daunting, but by looking at their quality and relevance, you can spot them with a trained eye. Poor spelling and grammar on the linking website, an abundance of unrelated or outbound links and links from websites set up explicitly for linking purposes, are all warning signs.
Tools to Monitor Your Backlink Profile
There are plenty of tools available that can help you keep an eye on your backlink profile. These tools can help in identifying and removing harmful backlinks, thus protecting your website from being penalized by Google. They work by monitoring your backlinks and highlighting the ones that are potentially harmful based on quality and relevance. Some tools even have the functionality of sending alert notifications when your website receives a new backlink.
Functionalities of Google Search Console
While those tools are doing their job, Google also offers you its own set of tools. Google Search Console, previously known as Google Webmaster Tools, plays an essential role here.
How Google Search Console Helps Manage Your Website’s Backlinks
The Google Search Console is a functional tool that lets you monitor, troubleshoot, and maintain your website’s presence in Google Search results. It’s also the best suite for managing your website’s backlinks because it provides a list of all the incoming links reported by Google. In addition to that, you can see who links to you the most and how your website is linked.
Guide to Using Google Search Console for Backlink Analysis
Using Google Search Console for backlink analysis is quite straightforward. To start with, you’ll need to log in and verify your site. After that, navigate to the ‘Links’ section where you’ll see ‘Top linking sites’. Here, you can see where most of your backlinks are coming from. This tool also allows you to download more detailed backlink data, including information about the text that other sites use to link to yours, the page they’re linking to, and more.
Using Google’s Disavow Tool
But what if you’ve encountered some of those pesky low-quality links? The bad news is they can hurt your search rankings. The good news is there’s a way to fight back: meet Google’s Disavow Tool.
What is Google’s Disavow Tool
Google’s Disavow tool is a search console feature that allows you to tell Google to not consider certain backlinks that point to your website, that you deem as spammy or low quality. It’s sort of like saying to Google, “please ignore these, they’re not a representation of my website’s worth”.
How to Use Google’s Disavow Tool
Now, using this tool is not meant to be your first line of defence against bad backlinks. You’re encouraged to first attempt to remove these links by contacting the website owners. If that fails, or your site has a large number of bad backlinks, using the Disavow tool can be a helpful option.
Procedure to Remove Backlinks with Google’s Disavow Tool
The process involves creating a list of the bad backlinks you want to disavow and uploading it to the tool.
Step-by-step Guide to Disavow Backlinks
To disavow backlinks with Google’s tool, your first step is to gather a list of links to disavow. You can find the data right on Google’s Search Console under ‘Links’. After gathering all the bad backlinks, put them into a .txt file and upload it to the Disavow Tool. However, it’s important to approach with caution. If done incorrectly, it can potentially harm your website, so make sure to only disavow backlinks that are harmful and low-quality.
How to Monitor the Ongoing Process
After disavowing the unwanted links, you’ll need to be a bit patient. Google takes some time, typically a few weeks, to process the request. You can keep an eye out for any changes by regularly checking your organic traffic or your site’s ranking for specific keywords.
Hi, I’m Nicholas Bortoluzzi (but people often call me Nico).
I am the Founder and Director at SEO Lynx, an internet marketing agency operating in the UK and servicing clients worldwide.
The article on this page was written and curated by myself.