10 steps to do if Google penalizes blog for irrelevant link building | How to disavow spammy links

For a week, Google penalized one of my blogs due to spammy links from irrelevant sites. After using the Disavow Tool, the penalty was removed in less than 24 hours.

Google Webmaster Tools: Disavow Links Feature

Here’s what to do if your blog was penalized:

1. Go to Webmaster Tools;
2. Choose the domain of the affected site;
3. Click “Traffic”;
4. Under “Who links the most” click “More”;
5. Hit “Download this table” and open the file in Excel;
6. Delete the domains of sites that you think are relevant to your blog;
7. For the remaining links, add an http:// prefix to each domain (https:// if applicable) then Save to a .txt file that contains only the links you want to disavow;
8. Now, access the Webmaster Tool Disavow Links feature;
9. Select the affected blog then hit the “Disavow Links” button;
10. Upload your .txt file, click Submit then Done.

Google noted that the Disavow Tool “is an advanced feature and should only be used with caution.”

Remember that if it’s used incorrectly, this feature “can potentially harm your site’s performance in Google’s search results.”