Hiya Jolly1,
First of all dont panic! ;-) You can indeed solve this... Here is my best advice:
1) Do not rush to use G's disavow tool... Its a strange thing that this exists - but once you begin disavowing links your site will be on the radar and future link building
will be much more sensitive to G's algo...
The disavow tool is almost admitting to the fact that you have been gaming the serps - hence its sensitivity to future actions... ONLY USE THIS AS A LAST RESORT!!! and as last resorts that will be strong evidence of when your rankings fall dramatically.... and permanently....
2) Check if the links are DOFOLLOW or NOFOLLOW... If they are NOFOLLOW then ignore it... In fact the disavow tool basically turns dofollow links to nofollow links... So for sure DO NOT disavow NOFOLLOW links! Just ignore it and consider yourself lucky.... and move on...
3) First see if you can remove the original submission... I don't know what you used... but see if you can log into that piece of cr** and see if you can remove it... If that dont work ask the website admin to remove it - but I'm guessing chances are that's not going to happen...
4) Next step is if the links go to sub pages (not home page) - then I would think of moving the pages/posts to a new URL within same domain, use canonization tag on original to transfer link juice... and 301 it out outside of your domain or 404 it.... Only do this if its a relatively new page/post...
5) Use your htaccess file to block incoming traffic from the domains which are providing these dodgy backlinks... This one is probably your best bet... Chances are spammy sites as such as these will not provide any traffic... so when G's crawlers come along they will see the spam site and follow the link - and if that link leads to a page block on your site then I think you have a chance of not getting penalized as I am sure G's algo is smart to realize.... Use the following in your htaccess:
Code:
# BEGIN REMOVE BAD LINKING SITES
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://.*baddomain\.com [NC,OR]
# END BAD LINKING SITES
Note: noting baddomain and .com (or other related TLD's) is specific to the ones you want to block...
6) Wait a few weeks.... and hopefully you are okay.. I dont know when the next penguin refresh is - but I would wait it out.... If you get hit after a penguin refresh then disavow, but hopefully the above will mitigate/prevent that happening... My tests to date with step 4/5 has worked - but its experimental stuff on my part as I indeed mess around with tools such as GSA and smash the sh** out of G on some side projects and see if I get hit with a penalty and then see if I can fix it before future algo refreshes ;-)
Saying that G's crawlers always follow through on links and when its blocked by htaccess I am sure it will solve the problem without resorting to the disavow tool...
Worst case like I mentioned - keep a log of all of the urls and then proceed to disavow... but only do that if you can see an obvious decline in rankings! As mentioned only use the disavow tool as a last resort and if you do - then slow or stop your link building as the algo for sure becomes much, much more sensitive and you'll feel the pain even more further down the road....
I hope that helps! Best of Luck,
Sid
hmy:
