Author: Franz Malten Buemann

Hey Marketers I have a link-sharing tool https://hy.page/ that is similar to Linktree. This tool is ideal for influencers that want to make the most of the single link you get on platforms like Instagram and TikTok (Link in bio). Please have a look and let me know what you think. I really appreciate your help. Cheers!
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This article is part of a larger series that focuses on diversity and equity in marketing. As a company, we are committed to identifying actions we can take in the fight against racism and injustice, and elevating BBIPOC voices is paramount to inspiring change. Follow along and read other posts in this series here.

This post is authored by Gabrielle Lawrence (she/they), Writer, Editor, & Designer. 
Perhaps abuse is a strong word. The poet in me is overly conscious of that choice. I’m also fighting against my conditioning here. I know from lived experience, history, the media, education, and so on, that a facet of white fragility is it’s sensitivity and aversion to the language of violence—especially when it is responsible for said violence. It reminds me of gaslighting.
However, language is power and it gives us space to demand accountability. Abuse does refer to the mistreatment of another living being, and we know that violence is not only or always physical. This argument, that employers abuse minorities in white spaces, is geared toward companies without an evolving Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion core, or companies that practice performative inclusivity. 
This can manifest as:

Going through the inception and growth of a business without so much as developing a mission or acknowledgment of diversity, equity, or inclusion, let alone structures that back up the mission. 
Companies that say they “value” DEI but don’t have cultures or employees that reflect those values.
“Doing diversity” in a performative way that is patchy, only in reaction to complaints to quell unrest, not rooted in research or calls to action, not created by or in collaboration with the populations it serves, or is a “value” on the surface but always internally backlogged, never implemented. 

How white spaces lead to burnout and resentment 
Having to “fit” into a culture that doesn’t take your experience into account creates the perfect conditions for burnout and resentment. In response to these arguments, I often hear people rebuttal:

 “It’s just a job” 
“That’s the way it always is”
 “Your place of work is not your identity or political home” 
“Sometimes you just have to show up and be quiet”
And even, “Just let it go. HR is not your friend.” 

 
Sometimes it feels like they’re right; maybe I should resolve to keep my head down and my mouth shut when I experience bias and oppression at my job. I should accept and actively engage in double consciousness as I navigate predominately white workplaces. 
Maybe I should allow my self-image, mental health, growth opportunities, and happiness to suffer—for a paycheck—from people who, upon hearing of my sudden death or departure, wouldn’t even blink before trying to fill my vacancy. 
The effects of white spaces don’t begin on day one
Furthermore, consider every part of the process: having access to the “right” education and communities, the job search itself, the hoops of the recruiting process, salary negotiation, the onboarding and socialization process, and the list goes on. 
The workplace isn’t a walk in the park for anyone, especially during major transitions and crises like the pandemic, but I find it harder to stay docile when I realize that my fellow white employees have the luxury of a completely different experience. Especially those without intersecting identities. 
For white colleagues, going to work does not mean confronting the same roadblocks, mental stressors, or disrespect. At minimum, the culture of the environment and the market are most often catered to their experiences. This also makes it easier for white colleagues who notice and acknowledge these inequities to stay complicit because they are not as severely impacted. 
Consider the harmful ways these disparities can manifest for minorities on the job:

Being pressured to create or be the representation where there is none. (Though this evolves the organization and strengthens the company’s relevance, these employees may not be compensated for their additional work.)
Finding themselves educating their employees or managing others’ feelings and projections, especially when workplace sensitivity training is often insufficient. 
A white coworker can show up without being the butt of microaggressions or the token, can feel that they have ownership and belonging in the space, may not feel taxed with over-performing for the same respect as their coworkers, and a host of other interpersonal inequities. However, minorities are expected to live with this day to day which can have long-term and negative effects on a person’s health. 
Advocating or boundary setting can often make employees feel alienated, unsupported, or targeted when white environments are hostile (covertly or subtly) to underrepresented minorities.

