How To Identify and Avoid Toxic Backlinks?

Backlinks are one of the essential factors considered for Google rankings, and no marketer can afford to ignore them. It would be best if you had a strong strategy to build high-quality links to rank high, for competitive keywords and search terms. But remember, not all links are the same. Identifying right and wrong is important to escape harm; wrong links can affect your website and negatively affect rankings, organic traffic, and revenue.

The simple hack is to regularize analysing your backlinks and your competitors to find opportunities to build high-quality links that will help increase organic visibility. This is also crucial to identify any issues that may be altering your website performance and can help find an appropriate way to take action to resolve it.

Backlinks Analysis

It would be best if you taught a habit of regularly analysing your backlink profile vitally. A better insight into your and your competitors’ link profiles will give you a better chance to gain and use the information to improve strategies.

Identify Competitive Link Gaps

A backlink analysis will help you to understand the link gap between you and your competitors. This information is beneficial to identify your ability to outrank your competitors and enjoy higher rankings. All you need to do is develop a strategy to close the link gaps, which will help you gain a competitive advantage.

Without these insights, it would be like targeting an arrow in the dark or without an aim. Knowledge of link gaps lets you know whom you are competing, and you can work more directionally. Tools like the SEMrush Backlink Gap tool can help you identify your competitors, and you can efficiently strategize your moves to excel with them.

The more information you have, the easier it will be to stack up against the competition and formulate a strategy. This also facilitates building links that positively impact your rankings.

Recognize Bad Links & opt for Preventive measures to Protect Rankings.

The toxic or bad links are often the wrong type of links, often referred to as unnatural or spammy links, which can harm your site’s organic performance. To get rid of it, ensure you run a regular backlink audit proactively to identify these issues and take action to protect your rankings. If you have unfortunately noticed a negative impact from bad links on your website, you need to jump out into action for analysis to fix issues and conquer your lost rankings.

Backlink analysis is like a routine health check with healthcare specialists to keep your potential problems at bay and fix them before they cause harm.

Quality Backlink and how to build one?

A quality link comes from trusted and reliable sources and does not have a sole motive to manipulate search engine rankings.

If you listen to Google and adhere to what it says, it directly outlines:

“The best and easiest way to get other sites to create high-quality, relevant links to yours is to create relevant, unique content that can naturally gain popularity over the Internet community. Creating good content can pay off highly. Links are often editorial votes given by choice, and useful content on your website poses greater chances that a third party finds it valuable and reliable enough to link it to their readers.”

When a link is editorially chosen (by a writer or webmaster), it merely means that you have created a worthy piece of content that can be amplified and used for the readers. This is where we need to pay attention and understand.

You can follow simple tactics to build high-quality links and avoid the risks associated with toxic links.

Related:5 Types of Quality Backlinks You Need to Know for SEO

What do quality links look like?

Send potential referral traffic: There is an excellent opportunity or potential to receive targeted referral traffic via high-quality links. This is because of the navigational nature of links, and if a link drives quality traffic to your website, it’s a useful link.

Aligns with your own website’s content: If two pieces of content are irrelevant and look misaligned, it may turn off the reader’s mood and make it look unnatural. Quality links must cover topics similar to your website.

Source reliability: Links are a bond of reliability between two websites, and the highest quality links must come from most trusted sources. No one would like to have a recommendation from a stranger and apply it to backlinks on the same day. For example, a link from the New York Times or The Wall Street Journal has higher reliability than an amateur blog with low-quality content.

Also Read: Optimize Your Internal Linking Strategy

How To Build High-Quality Links?

Power of public relations

Backlinks are based on building relationships. It’s the best way to generate high-quality backlinks to your website. While your website is new and lesser-known, people will be sceptical about linking to your website. So, public relations will accelerate your rankings, not immediately but slowly. Leveraging public relations can be the most vital step in your backlinking journey. You can initiate the first step by being active on social media.

