Toxic Backlinks | James Dooley SEO Podcast

Kasra Dash and James Dooley push back on the idea that disavow files no longer matter, explaining that backlink toxicity still affects trust, rankings, and algorithmic risk thresholds. They outline how damaging links are often acquired passively through scraping, hacked domains, newsjacking, and large-scale aggregator spam, which can quietly inflate a backlink profile’s toxicity and suppress performance over time. Rather than waiting for a full ranking collapse, they emphasise that proactive disavows help protect large and established sites by pruning risks early and preventing partial penalties from escalating. They also stress the importance of using multiple tools when assessing link risk, noting that no single platform provides complete coverage. Kasra Dash and James Dooley argue that Ahrefs, Semrush, and Majestic can each miss links that tools like LRT surface, making combined analysis essential for accurate decisions. By focusing on removing only the most harmful links, rather than over-disavowing, they explain how sites regain “ranking headroom,” allowing new authority signals to take effect more efficiently and restore upward momentum.

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Host

James Dooley

James Dooley is a UK entrepreneur.

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James Dooley is a Manchester-based entrepreneur, investor, and SEO strategist. James Dooley founded FatRank and PromoSEO, two UK performance marketing agencies that deliver no-win-no-fee lead generation and digital growth systems for ambitious businesses. James Dooley positions himself as an Investorpreneur who invests in UK companies with high growth potential because he believes lead generation is the root of all business success.

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Kasra Dash:
So I am joined with James.
How you doing.

James Dooley:
Yeah not bad mate. Are you good.

Kasra Dash:
Good good.
So I was in SEO Estonia last week.
I will not mention who but somebody went on stage and said that disavows do not work.
Okay so let us have a rant shall we.

James Dooley:
First and foremost whoever that was.
When was the last time you tested it.
If you want to share some data I will happily share some data back.
If you are not willing to share the data I am not going to share mine.
I have a lot of data showing there is such a thing as toxic backlinks and disavows do work.
A massive caveat.
Not all websites need a disavow.
There is a toxicity threshold each site can handle.
Google neutralises and ignores a lot of links to a certain degree.
Understand that caveat.
To a certain degree.
People also say when was the last time you heard anyone get an unnatural links penalty.
If anyone wants to reach out drop me an email or comment.
I will show several examples.
I can show you examples from the same week you watch this video.
Unnatural links penalties get issued pretty much every single week.
They only slowed down around covid.
We handle a lot of reconsideration requests for people who get unnatural link penalties.
Let’s take a step back.
Question.
Would you only do a disavow if you have been hit by a manual action links penalty.

Kasra Dash:
Definitely not.
You would be consistently looking at it.
I would do what we call a proactive disavow.
But I would only do a proactive disavow if you are a big site with a lot of referring domains.
If you have 100 referring domains then no.
A proactive disavow is not needed.
It is overkill.
If you are a big site in certain industries like money, life, health, finance, gambling, CBD.
Those niches get negative SEO attacks.
Any site with a lot of traffic and ranking keywords gets spammy links.
Image aggregator spam hits sites that rank.
Small sites that do not rank do not get those links.
Some image aggregator links get ignored by Google but many do not.
Removing these can pull you back under a toxicity threshold.
A proactive disavow is only a problem until it becomes a problem and then it is too late.
If your car makes noises you take it for a service.
You do not wait for it to break down.
Waiting for a penalty is waiting for the engine to blow.
A regular service prevents disaster.
Same with backlinks.

James Dooley:
If you proactively keep your backlink profile safe it costs far less than waiting for a manual action.
E-commerce stores get lots of image aggregator links because of unique images.
Aggregators scrape product images and link back.
They also push the images across other sites.
Digital PR also gets scraped into newsjacking websites.
They copy your story from The Sun and paste it onto a spam domain with your link still in it.
Some of the worst links come from this.
Those scraper sites are not maintained.
They get hacked.
They get malware.
That malware triggers toxicity flags.
Even if the original digital PR was clean.
Daily Mail, The Sun and big sites get scraped constantly.
Some scrapers are even Google News approved which fools people.
A DR60 news scraper can still be toxic.

Kasra Dash:
Another thing.
You might buy a great guest post.
Say a DR50 with UR30.
Strong page.
Strong domain.
Relevant link.
But if that site does not update plugins and gets hacked the hackers sell links.
They sell to gambling, porn and CBD.
Now that site becomes a bad neighbourhood.
Your once clean link becomes dirty.
It is like being catfished.
The picture looks good but the reality is not.
You need a recent picture.
You need a recent link analysis.
Some guest posts become PBNS because they realise they can make more money selling links to bad niches.
So what was once good becomes toxic.
You must service your profile like you service your car.
You spend money on content and topical authority and digital PR but ignore your technical health and toxic links.
You waste money.

James Dooley:
Some sites sit in a partial penalty with no message in Search Console.
Thirty percent suppressed.
They wonder why their content is better but they sit at position five.
You will never get position one with that backlink profile.
Clean it up.

Kasra Dash:
We have had clients on a positive ranking state jump thirty percent after a disavow.
Even when the curve looks positive.
They could still be minus twenty percent because of toxicity.
So let us do a quick one.
Would you judge links by AHREFS DR.

James Dooley:
No.
If you want a six pack you do not only use a treadmill.
You need weights and cardio.
Same with disavows.
You need all tools.
If someone says they used only AHREFS spam score or toxicity that is laughable.
Spam score in Semrush in isolation is terrible.
Link Research Tools is great for toxicity.
Majestic has trust flow which is hard to game.
Predicted traffic from AHREFS and Semrush helps.
You need the full data suite.
A scientist will always say more data gives better decisions.
I want it all.
Then I load it into my link simulation tool.
I sort by most toxic.
I check power, trust, traffic.
I remove the ones doing nothing.
I do not disavow every toxic link.
Some toxic links still pass power and relevance.
I only remove the worst.
Anchor text matters too.
If people hire the wrong PR company and get exact match anchors across 350 domains it tanks pages.
We fix that.
Anchor diversification is important.
Velocity is important.
Servicing is important.
Removing crap links is important.
People are obsessed with new links and ignore cleaning the old.

Kasra Dash:
I have just pulled up FatRank.com.
AHREFS shows 520 thousand backlinks.
Semrush shows 834 thousand.
Link Research Tools shows one million.
That shows the gap.
AHREFS and Semrush were not built for disavows.
LRT crawls hacked sites and aggregators.
It catches the bad links the others skip.

James Dooley:
If I had one tool I would pick LRT.
But I still want Majestic trust flow and predicted traffic signals.
The more data the better.
Upward traffic can signal a domain is not as toxic as it looks.
Downward traffic plus toxicity means remove it.
This gives a clear view.
Anything else you want to add.

Kasra Dash:
I think that covers it.
It is a good debate.
But most people arguing have not done enough disavows to understand them.
It is like saying links do not work because you only built GSA links.
Correlation does not mean causation.
If your site is full of AI content, no topical authority and garbage links you are not going to see jumps from a disavow.
But I have never done a disavow that made a site tank.
Removing crap lowers toxicity and increases your delta.
You can then build more links safely.
Unnatural link penalties happen daily.
More link building than ever.
More hacked guest posts than ever.
More spam than ever.
People fall into partial penalties without even knowing.
Proactively protecting your profile prevents disaster.

If you are acquiring new links then proactively review your backlink profile.
Do it yourself or use a service.
I am biased because I own BeLinkDoctor but I bought it because I knew how important disavows are.
We acquire sites in partial penalties.
The first two things we do are content pruning and disavows.
They work.
Do it yourself or check out BeLinkDoctor.com.