How to Disavow Links for Google and Bing search engine?

Disavow Links for Google and Bing
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How to Disavow Links for Google and Bing search engine? 65

How to Disavow Links for Google and Bing search engine?

According to Google search Algorithm, website content and links are the two important ranking factors that affect website performance in organic searches.

Penguin Update by Google brought the most important updates focusing on the link quality. Website linked to bad and spammy websites will impact the website performance in SEO.

In our experience managing SEO for clients, we’ve found many cases when a low-quality link profile still hurts a website. In these cases, we must closely evaluate their every link, and be honest about its value to the brand.

The Disavow tool is part of Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) that allows websites to discount the value of an inbound link, helping to prevent against link-based penalties.

Let’s talk about the whys, when and how of the search engines’ tools for disavowing links. Get a clear map of disavowing links tools best practices, including:

  • How to tell if you need the search engines to disavow tools and the benefits of using them
  • Some drawbacks and limitations of the disavow links tools today
  • How to create and submit a disavow file to Google and how to use the Disavow Links tool from Bing
  • How Disavow Files Help You

Quality backlinks are a requirement of healthy search rankings. But it’s clear from the mouths of the search engines that you can’t go very far if your site is associated with off-topic or spammy inbound links. While it’s important to attract good links, it’s just as important to remove bad ones. This is why link pruning is a critical task of SEO.

A problem arises, however, when you’re stuck with a few bad backlinks. If you can’t get them removed, how do you avoid a search engine penalty for these backlinks? Fortunately, both Google and Bing have an answer: each search engine has a tool for disavowing links or telling them the backlinks that you want them to ignore.

First, it can improve your inbound link profile. Disavowing a low-quality backlink essentially blocks it from the search engines’ considerations. If a search engine feels that a low-quality link is dragging down your trust factor, removing that link via disavow can help your site regain some of that trust. In fact, we’ve seen that getting rid of low-quality backlinks can provide positive results in a way similar to attracting quality links to your site.

Another benefit to using the tool is the opportunity to discover negative SEO. While gathering link information, you might find artificial links pointing to your site that you had no part in generating. If you are indeed negatively targeted by your competition, asking nicely to remove the links may not work. While rare, negative SEO is a great example of when disavow links tools can stop poor-quality links from harming your site.

Site owners have no insight into disavow data held by Google and Bing.

SEOs can be left without answers …

  • Are you affected by Google’s Penguin penalty?
  • Are you a victim of negative SEO?
  • How do you know if you have backlinks that others have disavowed?
  • Would you like to know if another site has disavowed your pages?
  • Who Needs a Disavow File?

Google has said that not everyone needs the disavow links tool. The search engine calls it an advanced tool and warns users to only use the tool if “…you believe you have a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site, and if you are confident that the links are causing issues for you.”

Once you’ve worked to remove as many low-quality, off-topic, or spammy inbound links from your site, if you’ve found you’re stuck with a few stragglers (which is very common), the disavow links tool might be the best way for you to avoid current or future penalty.

You might also want to use the tool if you’re turning a new leaf in your SEO strategy. You or a past vendor may have consciously created unnatural backlinks in the past. Whether or not you have been penalized for these backlinks yet, you’re eager to follow the search engines’ guidelines. Using this tool helps you to get on the path of SEO best practices.

  • You know you need a disavow links file if any of the following are true:
  • You receive a manual action or a Google link warning in Search Console.
  • Then you suspect a Penguin algorithmic link penalty.
  • You believe you might be a victim of negative SEO.

Google’s disavow tool requires you submit a list of the domains and pages you wish Google would ignore when evaluating your inbound link profile.

The first step to using the Google disavow links tool is to create a .txt file. Per Google’s instructions, this file type has to be a.txt file encoded in UTF-8 or 7-bit ASCII. Within this file, list the URLs and domains you want to disavow; each domain and URL should have its own line.

  • To include a domain-level link in the file, add “domain:” before the URL of the domain home page (for example, “domain:xyzseo.com”).
  • To submit a page-level link, simply list the URL.
  • Add notes to each submission by starting the message with “#” on the line before the URL or domain listing.

Once you have your .txt file, you can now submit the final list to Google’s Disavow Links tool. Here’s how:

Google disavow links tool image

A message of successful submission of a Google disavow file

Note: If you want to remove links from or add links to your disavow file in the future, upload a new and complete file. The new file will replace the previous one.

The way to use Bing’s disavow links tool is slightly different than Google’s tool because you don’t need to upload a .txt file. Instead, you manually enter each domain or URL.

  • Log into Bing Webmaster Tools.
  • Go to “Configure my site” and then select “Disavow Links.”
  • Within the Disavow Links tool, use the drop-down menu to indicate that you are disavowing a page, directory, or domain URL.
  • Enter the URL you want to disavow and click “Disavow.”
  • Your submission will be featured underneath the tool along with the date it was disavowed.
  • If you want to delete a submission, select the checkbox and click the “Delete” button.

Bing's disavow links tool.

DisavowFiles is a free crowdsourced database and SEO tool that gives users insight into their websites’ backlinks.

What’s Next?

After you’ve submitted the links you want Google and Bing to ignore, it’s time to wait. Google says it could take weeks before it recrawls your site and “reprocesses the pages.” This might be especially frustrating if you’re waiting to recover from a certain manual or algorithmic penalty. Bing says you might not notice any dramatic changes at all! At least you can sleep a little better knowing that you’ve cleaned your house of low-quality backlinks – until, of course, it’s time to do it again.

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