Backlinks are not only the foundation of your website's reputation; they can also make or break your SEO efforts. If your website receives a lot of good links, Google will recognise it as a trustworthy and reliable website with useful content.
Many high-ranking websites do exactly that. Similarly, there are many high-ranking websites that have become victims of spammy backlinks. This is due to competitors implementing a negative SEO campaign. Spammy backlinks are one of the most common tactics used in a negative SEO campaign.
Spammy backlinks, also known as toxic links by Google, are links that originate from spammy websites, low-quality websites known for spamming, or websites with low domain authority.
Here are six steps to help you stop spammy backlinks in their tracks.
First and foremost, it is critical to understand where the spammy backlinks are coming from. Many tools, such as Monitor Backlinks, Moz, and others, can assist you in determining where the spammy backlinks are coming from. They assist in categorising all such links as toxic links.
Each tool has its own set of metrics. Monitor Backlinks, for example, will reveal everything from Moz's spam score to Ahref's Domain Authority and more. This will notify you when a backlink is shuttering between the'spammy' and 'possibly harmless' categories.
Whatever tool you use to identify spammy backlinks, make sure it has an export option. This can be accomplished by downloading a CSV file, which will aid in the sorting and ordering of the data. The information will be extremely useful when deciding which websites to contact first in order to have the spammy backlinks removed.
Once you've determined where the spammy backlinks are coming from, the next step is to have them removed. However, asking the offending webmaster to do the same in a polite manner can be difficult. Few people will respond to that.
Furthermore, in approximately 90% of such cases, the contact information for the offending webmaster will be unavailable. In many cases, there will be no 'Contact Us' page at all. Even if it is available, it will not include the email address or phone number. But it is a task that must be completed. Before you can ask Google to ignore a link, you must first take action. So, try using 'WHOIS Domain Lookup' to find out who owns the site from which the backlink is coming.
If the offending webmaster does not respond, contact the offending site's hosting provider. Request that the provider remove the spammy backlink to your website.
Use tools to determine who is hosting the offending website. This will provide you with the hosting provider's contact information. With the information at your fingertips, contact the provider and complete the necessary work.
If all other methods fail, use Google's 'Disavow Links' tool to resolve your spammy backlinks problem. You will learn how to import a txt.file with the help of Google Search Console by using the simple and easy-to-use Google URL removal tool. You can include specific URLs of spammy backlinks that you want Google to ignore in the file, or simply instruct Google to ignore all spammy backlinks from a specific domain. However, do not use the tool on the spur of the moment. Instead, use it only after a thorough examination of the backlink profile. Otherwise, you risk mistakenly disavowing high-quality backlinks, which will only harm your website's organic ranking. You must be patient after submitting the file to Google. This is due to the time it takes Google to cross-check the file, process it, and then remove the spammy backlinks.
If you want to remove all traces of the spammy backlinks, you must thoroughly clean up the backlink profile. However, the process can be aggravating. This is because backlink removal requests take a long time. Outreach to webmasters can be exhausting because they do not always respond positively or acknowledge your request.
Use Google's rel="sponsored" attribute to avoid such aggravating situations. This allows you to mark all spammy backlinks and change the links to have a rel="sponsored" attribute. You can ask the webmasters of the offending spammy backlinks to take on the task of flagging the links. If you are successful, you will be able to avoid a possible link scheme action.
The webmaster is asked to redirect the link to a URL on their website that is blocked by the robots.txt file. This will enable you to not only clean up your website but also help restore user trust.
Today's search engines are much smarter and more objective. They want to not only create a level playing field for all websites, but they also want websites to be ranked solely on merit rather than webspam.
The urgent need is to remove as many spammy backlinks as possible as soon as possible. When that's done, the search engines will realise they won't be seeing them again. Check your website's backlink profile on a regular basis to avoid this happening again. This will assist you in identifying spammy backlinks and removing them as soon as possible. Contact DoFort’s digital marketing experts to know more.
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