Align social signals

To build an expert backlinking strategy and rise through rankings, aligning social signals is necessary! Social signals disseminate your activity and updates to search engines. It’s directly proportional! The more the activity, the better the rankings. You have to focus on engaging content that is even useful to others. If you don’t have time to leverage every platform, choose a mix for yourself. Give dedicated time to just one or two and reach out to your audience.

Grab the Edge with Competitive Content

Strong backlinks demand unique content creation. Any reader would check your credibility and worth before linking to your website. So, please keep it simple, appealing and compelling enough for the writers to get lured in and link you! If your website contains dull, familiar, and wordy content, no one cares about its existence. Also, always remember the competition. You need to write better, unique content based purely on research.

Create an infographic

Infographics are attractive and are liked by readers. The representative and minimalistic nature make them easy to scan, love and browse. They are easily shareable; this means if an infographic exists on your website, and someone shares it, they have to link to your website. You can strategize the creation of an infographic, i.e., is it offered for free or you charge for it! Just a few extra pennies!

Comment on other relevant blog posts

Look for other pieces of relevant content and start by commenting to build the rapport needed for backlinks. The comments must have the primary purpose of building a mutual relationship with the author, and you can occasionally jump to an opportunity to introduce a backlink in your comment tactfully. Smart way; try it!

“Toxic” Backlinks and their impact on organic performance and rankings?

Now that we know how high-quality backlinks are built and how they can benefit our website traffic and SEO services, we must now understand “Toxic Backlinks”.

If high-quality links came from editorial earnings and trusted sources, where do toxic backlinks come from?

According to Google: 

“Any link that intends to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered as a part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.”

This statutory framework includes any behaviour that can manipulate links to your site or any outgoing link from your website.

If Google finds a link to be an attempt to manipulate your search rankings, it is considered as a violation of their Webmaster Guidelines.

But what type of links can be considered manipulative?

It’s simple: those links that aren’t editorially ranked or approved and have been actively placed with the primary purpose of increasing search rankings by SEO are toxic. These bad/toxic links display signs of low quality, such as:

• Connected from websites created for the sole purpose of linking out.
• Coming from irrelevant websites and irrelevant content.
• Links from websites that Google doesn’t list.
• Links that are forced into blog comments.
• Hidden links in the website’s footer.
• Omnipresent on the website.
• Backlinks that are marked as sponsored.

Yet many other signs of bad links can contribute to your website’s toxicity. Be familiar with appropriate tools to identify and analyse bad links before they harm your SEO and other related activities!

Yes! Toxic Backlinks Can Potentially Affect Your Organic Performance & Search Rankings

Use of manipulative links was once considered common, and they had a profound impact on a site’s ranking. Google’s algorithms have advanced extensively, and their efforts against web spam are widely reported.

In the present times, successful link building is more about focusing on quality than quantity because low-quality links can majorly impact your rankings and organic traffic.

In 2012, Google’s Penguin algorithm update targeted the toxic/unnatural links, after which the link-building landscape changed forever and in a better way.

Here’s how toxic backlinks can harm your site’s SEO efforts:

Your Website can Receive Manual Action for Toxic Links

If Google’s web-spam team reviews your site links and finds it spam, a manual action for unnatural links can be applied. So, you must adhere to Google’s webmaster quality guidelines. Manual actions are though less common than they once were. Since reviewing websites manually is time and resource-consuming, Google has put in its algorithms for the task to refine toxic links.

Website Suffers from Algorithmic Filter

Toxic links make your site suffer from an algorithmic filter as a penalty adjustment. This can hamper your rankings; typically, the Penguin filter does the task. The worst part is that you won’t be notified and can’t file a reconsideration request to remove an algorithmic penalty.

Organic Changes

You can see the negative hit in various ways: a significant decline in organic traffic and visibility may be. Depending on the extent of unnatural links, this decline may be sitewide or restricted to a specific set of pages or site sections only.

To recover from this condition, you need to stop discontinuing the set of tactics that caused the problem and renounce links that were problematic. With this, you now need to go out and earn better links to regain the lost insights.

