There used to be no such thing as a bad backlink. Over time, people began to realize that they could do lazy search engine optimization and blast their way to the top of the search results using automated tools or low quality link networks. It progressed to a point where Google was being gamed by SEO’s and they had to finally do something about it. The search results are Google’s most precious asset. Quality results is what brings people back to perform more searches, and in turn, possibly click on a paid advertisement. If this becomes tainted, then Google is at risk of damaging their product and potentially losing revenue over time.

Panda and Penguin updates are two massive updates that were launched in order to help combat either low quality content or link building tactics that go against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Both updates affected a large number of sites and sent lots of webmasters into a panic. Lots of webmasters had the mentality that “if there was no such thing as a bad backlink, then what could go wrong?” Turns out, lots could go wrong!

Google is trying to clean up the search results, which unfortunately means that they are going to force webmasters to clean up their link profiles and convince search engine marketers to change their outlook on SEO and link building. The Penguin update focused on targeting sites that performed unnatural link building or tactics that go against the Webmaster Guidelines.

This does put Google in an interesting predicament though since Webmasters don’t have control over the internet and if people link to them. This opened up a flood of issues or concerns for site owners: What about a competitor potentially sending bad links to your site (also known as Negative SEO)? What if you hired an SEO company that did a poor job and cut corners to get you results?

In an effort to try and answer and deal with these issues, Google launched the disavow tool through the Webmaster Tools control panel. Google understands that there are things outside of your control when it comes to links and built the tool to help. In the video below, Matt Cutts explains the disavow tool and how it works:

In the video above, Matt Cutts goes into how the tool works and why it is important. He mentions a couple of very important things that we need to note. Matt not only confirms that there is such thing as a toxic link, but he also explains what we should do about it if we are in that situation. The first thing that he recommends that we do is have all of the bad links taken down. If we can’t get them taken down, then we need to utilize the disavow tool. It is clear that the disavow tool is only a last resort option and that we need to focus on actually having backlinks removed all together before using the tool and then finally submitting a reconsideration request.

This sounds pretty simple, but the problem is that there is actually a lot more to it than this. There are a few main concepts that are included in those suggestions. In short, you are going to have to first find out which backlinks are bad. Once you go through that process, you are then going to have to remove those bad links after you have figured out which ones are toxic.

You’re probably saying to yourself, wait a second, I have thousands of backlinks, what should I do?! Fortunately, there are some quality link removal services that will help you remove them, but you might not have a budget to hire a service. Don’t worry, we will walk through all those steps in the guide, so don’t hit the panic button just yet. It would be much easier for site owners if we didn’t have to worry about our link profile, but unfortunately this is the game that Google is asking us to play. We can either follow along or get left behind. Using this guide, I’ll show you how to repair your site and get things back on track and even how to future proof your site with link monitoring.

Once you have either decided to do it yourself or use the help of a service to do it, you will have to perform a link disavow in Google Webmaster tools. This basically tells Google which links you think are bad and that you don’t want counted as links towards your site. If you are familiar with SEO, think of this as “nofollow” for links that you can’t control, but want to basically be “nofollowed” towards your site.

Lastly, you are going to have to complete a reconsideration request. This is basically you going to Google and admitting that you had not been playing by their webmaster guidelines and that you have cleaned up your links. This is the final step, but if done in a lazy way, will not work. You are going to want to follow our steps so that you have a much higher success rate when submitting your request and having your penalty lifted.