Toxic Backlinks: How They Hurt SEO And How To Get Rid Of Them
Updated on: 12 April 2022
In SEO, backlinks are a “vote of confidence” from one site to another.
Backlinks or inbound links tell search engines that other sites vouch for your content. So, when one of your pages has many links from other sites, search engines take it as a sign that your content is worth linking to. As a result, that page ranks higher on the search engine results pages.
This shows that backlinks are crucial for your search engine optimization strategy and ranking position.
Earning inbound links from other sites is essential for your offsite SEO strategy. You can’t expect your site to rank in search engines without backlinks.
Obtaining more links from other sites is called link building. However, link building is not a straightforward process. Some backlinks may be more valuable than others. Links that come from popular, high-authority, and trustworthy sites are at the top of the priority list for links that you need to have on your site. On the other hand, inbound links from potentially spammy sites are to be avoided.
Good vs bad backlinks
All backlinks are not created equal. Some may not offer as much value as others, while others affect your ranking.
So, what makes backlinks good or toxic?
Good backlinks
1. They come from authoritative sites
Again, you want backlinks from authoritative, trustworthy sites to boost your rank position. To determine whether a link is from a popular and reliable site, you need to check its “domain authority score,” which gauges how high a site’s ranking is in search engine results. In other words, the higher a site’s domain authority score is, the more search engines trust it, and so, you should, too.
2. They use target keywords as their anchor texts
Anchor text is the word or phrase that is linked to a website. Keeping the anchor text relevant to its context is an essential part of search engine optimization. So, if a link uses your target keywords as its anchor text, it’s a sign that it’s from a legit, reliable site. And by allowing such a backlink to your page, you can be sure that it will improve your ranking.
3. They are from sites that are relevant to the page content
Search engines value links from sites that offer relevant content to your site. This is because Google and other search engines want to make sure that the content from your site and the backlink source answers people’s queries.
4. They are Dofollow links
Search engine crawlers track links that are marked “dofollow” and ignore those marked “nofollow.” This is because dofollow links tell bots what the content is all about. They can help improve your page rank and build more link juice, which can make your site rank higher.
Toxic links
As already mentioned, toxic links can hurt your website’s rank position and reputation in Google’s and your audience’s eyes. These links are wrong for your SEO efforts because they come from sites that use black hat SEO tactics, which are unethical attempts to cheat their rankings. As a result, Google penalizes those sites, which means that your site can get flagged, too, for using toxic links.
1. They come from spammy sites
Sites that sell illegal or sketchy products or services are usually peppered with spammy backlinks. Once you let those sites link to your site, it can harm your site, costing you ranking points.
2. They are from paid link mills
Some marketers use paid link schemes wherein they buy backlinks from unscrupulous individuals and use them to easily and quickly boost their rankings. Luckily, search engines are aware of this practice. Based on Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, sites that new paid link mills will get penalized.
3. They are sometimes hidden
Untrustworthy web admins hide toxic backlinks in an attempt to cheat their ranking. They manipulate the background colors, for example, to disguise those links and hide them from users and search engines. This is a clear violation of Google’s guidelines, which can merit a penalty.
How to remove toxic backlinks?
If you have been diligent in implementing link building best practices, it can help you create quality content that gets shared all over the web organically. But because this process can be exhausting, some webmasters have invented schemes to try and make it easier for them to collect links. However, Google and other search engines always make sure that they value quality over quantity.
If you think you have toxic backlinks on some of your pages, follow these tips to remove them successfully.
1. Know the types of links you don’t want on your pages
Basically, any link that’s irrelevant to your site is considered toxic. Aside from that, you want to avoid links from penalized domains, link farms, unscrupulous sites (dodgy sites, such as gambling, porn, etc.), foreign language sites, unrelated sites, and the like. Google is aware and thus, penalize web admins who use these kinds of links to try and cheat their way around ranking in SERPs.
2. Find out where such links come from
It would help if you used tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, and Moz to know where toxic links are from. These tools will flag all links that they consider ‘toxic.’ They have different metrics, including spam and domain authority scores, which help tell you whether a link is teetering between “likely harmless” to “spammy.”
3. Make a Removal from Website request
Although there is little to zero chance of getting low-quality backlinks removed by the webmasters who created them, it’s still worth a try because it’s a Google requirement before you can ask them to ignore the links altogether.
However, the problem is you won’t easily find the webmaster’s contact information. If that’s the case, you need to use WHOIS Domain Lookup to track down the owner. In most cases, you’ll find the email address of the hosting company. You can ask them to remove the toxic backlinks you found instead.
4. Create and submit a Disavow file to Google
When all else fails, you’ll need to turn to Google’s ‘Disavow Links’ to sort out toxic links on your site. This tool allows you to import a text file with all the links you want Google to ignore. You can add specific URLs using the tool or have Google ignore all links from a particular domain.
You need to be careful when using the Disavow Links tool, though. It should be considered a last resort after a thorough analysis of your backlinks to avoid negatively affecting your organic rankings. Also, it’s important to note that it takes time for the disavow file to be processed and for your rankings to recover slowly.
Bottom line
Toxic backlinks are like insects that affect a plant’s growth. If left untreated, those pests can make the plant die – in this case, for you to waste all the search engine optimization strategy you’ve worked so hard for so long.
Follow the tips mentioned above or seek out assistance from a competent digital marketing agency to identify toxic links and get rid of them so your rankings can recover and get back your ROI.