Do’s and Don’ts of using Google’s Disavow Links Tool

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Disavow Links Tool

If you are looking to clean up a bad link profile you want to ensure that your reconsideration request is successful first time round. But what if you are not sure where to start when it comes to using Google’s disavow links tool?

Fear not. Below we discuss the do’s and don’ts of using Google’s disavow links tool and tips to increase odds that the disavow and reconsideration request process will work in your favour:

 

DO make sure that you upload you disavow links file in the correct format as a .txt file.

DON’T upload your disavow links file as an excel spreadsheet or .doc file as this will cause the system to throw your file out, meaning your reconsideration request won’t go through successfully.

 

DO use the ‘Domain:’ command to list sites that you have a lot of bad links from, for example a spammy forum.

DON’T try to identify and list multiple URLs from the same domain, as you could be missing out on a lot more links.

 

DO make sure that you use the ‘Domain:’ command correctly by following with the domain name, e.g. Domain: linkrisk.com

DON’T follow the ‘Domain:’ command with ‘http://’ or ‘www.’ – this is the wrong format and may be rejected.

 

DO make sure that you describe what is going on in the reconsideration request report and not the disavow links text file; keeping both documents separate.

DON’T put context in the disavow links text file that you upload – this really isn’t the place for it. If you do it is likely to be thrown out as a bad file, causing the re-consideration request not to go through.

 

DO be pro-active and show Google evidence that you have been cleaning up your link profile by removing bad links on the web, this will bode well in your favour.

DON’T just sit back and think that by just submitting all of your bad links to the disavow tool that all of your website problems will be solved.

 

In his video on the most common mistakes people make when using the disavow links tool (below), Matt Cutts says:

“If you have been doing some bad SEO and you are trying to cure it, in an ideal world you would actually clean up as many bad links as you can off the actual web. That is just a really  helpful way for us to see, when you are doing a reconsideration request, that you are putting in the effort to try to make sure that things have been corrected and cleaned up and are not going to happen again.”

 

 

So, in order to increase your chances of using the disavow tool correctly and submitting a successful reconsideration request, you firstly need to root out the cause of the problem, take action to clean up your link profile and provide evidence of this to Google.

That is where Link Risk comes in. We can pro-actively help to clean up your link profile by identifying and locating ‘bad’ and problematic links that are harming your website.

For more information on our packages and which plan is best for you, please contact us today or visit our packages page here.