Wrap up
If a job description were to be tailored to a person of color truthfully, it would look quite different. Responsibilities would include things like experience collaborating with people who aren’t conscious of their privilege or prejudice, must be extremely familiar with white culture and have a similarly crafted personality, must be comfortable sharing insight into your culture when it suits us best or makes us money, have a willingness to work harder to combat our prejudice and earn our respect, etc. 
Of course, these could look differently at every job depending on the nature of the work, styles of communication, and structure of the company. Nevertheless, the disproportionate asks of employees whose identities are at the intersection of BIPOC, LGBTQ, and disabled communities is shameful, especially considering the impact of the pandemic outside of work on these populations. 
This should not be normal or sufficient. In the wake of everything we’ve seen the past four years, we should also be taking radical action towards building safer workspaces. Not just because companies know sustainable DEI has a positive impact on profit, but because we matter. 

Gabrielle Lawrence (she/they) is a freelance writer, editor, and designer from Southern California. They are well-rounded with experiences in marketing, software development, publishing, higher education, and more. She is a contributing editor for The Tenth Magazine and Harpoon Books. Their poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net and Best New Poets. They are an interview correspondent for TERSE. Journal and they had the honor of being the former EIC of Linden Avenue Literary Journal. Gabrielle loves music and yoga. Learn more about their work and services at gabrielle-l.com.

Visit this page to see more in the series, or check back in a week for our next guest post. 
CM Group is a family of global marketing technology brands including Campaign Monitor, CM Commerce, Delivra, Emma, Liveclicker, Sailthru and Vuture. By joining together these leading brands, CM Group offers a variety of world-class solutions that can be used by marketers at any level. Headquartered in Nashville, TN, CM Group has United States offices in Indianapolis, Los Angeles, New York City, Pittsburgh and San Francisco, and global offices in Australia, London, New Zealand and Uruguay.
The post How Employers Abuse Minorities in White Spaces appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

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If you’re confused about when, why, and how to disavow links — you aren’t alone.
We all know that backlinks are critical to your SEO success, but the quality of those backlinks can make all the difference in that success.
This post will help you understand when and how to submit a Google disavow file, which is important for protecting your domain.
Let’s dive in — but first, what is the disavow tool?

What is the disavow tool?
The disavow tool gives you the opportunity to ask Google to ignore low-quality backlinks to your website.
When you submit a disavow file to Google, you are asking them to ignore certain links that are pointing to your domain. There is no obligation for them to respect your request, but if they do, those links won’t be used in determining your ranking in search results.
It’s important to understand, however, that disavowing backlinks doesn’t remove them from your backlink profile.
Do you actually need to use the disavow tool?
Google has made it clear that they only want you to use the disavow tool if you need to.
They recommend using it if you have a manual spam penalty, or if you knowingly took part in link-building practices that might be harming you.
In 2019, Google Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller talked about the disavow tool during Google Webmaster Central office hours.
He says, “I think for most websites out there, pretty much the really largest majority of websites, you don’t need to use the disavow tool. That’s why we have the disavow tool so separate from search console so that you don’t get tempted to using the disavow tool because it looks like this normal part of search console that everyone should be using.”

Mueller says, “[The disavow tool] is really something that you only really need to use in really extreme cases.”

To decide if you might benefit from filing a disavow, you’ll need to analyze your backlink profile, which you can learn more about below. But if you knowingly participated in what would be considered unethical backlink practices, chances are a disavow would be helpful.
What is considered a ‘bad’ backlink?
Before we tell you how to do a disavow, it’s important to understand what makes a backlink a bad one.
Google considers any link created to manipulate PageRank or a website’s ranking to be a bad link. They want you to work on creating great content that gets linked to naturally!
If you’ve purposely taken part in any kind of link-building campaign, then chances are you might have bad backlinks.
This could include:

Purchased backlinks
Link schemes
Product for backlinks
Link exchanges
Footer links

You might look at your backlinks in various tools and see lots of spammy-looking backlinks and think you need to get rid of them — but you don’t need to worry about those.
Google will understand spammy links to some extent and ignore them.
As an example, here are some backlinks from a website pulled from Ahrefs. These are all spam, and none of them have DR ratings:

