Disavow Definition in SEO | Why & How to Disavow

Disavow definition in SEO means to discard harmful links pointing to your site.

If you believe your site’s ranking is being damaged by low-quality links you do not control. You can ask Google not to take them into account when assessing your site by disavowing your backlinks

Why Disavow Backlinks?

The Google Disavow Tool has one main purpose — removing harmful links from Google’s consideration. There are three reasons why you would want to do that.

Use the Disavow Tool if your site receives a manual penalty

Manual penalties are the bogeyman of the Google-dominated web world. If you receive a manual penalty, you will need to use Google Disavow. Manual penalties are the reason why Google created the Disavow Tool in the first place.

Use the Disavow Tool if your site receives an algorithmic penalty

Although not quite as horrific as the manual penalty, an algorithmic penalty can still deliver a knockout blow to any website. If you have experienced a traffic drop due to an algorithmic change, there is a good chance that toxic backlinks are to blame. The Disavow Tool will help you recover. And precisely because of this it is important to know what is Disavow in SEO.

Use the Disavow Tool to remove toxic backlinks from your site’s link profile

Toxic backlinks are links pointing to your site that has a high Spam Score.

Spam Score is an indicator that says how many low quality and dead links a website is hosting. If the Spam Score is above 2 – you should consider having Google disavow backlinks of this nature.

Avoid Google Penalty & Disavow Harmful Backlinks Now!

Disavow Backlinks NOW

What Backlinks You Should Disavow?

There are few things you should check to decide if you should disavow the backlink:

  • Backlinks from websites with high Spam Score – 17/17 is the highest, 0/17 is the lowest and safest score. Everything above 5 should be Disavowed.
  • Check for a lot of links with unrelated Anchor Texts, low Domain Authority scores, links from unrelated industries and/or in foreign languages.
  • Also, pay attention to hidden links – those are links that use anchor text as a “white” text or ”    ” a lot of spaces.

For more factors to consider read this article on how to remove bad backlinks.

To see all these metrics you can signup to Linkody and use its 1-step Disavow Tool.

How to Disavow Backlinks?

Linkody comes with a disavow tool that allows you to identify and easily select links or domains to be disavowed. However, disavowing links within Linkody does NOT automatically disavow them with Google.

To start quickly sign-up for a 30-day FREE trial.Then select a link for disavowal, click on the gear icon on the right drop down menu:

disavow definition
You can either choose “Disavow link” or “Disavow domain“.

Use the Disavow domain option if there are many links from the same domain and the domain seems spammy and harmful. In most cases we would advise to disavow the whole domain. When disavowed, an icon will appear to the right:

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Next, click on Disavow on your main Linkody dashboard. On the next screen you can see all the disavow rules you have created:2016-03-17_1354

Review your rules, then use the “EXPORT” button to download your file, and upload it to the Disavow section in Google’s Search Console:

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You can add a Comment for your own reference (Google does not read your comments) about why this website or link has been disavowed:

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You can also view all Google disavow links and/or domains from the links view:

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Fun SEO Facts 😉

There are many factors for you to consider when disavowing backlinks.

So, here are which backlinks top-SEO experts suggest to Disavow:

  1. Remove backlink if it’s not relevant to your business,
  2. Diversify anchor text and don’t over optimize them,
  3. Disavow links with high spam score,
  4. Don’t use poor quality links from directories,
  5. Stay away from dodgy sites (offensive, pornographic, etc.)

If you are not sure about the quality of your backlink profile – check your backlinks now!

I hope now you know the Disavow Definition

The disavow definition in SEO means to disqualify any incoming link to your site and let Google know the link has nothing to do with you. So, if it’s a spam link or a link that can get you penalized, will help you to make sure your site is the victim here.

So to sum-up:

  • Monitor your backlinks with Linkody,
  • Check the Spam Score and if it’s over 5 – look into other metrics,
  • If your site has a toxic backlink – use Linkody’s 1-step disavow tool.

I hope now you know the disavow definition in SEO.

Moreover, if there is anything we forgot to explain in this post or you have other SEO FAQs – let us know.

Disavow Backlinks NOW

Avoid Google Penalty & Disavow Harmful Backlinks Now!