It was 24th April 2012 when Penguin started the fight and in May as well as in October 2012, Google penalty became the buzzword. To escape the ire of Google, webmasters started looking for a tool incessantly for bad link removal and finally Disavow tool evolved at the platform. Before indulging in the mechanism of the tool and its impact on Google Penalty Recovery, let's discuss a bit more about the Penguin penalty and Penalty Recovery with Google Disavow.
By introducing its Penguin 2.0 and 2.1 updates in a consecutive row, Google has made its intentions loud and clear and that was “my way or highway.” Penguin 2.1 kicked hard at the websites that were involved in link spam of any kind. Not only did these updates shuffle the search rankings of millions of websites across the World Wide Web but also penalized them with a severe dip in rankings and permanent ban in certain scenarios.
The search industry predicted that in its initial follow-through, Penguin covered websites with around 85% bad links. Its later updates similarly reduced to 65% and finally, Penguin 2.0 included all websites having around 35% bad inbound links.
Why Link Penalty Occurs?
If your business website/blog has dropped from the SERPs drastically, you can't deny the possibility of a Penguin shocker. Technically, Google Penguin targets those websites that have been over-optimized and enjoy unnatural link profiles.
In a crispy term, if you are using black hat SEO techniques, you are under the Google scanner. Most of the websites that rely on the link spam techniques have lost their search engine rankings and experienced sharp decreases in visitor traffic during the Penguin's surprise check. I am listing several specific reasons that may instigate Penguin's wrath for SEO Services professionals.
- Acquiring backlinks from bad neighborhoods.
- Enforcing hidden text and links.
- Extensive interlinking and backlinks acquired from nonauthoritative websites.
- Serious violations of Google guidelines.
- Bulk syndicated content and poor-quality article submission.
- Blog link spam
- Nonnatural links
- Paid links
- Link Farms.
How To Recover From Link Penalty Manually?
At the outset, if you are under the penguin scanner, you need to work on the bad backlinks to restore your relationship with Google. A webmaster must scrutinize and identify which bad links should be removed. It is also very important to make adjustments to your website to make it Google-compliant. And finally, send a communication to Google to tell them that you have already done with these basics.
Link-building techniques are not only a proven solution but a comprehensive strategy that leads to massive search rankings in SERPs.When webmasters go beyond the ethical techniques to get the results quickly, they come under the Penguin hammer.Although there is no established process to get away of unnatural link removal, you may go through the following procedures to remove crap.
- Collect and recall all your backlink data.
- Analyze the backlinks in terms of relevancy, indexing, anchor text, and authority.
- Communicate with webmasters to remove your low-quality links.
- Make a documentation.
- Send it to Google for final scrutiny.
This is an educational video by Mr Tarun Gupta, CMD of BrainPulse Technologies. Here he covers every aspect of Google Disavow Tools for webmasters.
What is the Disavow Tool?
Post-penguin 2.1, the primary attention of the webmasters has inclined towards posing clean and fair backlink profiles. Even Google endorsed their objective of having a cleaner link profile. To do so, Google introduced a Disavow Tool to help webmasters and website owners in cleaning up bad backlinks that point to their websites. Disavow tool was rolled out last year to assist webmasters in cleaning up their websites from toxic links.
“The Google Disavow Tool was introduced by Google to give webmasters an option to tell Google that they want Google to ignore a few links from certain pages or domains on the web.”
Important Points To Remember About Disavow:
Disavow tool works in a very straightforward manner. When you submit a disavow request, Google starts processing that request and tags those links pointing at your site. If these links don't point at your site for link counting and analysis, this tool puts it in the removal list.
- It takes several weeks for Google to consider your request.
- Google sometimes declines your request to disavow link on some merits.
- If you by mistake a good link to the list, prepare a fresh list to be sent.
- When you Disavow links from a subdomain, it only affects links from the subdomain and not the domain as a whole.
- In your reconsideration request, urge Google that you use their disavow links tool.
Penalty Recovery with Google Disavow: How it Works?
Although this is the finest tool Google ever recommended, it's important to set caution while using and getting the most of its benefits. Recall your memories if you have ever gone with spam link building to push your website (s) up in SERPs. Confirm it as well whether or not you have received an advisory mail from Google about the toxic links in your websites.
Even Matt Cutts, Head of Web Spam, Google suggested in one of his recent notes that before using the tool make multiple link removal requests to the respective webmasters of the websites where your websites are linked. I too will suggest you send manual requests to the webmasters to remove your links from their sites. If they fail to do so, initiate the tool.
Following are the steps webmasters may attempt to clean your bad link profile using the Disavow tool :
- Login to your Webmaster Tools Account.
- Click on the website you want to Disavow links from
- Click on the Traffic menu item in the left-hand sidebar
- Click on the “Links to Your Site” link
- Click the Download link
To Disavow an entire domain, enter:
domain: abc.com
To Disavow specific individual links, enter the full URL of the bad link:
https://abc.com/badlink.php
The file downloaded will comprise a list of all the pages linking to your website. The file will help you to look at the links and evaluate their worth using Backlink Profiling. Once you have done this, you now have a list of undesirable/toxic URLs with you.
- Create a new text file
- Copy and paste the URL to each website you wish to disavow (one URL per line )
- Go to the Disavow Links Page in Webmaster Tools
- Select your website from the list
- Click Disavow Links
- Click the Choose file button and upload the text file.
A couple of points you need to consider here for sure. It's Google's take to decide which links they will disavow. The list you have uploaded is just suggestive for the search engine. The changes you expect may take weeks to be done after the submission of your consideration request.
Tarun Gupta, CEO of Brainpulse Technologies, is a prolific author and digital marketing specialist. His insightful writings span SEO, content marketing, social media strategy, and email campaigns, offering invaluable expertise to businesses worldwide. Tarun’s contributions continue to shape the digital marketing landscape, guiding success in multiple niches.
