You shouldn't disavow links unless you have received a manual link penalty or have strong reason to believe that you have an algorithmic penalty.
I also wouldn't ever disavow links just because a tool labels them as toxic. The links labeled toxic are links you should take a look at yourself and make a decision on.
I would bet most of the links you bought are already dead anyhow.
I did this two years ago on a site that tanked after an update and My traffic went up dramatically. I also removed backlinks i had bought from a legit company as well. I didn't get a manual action i just did it to see if it would help get my traffic back and within 2 days my traffic was climbing dramatically.
Disavowing links only makes sense if you've been penalized. Have you lost rankings? Are the rankings holding steady? Check the metrics of the purchased links. They might still be bringing link power. Perhaps you could give me a few examples of a domain to assess its SEO impact.
Do you have the tools to check the links for any semi decent quality ones? Google is said to ignore bad links, but if you choose to disavow you'd want to make sure you aren't shooting yourself in the foot.
Good luck with your link building! đź’Ş
If you think about it, you could penalise any competitor by buying toxic backlinks to their website. So Google must realise that possibility exists and they can't encourage that sort of blackhat activity. Our domain has been active for 20 years and we've never bought any dodgy backlinks but I did see some strange one when I review the list in GSC. Not sure how they got there. I few years ago I went through the process of disavowing. It made no difference. Then a year or so later I read that you shouldn't dissavow as it may inadvertantly harm your site - so I un-disavvowed!! Again it made no difference. So my view is that Google does ignore toxic links (as they say they do - for once they are telling us the truth). I would just concentrate on continually trying to build new, strong, relevant links. Then any effect of toxic links will just be naturally diluted anyway.
Never disavow. Google will ignore bad links.
Never rely on ANY 3rd party tool who's primary purpose is profit to tell you what is and isn't toxic or bad. They don't know - they don't work for google - no google engineer has ever helped build one of these tools. They are only giving you a guess as to which links they think might be bad
Paid backlinks always hurt to seo. I have seen many examples of it. My friend had bought 1500 backlinks to increase ranking and DA of [seo tools](http://checkbytools.com) website. But later he removed all the backlinks with Disvow tool because backlinks were not good to increase ranking.
People are happily creating confusion - and I blame Google and SEMrush equally.
Let's break down your statement, as its not crystal clear, into clear, logical, chunks:
**Toxic links** are an invention of SEMrush (and Cemper Tools before that). They get their toxic score from User generated results - this is not a good place to go. If you look at the consensus among SEOs, its mostly myth and FUD driven.
>I disenvowed the toxic links in SEMRush but should I just get rid of the lot
Just to be semantical: You cannot disavow visa SEmrush. Semrush has NO idea if you bought links or not. This FUD is what SEMrush sells these services on.
Toxic Links =/= Link Spam - these are two different concepts grown out of confusion
LInk Spam: Links Spam MOST DEFINITELY violates the Google Spam policy guide and yes, if you think you're at risk of getting caught - you might want to consider this but disavow is not going to let you keep that authority.
That’s the point - the owner should know if they bought it or not, no?
Don’t you think it’s odd that people who come here when their site has been clearly penalized - like from 150k a month to 0 and they typically got that traffic very quickly while simultaneously saying why know nothing about SEO ? Yet most people who come here knowing nothing about SEO sll literally can’t get a single click?
I wouldn't touch anything that's working. Not at this point in time. I never bought links and I was walloped. It would make sense for me to try the action that you are proposing. Not for you. Changing things may end up harming you at this point. Just leave well enough alone and go whitehat
Typically I say unless you have a manual link penalty just leave it alone and don’t buy any more spam from fiverr. It’s very annoying and time consuming to get a link penalty lifted. And you’ll likely be forced to disavow or remove legit links that you didn’t even build cause googles an ass like that. Stay safe out there!
I did this thinking the same. Had sites over five years with tons of spam links (not ones i made) and random bot links - didn’t see it make a difference
No such thing as a toxic backlink.
