Steps to Get Rid of Bad Links from Your Website

There are various SEO techniques used to rank the websites in the SERPs and many webmasters build spammy links to attain rankings pretty quickly, but that glory is usually short termed and the site may get penalized by Google. 

So, the first thing that you should know is to learn how to remove bad links from your site and regain your rankings in the search engines. In this post, I will discuss how you can remove low quality backlinks from untrustworthy and spammy websites. They can ruin your online marketing efforts and can restrict your growth and even cause a Google penalty.

In order to have long lasting SEO results, it is vital to monitor and manage your backlinks. A clean profile can help you to get rid of the negative influence on your rankings. Here are few things that you should consider if you want to avoid any sort of down ranking or penalty:

Identifying Your Bad Links

Quality is the main difference between a bad and a good backlink. Sometimes it is very easy for the webmasters to find the bad ones and at times it has to be checked to see if they are creating any negative impact on the site.

Links from websites that are set up only for SEO: There are millions of sites and among them many websites are only designed just for links and form a network. Google often penalizes them based on patterns and quality. Sorting them is the first step.

Any links from the comments of other sites: You may find comments in your forms telling that the information was great and helpful and etc. Personalized comments may also include the author’s name. Comment spam are considered bad for your profile.

Links that have over optimized anchor texts: Your website may have backlinks that usually use the URL or the website name as the anchor text. If there are many sites linking to your site having the exact keywords, then it becomes suspicious and will soon ring the alarm bell at Google.

Links with duplicate texts: Sites that are just created for them usually have content that doesn’t make any sense. Some SEO companies create such sites to make them look natural, but irrelevant content or low quality often results to low ranking of the site.

How to Remove the Bad Links:

Once you have a clear idea of the quality of your links, it is time to take an action.

Request a link removal:  Try to dig up the webmaster’s contact information and ask him to remove the link politely. However, most of the webmasters would ask you to pay for such task or won’t reply at all.

Cut the page: If in case the links are targeted at deep and low value pages, then it is best to pull a disappearing act. At times you may need to remove the pages completely and return a 404, but if the penalty is not severe then you may also use the 301 redirect to take the page to another and shake off the bad link.

Build good links: You can try to get some high authority links and focus on the quality of it instead of the quantity. This may be appropriate when you are on the border of a penalty or the penalty is not very severe.

Request Google: In case you have done everything to address the bad links and have not seen any improvement in the rankings, then you may have to appeal to Google directly. This means that you have to file a reconsideration request through the Google Webmaster Tool.

Once you find your website’s bad links, you can take the essential steps to get rid of them before they start to affect your ranking.  A timely clean-up will not only save your site from being penalized, but will also help you to maintain a good ranking in the SERPs.