Should I use the Google disavow tool?

[hotchilidamo]

Hi

I'm a bit new to SEO and am looking for some guidance.

Although there is no indication in Webmaster tools that my site is being penalised for bad links, I have noticed that I have over 200 spam links for "Pay Day Loans" pointing to my site.  (This was due to a hack on my site several years ago).

So my question is two fold. Firstly, is it normal to have spammy links pointing to your site and secondly, should I bother to do anything about it? I did some research into the Disavow tool in Webmaster tools wonder I should use it to block all these links.

Thanks

[hectormainar]

If your website is not related to Pay Day Loans, you should do something:

First, visit the origin of those links. Are they automated comments on blogs, with strange messages not related to the post or your website? By the anchor of your links, I would bet you have that profile of incoming links. If it is the case, you should definitely do something with those links. Otherwise, if you discover they are interesting content, in context links and something really worthy, you can let it be.

If you detect this way they are spam, you should first contact the webmaster of that site. Maybe he is not conscious about having those links, and they are probably caused by some kind of bug, or a form open to visitors. If he is a webmaster concerned about SEO, will remove the links soon.

If you don't obtain a reply from the webmaster, and only in that case, should you use the disavow tool: when you are not able to have those links removed by normal ways, and your last option is to inform Google you don't want them to have those links taken into consideration by their algorithm when ranking your site.

Good luck with doing that manual stuff on the 200 links

[TheZenAgency]

If all the links are from 200 different domains i would skip the step of contacting the webmasters and go straight to the disavow, its often very time consuming and i would suggest that time could be better spent elsewhere.

I swear by this guide for a disavow http://moz.com/blog/guide-to-googles-disavow-tool

Good luck