With the recent hype about “negative seo” Google sort of admitted (read;didn’t deny) that bad links pointing to your site CAN have a negative effect on how well you’re ranking. The biggest problem in the industry is now competitors building nasty spam links to other sites in their niche, hoping Google will penalise them. Any kid with an xrumer or scrapebox license can cause a lot of headaches for online businesses.

Google has since offered a “solution” with their link disavow tool. Basically all you need to do is figure out which bad links might cause a problem for your site’s ranking and add them to a txt file which you submit to Google. They take the information you submit as a strong suggestion and not a directive.

Here’s the format Google suggests we use:

 

Here are five ways to find as many links pointing to your domain:

1. Google Webmaster Tools is the best place to start looking. Once you’re signed in (and verified your domain) you click on Traffic and then the Links to your site section. From here you can download a CSV file with all the links Google is willing to show you.
2. Majestic SEO is probably the next big tool for you to find those bad links. Not free but well worth it. I recommend that you create a report with the Historic Index option. That way you’ll be able to get the bigger picture. Even if certain links are already gone, its a good precaution to add repeat offenders to the naughty list.
3. Open Site Explorer can help you find links that might have been overlooked by the previous two tools. Remember, you want to make sure you get as many data sets as you can in order to eliminate the largest number of spam links.
4. Google can also assist. Simply copy and paste certain sentences from your homepage into Google like so:”this is text from my homepage. It should be unique, so any results popping up in Google which aren’t my domain are probably scraper sites“. It’s safe to assume that whatever site has identical copy has been scraping your site and linking back to it.
5. Bing Webmaster Toolbox is very similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once you’re logged in and added your site, go to the Reports & Data section and click on Inbound Links. Here you will find every link Bing is willing to share with you. I suggest you export the ones pointing to your root domain.

Once you’ve compiled all the inbound links into once spreadsheet, filter out the ones that you feel are spam or simply don’t want associated with your site and add them to the txt file. Once again, Google will review the links that you submit and treat it as a strong suggestion to disavow, not as a directive.

Eventually this tool should help Google identify bad links and clean up a large part of it. Remember, you’re not the only one submitting spam and certain sites will get flagged a lot so they’ll most likely get disavowed for every site they’re linking to, saving the next webmaster from having to go through all this again.

Some additional reading about the Google disavow tool:

• The Disavow Tool Works! Real Sites, Real Recoveries!
• Will the Google Disavow Tool Hurt More Businesses Than It Will Help?
• Google Link Disavow Tool: The Complete Guide
• Will Google’s Link Disavow Tool Come Back To Haunt Webmasters?