I wouldn’t bother disavowing these since these are probably backlinks that a lot of websites have, and Google is smart enough to know we didn’t create them to manipulate our backlink profile.
When should you create a disavow file?
Google has stated that most websites will not need to disavow links, and only in certain circumstances should it be used.
Below are some examples of when a disavow might be recommended or needed.
1. Manual Action: Unnatural Links To Your Site
This is the one occasion where you will absolutely want to file a disavow. If your website has been hit with a manual penalty due to link building practices, then disavowing links is a must to have that penalty removed.
If your website is connected with Search Console — and it should be — you will be notified if there is a manual action on your website.
At this point, you would begin analyzing the backlinks you have in Search Console and trying to find the links that may be seen as violating Google’s guidelines.
If you find offending backlinks, the first step would be to contact the website owner where the backlink is and ask them to remove it. If that doesn’t work, then you can try using a disavow file.
Once you have removed or disavowed the links, you can select the “Request Review” button in your Manual actions report to ask them to remove the action.  

2. Link Schemes
If you knowingly participated in link schemes, then you may benefit from adding them to your disavow file. These are links you – or someone you may have hired – paid for. These may be private blog network (PBN) links or even guest posts on websites of no relevance to your niche.
3. Directories
A long time ago, adding profiles to every directory that existed with a link to your website with your “money keyword” as the anchor text was all the rage. Maybe you are guilty of this, or the SEO you hired is – but these are backlinks that should be removed. If you can manually remove them that would be best, but adding them to the disavow is recommended if you cannot remove the link.
4. Comments
Another old tactic was to spam comments on other blogs and add keyword rich anchor text in the comments box or even for the name field.
If you have any backlinks from comments, directories or editorial links with anchor text like “buy red widgets” or “best tennis shoes” it would be recommended to add them to your disavow file if you cannot get the link removed or changed. Normally for these types of links it would be expected to be your first name or brand name.
Finding all of Your Backlinks
To create the most accurate analysis, you will need to retrieve as much backlink data as you can and understand how to analyze that data.
You can use a variety of tools to review your backlinks, and you can choose to download them all to a spreadsheet to manually review them or do an analysis right from within the tool.
Here are a few options of tools to use for finding backlinks:
1. Google Search Console.
In Google Search Console you can go to the links area and click the export external links button and then the more sample links option to get a full list of the backlinks to your website.
2. Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz, or your preferred tool.
Export your list of backlinks and merge it with your Google Search Console file or analyze your data in the software.
3. A Link Audit Tool.
There are a few tools that can really minimize your time in auditing your backlinks like LinkResearchTools.
Semrush also has a backlink audit tool that shows all of your backlinks and gives them a toxicity score based on a variety of factors. You can work right from your dashboard to assess the links and determine if they truly are toxic or not.
If they are, you can then add them to a disavow right from the tool. When you are done reviewing them all you can then download the formatted disavow .txt file and submit it to the tool.
While this is a useful tool, it does not have all of your backlinks in its database! You should still do a manual review using other tools as well.

Creating A Disavow File
Once you are done assessing your links you can create the disavow.txt file that will be uploaded to Google Search Console.
Creating A Disavow.txt File
Below are some guidelines from Google on how to create your file.

The file name must end in .txt
File size can be no larger than 2MB and 100,000 lines
Each URL should be on its own line
If you want to disavow a whole domain you should start the line with domain: 
If you want to disavow a URL you can just enter the URL

Below is a sample portion of a disavow file that I recently created as an example.
By adding a # before text you can add comments, these lines will be ignored by Google.

If you would like to test your disavow file before uploading it you can use the Disavow File Testing Tool which was created by Fili Wiese, a former Google Engineer.
Uploading a Disavow File
Once you have completed your disavow file it can be uploaded to the Disavow Tool in Google Search Console.
Below are a few easy steps to uploading your disavow.

Login to Google Search Console
Go to https://search.google.com/search-console/disavow-links

Select the property you would like to add a disavow file to
Click the upload disavow list button and find your .txt file to add

If you had uploaded a previous disavow.txt file, your new one will override that one. If your file has any issues, you will see error messages and be prompted to upload a corrected version.
While there is no guarantee that submitting a disavow file will help, there have been reports of success when using it.
It will take some time for Google to process the information you uploaded, so you will have to have a bit of patience.
There is no way to really know if the disavow.txt file is doing what you want it to do, but keeping an eye on your rank, organic traffic and impressions could be a good indicator.