SEOs are undoubtedly wary of bad inbound links, following the Penguin 2.0 release. With 2.3 percent of English domains impacted by the spam-fighting technology, two or three questionable links are now cause for concern. That doesn’t mean sites are without tools to protect themselves from offending links, Google’s Search Engineer Matt Cutts said in the latest Webmaster Help Channel video.
In response to a question from a webmaster who is concerned about links coming from two questionable sites, Cutts says that brands’ backlink profiles will be safe from SEO punishment if they follow two steps.
The first is to send a request to site managers from the offending domains, requesting to have the links removed. If there is no response after the initial message, webmasters must take action on their own and use the disavow tool.
Of course, Google has explicitly stated there are ways to inapproriately use the disavow tool. Brafton covered a list detailing five common mistakes webmasters make with the technology, which disassociates sites from bad backlinks. Some widespread misuses include submitting incorrect files, writing the wrong syntax in submissions and asking for reconsideration before SEOs have cleaned up issues on-site first.
This latest update resonates with another recent message: Cutts said marketers should stop worrying so much about their backlink profiles. By taking these simple steps, it’s easy for sites to break free of offending links and they should have nothing to worry about.
