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What are Bad Links/Toxic Links?
Bad Links or Toxic Links are the links, which are pointing to your website as backlinks. Backlinks are an important part in optimizing your SEO. Toxic links are poor backlinks can be determined by Toxic Score. It is always good for your website to disavowing those toxic links (poor backlinks) using Google’s Disavow Tool.
Good backlinks can have a positive impact on our SEO while the Poor backlinks can have the opposite effect. These poor backlinks can affect your SEO by lowering the positioning for keywords in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Also, the poor backlinks lower your domain ranks on Google.
How to find a Toxic Backlink?
With the use of any Backlink Audit tools, you can find out the poor backlinks (toxic links) by manually checking each link. For example, to do a backlink audit SEMrush tool is one of the best tools for backlinks research. Below is the backlinks overview screenshot of a website:
Here, SEMrush tool splits backlinks in 3 categories: Toxic (Poor/Danger Backlinks), Potentially Toxic (Not-bad-not-good), Non-toxic (Good Backlinks). For detailed information, find the below screenshot (Backlink Audit Dashboard):
Here, the red color highlighted is the Toxic Score, determined by SEMrush Backlink Audit tool. The score is between 0 to 100 as follows:
- Toxic Links (Toxic Score: 60 – 100) – We don’t disavow these links blindly and need to review whether it is really a toxic backlink or not).
- Potentially Toxic Links (Toxic Score: 46 – 59) – We need to review these links before disavow them.
- Non-toxic Links (Toxic Score: 0 – 45) – Good backlinks and we can ignore them from Disavowal.
Most of the toxic links come from:
– Spam sites and websites that are created only for link building.
– Websites which were not indexed by Google.
– Websites with a virus or malware.
– Link networks.
Once the backlinks are exported from the tool, you simply open each link in your browser. Before you adding a link into disavow list, make sure that particular link is really a Toxic Link. If you don’t know how to determine, check that link using Moz Toolbar Chrome Extension in your browser, like the below screenshot:
Here, red color highlighted is a Spam Score of that link and it is dangerous link (spam score more that 10%). So you can add this link into the Disavow links list.
Do Not Consider the below from the Toxic Links
- Relevant websites.
- Authority links (high DA & PA).
- Manually created links by You.
- Even though some of the links have a high Toxic Score, but check its DA and Spam Score. If it has >20 DA, <20% Spam Score and anchor text seems to be good, then we can remove it from Toxic Links.
- Duplicate domains.
How to Prepare Toxic Links Report for Disavowal?
- First of all, download the previously disavowed toxic links from Google Disavow tool. If you’re doing it for the first time, then this step.
Below are the must-follow instructions from Google when preparing a Disavow Links:
To disavow a domain (or subdomain) prefix it with “domain:”, for example: domain:example.com
The file must be a text file encoded in UTF-8 or 7-bit ASCII
The file name must end in .txt
Maximum URL length is 2,048 characters
Maximum file size is 100,000 lines (including blank lines and comment lines) and 2MB.
You can include comments if you like by starting a line with a # mark. Any lines that begin with # will be ignored by Google.
Example:
# Two pages to disavow
http://spam.example.com/stuff/comments.html
http://spam.example.com/stuff/paid-links.html
# One domain to disavow
domain:shadyseo.com
- Finalized bad links to be added in a .txt file starting with domain:domain-name. If the root domain is perfect, but the exact URL seems to be toxic, then you need to add that exact link 1 per line.
- Google will consider both (www + non-www) as different domains. So we need to keep both links if it’s presented in the Toxic Links.
- Finally, create text file that contains newly identified toxic links and previously disavowed links as well. (Ignore this if you’re doing it for the first time).
- Once all set, go to Google Disavow Tool (https://search.google.com/search-console/disavow-links), login with your Search Console Property account.
- Now click the Select Property drop-down button and choose the domain you’re going to disavow the bad backlinks.
- Now click the Upload Disavow List button at the bottom and choose the Toxic Links list in a .txt file. Find the below screenshot for your reference:
- That is all! Now Google shows your Disavow List Added message!
How long does it take Google to Disavow Links?
There is no exact time frame for disavow links take process. It’s all based on the website’s crawlability (how frequently GoogleBot access your website). Some of the websites effective within a week and some of the websites may effective after a month. But, it will effective immediately once GoogleBot checked your website’s Toxic Links list.
Hope you’re get the required information through this article, if not feel free to comment us related queries! Thanks!