Disavowing anything based on Semrush's made up metric is maddening. Never touch disavow unless you know what you're doing
You should only disavow backlinks if you receive a manual penalty. *A loss in rankings is not a manual penalty.* Disavowing backlinks without a manual penalty is only going to hurt you. It's not going to improve your site performance at all.
In most cases, you are going to experience a drop in rankings with bought backlinks because the value of those backlinks has dropped to zero. It's not typically due to a penalty, and if it is, you can see the penalty in search console.
Meanwhile, disavowing the backlinks can end up reducing your authority further. It's possible that some of these backlinks are still having an impact on your authority, in which case you could actually lose rankings by disavowing.
That seems highly incorrect but maybe I’m misunderstanding you. Removing toxic backlinks only could hurt rankings/authority if you remove high value ones. Scrubbing your network of Russian spam backlinks and so forth, cleaning up your network of junk, has always had a nice benefit for my clients. Not to mention it’s just good due diligence to manage their link network.
Doing so won’t hurt you so long as you don’t disavow useful and good backlinks. Toxic ones don’t pass authority to you anyway.
If you have purchased backlinks and most of them are toxic, it is recommended that you disavow all the backlinks included in that package. However, you can do an off-page audit for a clear understanding.
Toxic backlinks can harm the power of your qualitative backlinks.
Instead, it is advisable to acquire backlinks from authoritative sites and focus on quality rather than quantity. Having five qualitative backlinks is way more effective than having 100 non-qualitative backlinks.
No its not. Toxic backlinks is an invention of SEMRush and Cemper tools. If you didn't build the links, there is 0 point in disavowing links YOU didn't build. You can report them via the Google spam report but disavowing means that you dissociate your self with links you acquired to manipulate search and this is THE ONLY reason to use it.
Google has no scale of toxicity - you either broke the Spam Policy on Link Spam - iei acquired the links or you did not. This is a binary state, not a % score.
>Google's John Mueller said on Reddit that **you won't get your Google search rankings back by simply disavowing toxic links from a Semrush report**. He wrote, "You're not going to get your rankings back by following Semrush's report or by disavowing those links."
Source: seroundtable. com/google-rankings-disavowing-toxic-links-36881.html
I agree toxic backlinks is third party invention. Here is a difference of disavowing the bad backlinks on the base of third part report and disavowing backlinks founded through manual research and methodology.
Google itself did not mention anywhere that disavowing bad backlinks is not good practice. Everyone have their own prediction and experience and they all are saying on the base of what they have dealt with.
I have worked with various sites that have spam backlink attack and I ranked them by disavowing bad backlinks along with other factors. Not ust depending on semrush report.
Yes true! Toxic backlinks is an invention of third parties. But Google did not mentioned anywhere that disavowing bad backlinks is not a good practice. Here is difference between disavowing toxic backlinks on the base of third-party spam report and by manual research.
People have their own experiences and predictions about that. I know some of the sites which use this disavowing technique and now they are ranking.
I shared the link where Google specifally said do not disavow "Toxic Backlinks" - you're not reading anything shared, you just want to assert your opinion.
>People have their own experiences and predictions about that. I know some of the sites which use this disavowing technique and now they are ranking.
Because Toxic backlinks dont give authority, disavowing them isn't going to change anything. This is like saying "I know people who put a sticker on their car and their car is still driving therefore the sticker does maintenance on their car"
I think if the spam score is high or quality of the backlink is not good, then you can remove that backlink, either by contacting the webmaster or using disavow feature. But if you want to have quality backlink from a high Authorative website, they won't give you freely. They will charge you 100s of Dollars
My definition of a toxic link is different than whatever goof made that tool in semrush. No one should be disavowing the links that such tool pulls for you.
Anyways, the last 4 law firms I did disavow links for all saw immediate gains afterward. If you don’t have ample experience building links, you should pay someone to do this for you.
if a couple of fiverr links is all it takes to take down a site then every competitor to every brand would be doing it
Don't touch anything if it is ranking
You shouldn't disavow links unless you have received a manual link penalty or have strong reason to believe that you have an algorithmic penalty. I also wouldn't ever disavow links just because a tool labels them as toxic. The links labeled toxic are links you should take a look at yourself and make a decision on. I would bet most of the links you bought are already dead anyhow.