9 Causes of Toxic Backlinks

1. Exchanging Links

Backlink exchanges are sites that allow other websites to add their links. In exchange, those sites add links to others. The purpose of this link reciprocal program is to improve the SERP rankings. But the process reaps fruit only on a short-term basis.

Yeah! There are many serious concerns associated with backlink exchanges. Let’s see the clarification from Google:

Source: Search Console Help

2. Engaging with Private Blog Networks

Private blog networks (PBNs) refer to groups of websites that are designed to trick search engine crawlers. It creates fake links to a specific site. Using PBNs to get more links can be harmful due to a range of reasons, including:

• PBNs trick search engines into thinking that this site is more popular than it is. It puts the search engine in trouble.
• These networks have bad content. So, they have no useful information, which makes your links less valuable.

3. Using Link Building Bots

A link bot is a computer program that crawls and indexes web pages and their content. These AI-driven bots can create toxic backlinks in a number of ways. So, it would be best if you kept this in mind:

• Bots crawl the internet to find sites and extract information (email addresses) from various sources, like web pages, forums, or business directories.
• Link-building bots can automatically generate and send bulk emails to website managers. These emails consist of generic or template messages requesting link placements or partnerships.
• These bots create low-quality or irrelevant content. So, this can target websites that lack substance or relevance.

4. Posting Unnatural Links on Other Sites

According to Google’s official guidelines, “unnatural links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.”

As an SEO professional or marketer, you should avoid adding unnatural links to your website. It hampers your brand’s image. Simply put, Google officially recommends that webmasters automatically apply the rel=”ugc” attribute to links within user-generated content.

Source: Semrush

5. Listing Your Business on Low-Quality Directories

Using low-quality directory links can lead to penalties from search engines. They are on the list of manipulative tactics. These links also hamper your website’s ranking on SERPs, as they are regarded as irrelevant or unauthoritative.

On the flip side, not all directories that offer links will result in toxic backlinking. But yeah! Some can, so as an SEO professional, you have to remain vigilant while building your directory listings.

6. Creating Widgets with Links

Widgets make websites better and keep users interested. But some widgets add links to a site without the owner’s control. These links break the rules of Google Webmaster Guidelines because the website owner does not naturally put them there.

Google’s team might manually address unnatural links. If they do, they’ll tell site owners through the Search Console. If you get a warning about unnatural links in widgets promoting your site, it’s advised to fix the problems and ask for a review.

7. Mandating Backlinks Through Contracts

Mandating several backlinks within a contract may encourage the linking party to engage in unnatural linking patterns. This process involves creating a high volume of links in a short period of time.

8. Being the Victim of a Negative SEO Attack

A negative SEO attack involves unethical tactics to hamper the competitor’s website. Most often, perpetrators of negative SEO may engage in spammy link-building on behalf of targeted websites. So, it’s critical for website administrators to monitor their backlink profiles regularly and promptly disavow toxic backlinks.

Related: 13 SEO Trends You Should Know in 2024

How to Find Bad Backlinks

Option 1: Use a Toxic Backlink Checker

• Enter your domain and hit the option “Start Backlink Audit.”
• Read and follow the instructions to configure your audit.
• To get more accurate results, tap on the option of “Integrations” to connect Google Analytics, Majestic Accounts, or Google Search Console.

Source: Semrush

• In this step, go to the “Audit” report and look for the backlinks flagged for review.

Source: Semrush

• A high score shows the level of link toxicity.

Option 2: Check Toxic Backlinks Manually

Some SEO Professionals or marketers don’t have access to Toxic link checkers. No need to worry! In this situation “Google Search Console” comes to the rescue. You can track the sites which are links to yours through GSC by following these steps:

• Go to the option of “Links” in the left sidebar.

Source: Semrush

• Drag your mouse to the section of “Top Linking Sites” and then hit the option of “More”
• From here, you can export the list of site links to you.
• Last but not least, open the spreadsheet and manually find toxic links.

How to Remove Toxic Backlinks

After finding toxic backlinks, you have two options: 

• One is to contact the referring domain to request the link removals.
• Next one is to use disavow tools for removing toxic links.

