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Not all links are good for your SEO. But how do you make sure all of your links will make a good impact on your website’s ranking? By mastering Google’s Disavow Tool, you can now start disavowing links that no longer give much value to your page. Another thing that can help your clear bad links is a citation and audit cleanup services.
But first, what is hype about the Disavow Tool all about? What is a citation audit and cleanup? And how do you recognize good from bad links? This guide will tell you how.
Google’s Disavow Link Tool helps you to clean up your site’s backlink. If you ever find links that are low in quality that you have no control over, you can enter the URL on Google’s Disavow Link Tool to disavow such domains via GSC or Google Search Console. This, in turn, tells the search engine giant that you wish for them to ignore that particular backlink. It is a good option next to a citation audit and cleanup.
Citation Audit And Cleanup
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Everyone knows that a solid backlink strategy is essential if you want to make the most out of your link building. However, there are times when you’ll face challenges that can jeopardize your success, such as link penalties. This is why a Citation Audit And Cleanup needs to be an essential part of your SEO.
What Is A Citation Audit And Cleanup?
Citation cleanup is a process that aims to improve your local citations by ensuring consistent and accurate business listings over the internet. A citation cleanup service involves checking of all your links and pages, making sure no essential sources are left ignored.
Why You Constantly Need Citation Audit And Cleanup Services?
Contrary to popular belief, local citation building is not as easy as pie. Why? The reason is that there are times when some of your links are doing more harm than good when it comes to your SEO. If you’ve made some changes to your business, such as a change in address or contact numbers, then it would be a lot easier for you to hire citation building service.
With link penalties still a possibility, you would want to minimize the risk of putting your website under Google penalties. A local citation audit and a citation cleanup service will ensure that your link profiles will stay clean and accurate.
How To Check If A Link Is Good Or Bad For Your Ranking?
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Before you can determine which link is good or bad, one must know the characteristics of both links.
Characteristics of Good Links
- Good links come from sites relevant to your page, and they fit into the context of your domain.
- They come from highly-authoritative websites such as major legal publications, CNN, Huffington Post, and the New York Times.
- They have natural and a variety of anchor texts without using money words that much.
- The link flows naturally and serves as an elaborate way to add more information on a particular topic.
Characteristics of Bad Links
- Bad links come from spammy websites.
- They come from domains that are generally irrelevant to your site.
- They use the same keyword you’re targeting for their anchor texts.
- The link is disruptive and irrelevant to the topic.
Good Read: The 7 Characteristics That Can Make A Link “Bad” For SEO
What Types Of Links Are Considered Bad Links?
The following are common sources of bad links.
Private Blogging Networks
PBNs still exists these days despite Google’s attempt to de-index Private Blogging Networks way back 2014. While this may be a black hat strategy to build links for boosting a website’s rank, many mix PBNs with different tactics to turn it into a gray hat strategy. This way, the links look authentic, thus minimizing the risk of getting a link penalty. The PBN links you’d want to disavow are those that use the exact match anchor texts from low-quality domains.
Paid Links
These links are dofollow and non-editorial links that also use the exact match anchor texts your site is targetting. The links are from domains that are in no way related to your main site. The main giveaway is when the contents that have obvious clues such as those marked with “sponsored post.”
Comment and Forum Spam
Google encourages blog and website owners to comment on relevant and highly-authoritative sites and forums. By commenting on related sites and leaving links leading to your domain, you can increase organic traffic and make conversions. However, if you spam on different forums with your link being irrelevant to the post, you’re already leaving bad link.
Low-Quality Directories
You may find directories to be an excellent way to market your goods and services. However, not many can expect referral traffic from business listings. Not only is this not a good way to boost your rankings, but such links also won’t help you grow your domain’s authority either.
Hacked Domains
Hacking is illegal, and all backlinks from hacked websites, you can consider them as bad links. Not only will you get a link penalty, but you can face bigger troubles for participating in site hacking.
Press Release
This became a huge thing years ago. You write a press release with your anchor text, links, and the works, then you syndicate the content and release it to many distribution sites. But since press release links are easy to manipulate, Google now considers them as bad links. This is especially true if you over-optimize your anchor texts that target your main keywords, so make sure to avoid such practice.
Blog Spam
With almost every business website owning a blog nowadays, you can easily spot spammy comments containing links to their website. The thing is, if you leave link comments on an irrelevant page, you’re already adding a bad backlink to your domain.
Recommended Read: BLOG COMMENT SPAM CAN BE REALLY VERY HARMFUL FOR YOUR BLOG! HERE’S HOW
Conclusion
The Disavow Link Tool is a helpful tool to eliminate unwanted backlinks from your website. While there are good links that can help you rank higher, there are those that can hurt your SEO. By determining which links are good and bad, you can tell Google which links to crawl to give your site a better chance of achieving a good rank in search engines.
Alex Lopez is an SEO Content Strategist who believes that the creation of powerful, compelling, and engaging web contents is one of the best ways to achieve your digital marketing goals. Her passion for writing is what led her to write full time. Currently, she helps business owners reach their digital marketing’s full potential with her high-quality content creation. When not working, she’s busy creating content for her blog and makes sure to keep her listings up-to-date through regular Citation Audit. If not, she’s either cooking or traveling with her laptop in tow.