Finding out that your website was penalized for bad backlinks can feel like a nightmare, but recovery may be possible with the right approach. Bad backlinks typically come from spammy, irrelevant, or malicious sites and can accumulate either unintentionally or as part of a Negative SEO attack. Penalties for bad backlinks can be algorithmic (e.g., through Google algorithm flags) or manual actions issued by Google’s webspam team. The first step is to conduct a comprehensive backlink audit using tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, or SEMrush. Identify the toxic links, attempt to contact webmasters to remove them, and, if unsuccessful, use the disavow tool to tell Google to ignore those links. After cleaning up your backlink profile, submit a reconsideration request if you received a manual penalty. With persistence and proper maintenance, your website may recover and regain its rankings, but it’s usually faster and easier to simply create a new website if you’ve experienced a serious negative SEO attack.