Blocking Bad Links Through .htaccess

I have some links coming from bad sites how do I block them to improve SER

[noumaan204]

Last year I did a little article submission to get some linkbacks to my blog. Those articles were then copied by many websites and they are all linking back to my blog. I think this has caused decline in my Search Engine Rankings. I requested the website owners to remove the article but they did not. So I am thinking about blocking these websites in .htaccess

Will this be an effective technique and will googlebot still give my website credit for that link? Are there any other ways to safely get rid of the effects of bad backlinks?

[g1smd]

No it will not be effective to do that.

You can block requests for specific page URLs on your site such that the page will not display.

It is ineffective to block specific referrers because once Google has seen the URL of a page on your site mentioned in a link on some other site they crawl your site from their own list of links not from those other sites linking to you.

[noumaan204]

@g1smd Is there any other way so that the Google understands that I do not want to be credited for those links?

[topr8]

no there is not.

>>Are there any other ways to safely get rid of the effects of bad backlinks?

by getting 'good' links then it will dilute and negate the 'bad' ones

... however are you sure this is the reason for your bad ranking.

[zabalex]

Noumann,

I don't have any data to make that suggestion, I can see one specific example how you can be correct and those links can harm you (p0*n sites, or w@rez) linking back to you will drag you down (unless you're in this market).
However, the entire web is copy of each other. This is the best case example is if someone links to the original source acknowledging you as the author. They usually not, so you don't get benefit of your article.
However, this should not have negative effect. Look at seomoz, or bruceclay. Their writings have been copied thousands of times linking back to them, and that only raises their ranking.

[GregBarrett]

Request the webmaster of those sites linking back to your article to take them off and tell them that it is duplicate content. They may do it. That may not help your rankings though it all really depends.

[topr8]

>>Request the webmaster of those sites linking back to your article to take them off and tell them that it is duplicate content

i imagine the webmasters will already know it is duplicate content as they have either copied or scraped the original article!