Too much of anything is a bad thing – and that includes link building. When a website has too many spammy links to it (meaning links from low quality or irrelevant domains), Google views this as an unnatural practice and can punish these sites with a search engine penalty. Link cleansing – the process of removing or disavowing these links – is one way to recover from such a penalty.
In today’s Top Tip Tuesday video, Richa gives an example of unnatural link building and how we resolved the problem via link cleansing.
When do you need link cleansing?
Link cleansing is generally only required if your website has received a Google penalty. You will notice if your website has been penalised by Google since you will likely see a massive drop in organic traffic and rankings, and will also receive a notification in Google Search Console.
Once you identify that your website has been penalised, it is best to reach out to an SEO specialist agency to engage in the link cleansing process. Link cleansing can be complicated since it involves identifying the problematic links, reaching out to the webmasters to ask to have those links removed and (as a last resort) reaching out to Google to submit a link disavowal request.
It can be a costly and time-consuming process, but it is often the only way to recover from a search engine penalty. Link cleansing should not be necessary if you work with an ethical SEO company that builds links in accordance with best practices.
Here are Pure SEO, we are proud that we have never had a Google penalty slapped on any of our clients. However, if you have previously worked with an SEO company that built spammy links to your site and now you need them removed, we can help. Learn more about our link cleansing services.