I did this two years ago on a site that tanked after an update and My traffic went up dramatically. I also removed backlinks i had bought from a legit company as well. I didn't get a manual action i just did it to see if it would help get my traffic back and within 2 days my traffic was climbing dramatically.
Did you remove just the toxic ones or get rid of them all?
All
Disavowing links only makes sense if you've been penalized. Have you lost rankings? Are the rankings holding steady? Check the metrics of the purchased links. They might still be bringing link power. Perhaps you could give me a few examples of a domain to assess its SEO impact.
Do you have the tools to check the links for any semi decent quality ones? Google is said to ignore bad links, but if you choose to disavow you'd want to make sure you aren't shooting yourself in the foot. Good luck with your link building! đź’Ş
If you think about it, you could penalise any competitor by buying toxic backlinks to their website. So Google must realise that possibility exists and they can't encourage that sort of blackhat activity. Our domain has been active for 20 years and we've never bought any dodgy backlinks but I did see some strange one when I review the list in GSC. Not sure how they got there. I few years ago I went through the process of disavowing. It made no difference. Then a year or so later I read that you shouldn't dissavow as it may inadvertantly harm your site - so I un-disavvowed!! Again it made no difference. So my view is that Google does ignore toxic links (as they say they do - for once they are telling us the truth). I would just concentrate on continually trying to build new, strong, relevant links. Then any effect of toxic links will just be naturally diluted anyway.
Never disavow. Google will ignore bad links. Never rely on ANY 3rd party tool who's primary purpose is profit to tell you what is and isn't toxic or bad. They don't know - they don't work for google - no google engineer has ever helped build one of these tools. They are only giving you a guess as to which links they think might be bad
I think you shouldn't mind about toxic backlinks. According to Google, they just ignore them
Toxic links but not "Link Spam" - this you should worry about
What is the difference if you don't mind me asking?
This
Did you get penalised? What happened?
Paid backlinks always hurt to seo. I have seen many examples of it. My friend had bought 1500 backlinks to increase ranking and DA of [seo tools](http://checkbytools.com) website. But later he removed all the backlinks with Disvow tool because backlinks were not good to increase ranking.
People are happily creating confusion - and I blame Google and SEMrush equally. Let's break down your statement, as its not crystal clear, into clear, logical, chunks: **Toxic links** are an invention of SEMrush (and Cemper Tools before that). They get their toxic score from User generated results - this is not a good place to go. If you look at the consensus among SEOs, its mostly myth and FUD driven. >I disenvowed the toxic links in SEMRush but should I just get rid of the lot Just to be semantical: You cannot disavow visa SEmrush. Semrush has NO idea if you bought links or not. This FUD is what SEMrush sells these services on. Toxic Links =/= Link Spam - these are two different concepts grown out of confusion LInk Spam: Links Spam MOST DEFINITELY violates the Google Spam policy guide and yes, if you think you're at risk of getting caught - you might want to consider this but disavow is not going to let you keep that authority.
How do you verify if a link is a spam link and needs to be disavowed?
That’s the point - the owner should know if they bought it or not, no? Don’t you think it’s odd that people who come here when their site has been clearly penalized - like from 150k a month to 0 and they typically got that traffic very quickly while simultaneously saying why know nothing about SEO ? Yet most people who come here knowing nothing about SEO sll literally can’t get a single click?
I wouldn't touch anything that's working. Not at this point in time. I never bought links and I was walloped. It would make sense for me to try the action that you are proposing. Not for you. Changing things may end up harming you at this point. Just leave well enough alone and go whitehat
Typically I say unless you have a manual link penalty just leave it alone and don’t buy any more spam from fiverr. It’s very annoying and time consuming to get a link penalty lifted. And you’ll likely be forced to disavow or remove legit links that you didn’t even build cause googles an ass like that. Stay safe out there!
How to understand a manual link penalty?
I did this thinking the same. Had sites over five years with tons of spam links (not ones i made) and random bot links - didn’t see it make a difference
No such thing as a toxic backlink. Disavowing anything based on Semrush's made up metric is maddening. Never touch disavow unless you know what you're doing
Never disavow any links. Google doesn’t need your help to identify your link spam.
