I have had a sudden increase in "bad" incoming links to my site. And at the same time my ranking has taken a dive.
I have not done any link building in the last few months, and I have used multiple tools to track incoming links, and they show a major increase in incoming links from "toxic" sites in the past couple of months.
I have documented this entire process with reports and emails, and have contacted all the Sites concerned requesting that they kindly remove the links. Most have replied that we must pay them between $5 - $25 per link to be removed and some of the Sites have multiple links to us.
I am not sure what we should do and am concerned that if we pay these companies to remove the link, they could create more links as it appears many are connected to multiple spam type directory Sites. On the other hand many Sites advise not to use the Disavow Tool unless you are sure you need to use it and that even if used the results may take a very long time.
Our decline in our SEO ranking is really affecting our business and I would really appreciate advice as to what to do?