Let’s go over both these ways:

How to Request Link Removals

• First and foremost, you have to reach out to the website administrators about hosting the unwanted links. Explain the situation to them and request that they remove the specified type of link. Give them details, like the page URL, and use anchor text.
• Now, keep ready your template of removal request emails. Be professional in your tone. Provide them with unique information, like the reasons for link removal and any other details, for faster communication.

Source: Semrush

• You can also give alternative suggestions to webmasters. These can be related to updating the anchor text, linking to a new page, providing more accurate information, and so on.
• After sending the email with the initial removal request, Follow up promptly if you don’t receive any response within a reasonable timeframe.

How to Disavow Toxic Backlinks

• Identify toxic backlinks using tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, or similar platforms. Compile a list of these backlinks, including URLs and domains.
• Create a disavow file in a text document, following the specified format. Use the domain operator for efficiency or list individual URLs. Ensure each entry is on a new line.
• Follow the format of the disavow file, starting each directive with “domain:” or “http://” or “https://”. Include comments using “#” to explain why a link is being disavowed.
• Access Google Search Console and navigate to the Disavow Links tool. Choose the relevant website and upload the disavow file. Verify the file to ensure its correctness.
• Submit the disavow file through the Google Search Console. Google will be notified of your request to disavow the specified links.
• Monitor changes in your backlink profile after submission. It may take time for Google to process the disavowal, and improvements should be observed over time.
• Regularly review and update the disavow file. Add new toxic backlinks as needed and submit the updated file. Make genuine efforts to remove toxic backlinks manually before resorting to the disavowal process.
• Disavowing links should be done cautiously. Regularly monitoring and updating the disavow file is crucial for maintaining a healthy backlink profile.

How to Avoid having Toxic backlinks on your website?

It is better to use tools to be aware of the link-building tactics that can lead to toxic backlinks, and here are some ways that can help you to stay away from toxic links:

Paid Links

With the money involved in the exchange of backlinking, you may end up violating Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. This includes paying sponsorship fees for guest posts or gifting products or services in exchange for a link. Remember that a paid link has not been editorially placed. While it is a no-go for SEO, if you may need to use sponsored content for reasons other than building links such as leveraging someone’s audience and earn referral traffic. Make sure to add rel=”nofollow” or rel=” sponsored” attributes for full transparency and take preventive measures, not to get identified as unnatural.

Related: Guest Blogging: Strategies for Building Authority and Driving Traffic in 2024

Exact Match Anchor Text Links

Links that use exact match and keyword-rich anchor text may be criticised for being toxic, regardless of the source and credibility. Excessive keyword-rich anchor text can get you potentially flagged for using the money for links or not being editorially placed. Influencing anchor text with exact match keywords to another page may make links look unnatural.

Links from Spun Content & Articles

Earlier, building links using spun content was a popular strategy. This would involve writing an article and then using software to spin this into hundreds of different variations. Most of the results were likely to land in the trash bin. These articles were then uploaded to article directories like EzineArticles, and links were included within these.

Links from Spam Comments on Blogs and Forums

Spam comments are yet another link-building strategy that could result in toxic links. These comments work automatedly, placing numerous irrelevant comments on blogs. This is done with a hope that readers will go through without moderation and land on your site. So, the tactic is to get as many people as possible to land on these links through comments. People using WordPress will know this, as they can notice plenty of notifications with comments to approve. These comments contain entirely unrelated content and links, which form spam comments.

Widget Links

If you are developing a widget or plugin (e.g., for WordPress) and distributing this with a link included, be cautious as you violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and build toxic links. Immediately clean up the links if you have previously messed with this tactic!

Conclusion

It is essential to continue taking preventive and corrective measures to avoid traffic loss and face penalties from Google. It is best to run regular backlink audits as part of your SEO activity. You would help yourself by successfully spotting issues caused by toxic links before they become a huge problem, resulting in losses. After all, who doesn’t know, that prevention is always better than a cure?