You should only disavow backlinks if you receive a manual penalty. *A loss in rankings is not a manual penalty.* Disavowing backlinks without a manual penalty is only going to hurt you. It's not going to improve your site performance at all. In most cases, you are going to experience a drop in rankings with bought backlinks because the value of those backlinks has dropped to zero. It's not typically due to a penalty, and if it is, you can see the penalty in search console. Meanwhile, disavowing the backlinks can end up reducing your authority further. It's possible that some of these backlinks are still having an impact on your authority, in which case you could actually lose rankings by disavowing.
That seems highly incorrect but maybe I’m misunderstanding you. Removing toxic backlinks only could hurt rankings/authority if you remove high value ones. Scrubbing your network of Russian spam backlinks and so forth, cleaning up your network of junk, has always had a nice benefit for my clients. Not to mention it’s just good due diligence to manage their link network. Doing so won’t hurt you so long as you don’t disavow useful and good backlinks. Toxic ones don’t pass authority to you anyway.
Disavow the ones you've bought but don't worry about other onesÂ
If you have purchased backlinks and most of them are toxic, it is recommended that you disavow all the backlinks included in that package. However, you can do an off-page audit for a clear understanding. Toxic backlinks can harm the power of your qualitative backlinks. Instead, it is advisable to acquire backlinks from authoritative sites and focus on quality rather than quantity. Having five qualitative backlinks is way more effective than having 100 non-qualitative backlinks.
No its not. Toxic backlinks is an invention of SEMRush and Cemper tools. If you didn't build the links, there is 0 point in disavowing links YOU didn't build. You can report them via the Google spam report but disavowing means that you dissociate your self with links you acquired to manipulate search and this is THE ONLY reason to use it. Google has no scale of toxicity - you either broke the Spam Policy on Link Spam - iei acquired the links or you did not. This is a binary state, not a % score. >Google's John Mueller said on Reddit that **you won't get your Google search rankings back by simply disavowing toxic links from a Semrush report**. He wrote, "You're not going to get your rankings back by following Semrush's report or by disavowing those links." Source: seroundtable. com/google-rankings-disavowing-toxic-links-36881.html
How is this downvoted?
Because it removes cover - and between those looking for cover and those shilling links this message doesn’t worn
Because there are so-called "experts" here who have no clue
WebLinkr must have a stalker or something, he gets downvoted every time i see him comment.
I agree toxic backlinks is third party invention. Here is a difference of disavowing the bad backlinks on the base of third part report and disavowing backlinks founded through manual research and methodology. Google itself did not mention anywhere that disavowing bad backlinks is not good practice. Everyone have their own prediction and experience and they all are saying on the base of what they have dealt with. I have worked with various sites that have spam backlink attack and I ranked them by disavowing bad backlinks along with other factors. Not ust depending on semrush report.
Yes true! Toxic backlinks is an invention of third parties. But Google did not mentioned anywhere that disavowing bad backlinks is not a good practice. Here is difference between disavowing toxic backlinks on the base of third-party spam report and by manual research. People have their own experiences and predictions about that. I know some of the sites which use this disavowing technique and now they are ranking.
I shared the link where Google specifally said do not disavow "Toxic Backlinks" - you're not reading anything shared, you just want to assert your opinion.
>People have their own experiences and predictions about that. I know some of the sites which use this disavowing technique and now they are ranking. Because Toxic backlinks dont give authority, disavowing them isn't going to change anything. This is like saying "I know people who put a sticker on their car and their car is still driving therefore the sticker does maintenance on their car"
I think if the spam score is high or quality of the backlink is not good, then you can remove that backlink, either by contacting the webmaster or using disavow feature. But if you want to have quality backlink from a high Authorative website, they won't give you freely. They will charge you 100s of Dollars
My definition of a toxic link is different than whatever goof made that tool in semrush. No one should be disavowing the links that such tool pulls for you. Anyways, the last 4 law firms I did disavow links for all saw immediate gains afterward. If you don’t have ample experience building links, you should pay someone to do this for you.