Backlinks are voices of confidence your website receives in the world of SEO. The more backlinks you have of a quality sort, the higher your site will rank in search results. Not all backlinks, however, are good. But some can damage your site’s reputation and even rankings. Toxic backlinks—these harmful links—can be more damaging. Instead of doing that, in this post, we can walk you through how to spot those poisonous links and disable the ones with which you would want to protect your SEO efforts.
What Are Toxic Backlinks?
Before diving in, we should define toxic backlinks. Spammy, low-authoring, or unrelated websites are usually the source of toxic backlinks. For example, Google and other search engines consider these links unnatural. Instead of adding to your site’s credibility, they can penalize it and cause it to drop in rankings.
Here’s a quick list of toxic backlinks to look out for:
- Links from Irrelevant Sites: Naturally, if a site has nothing to do with your niche and is linking to you, that could be a red flag.
- Spammy Sites: Ad-filled websites, malware-filled websites, or websites with poor-quality content will negatively affect your site.
- Paid Links or Link Farms: While Google doesn’t necessarily dislike links purchased or traded in bulk, it doesn’t like the source of those links as much.
- Foreign-Language Sites: A flood of lateral backlinks from foreign-language sites is suspicious unless your site is multilingual.
Many businesses use white-label link-building services to keep their backlink profiles clean and free from toxic links. It’s a great way to scale link building without trading quality for quantity.
How to Identify Toxic Backlinks
The first step in removing toxic backlinks is to find them. Here are a few methods:
Use SEO Tools
Getting into the backlink profile is possible with tools like Google Search Console, SEMrush, or Moz. These tools will list the websites that point towards you and give you an idea of their quality.
Analyze Domain Authority (DA)
See what the domain rating of sites that are linking to you is. High DA sites are generally good sources, and low DA sites, unless below 20, are harmful.
Look for Irrelevant Links
Look at the content on your links. A toxic backlink is almost certainly one with irrelevant content to your industry or chock full of spam.
Building only white-hat links helps your site grow naturally and stay safe from penalties, ensuring long-term success.
Check Anchor Text
An unnatural or over-stuffed anchor text could signify manipulation and a penalty.
How to Disavow Toxic Backlinks
Now that you have your list of toxic backlinks, it’s time to disavow them. If Google is showing your site in the ‘Disavow’ report, it means that you’ve disputed these links, i.e. you’d like to tell Google that these links should not be considered part of your site. Here’s how to do it:
Reach Out to Webmasters
Before undertaking the disavowal process, you might politely request that the website owner remove the toxic link from their website. But this takes time, and it’s worth trying.
Create a Disavow File
If you can’t get out, then you have to get in. The first step is to list the toxic backlinks you want to disavow. You can use tools like Google Search Console or any backlink-checking tool listed before to export your backlinks. Next, make a simple text file stating each domain or URL you want Google not to crawl.
Most of the best link-building agencies also provide backlink audits and disavow them as part of their SEO service to keep their clients on the first page of searches.
Submit the File to Google
When you are ready and have created the disavow file, upload it to the disavow tool in Google’s WebmastTools, and you’re good to go. But you’ll see the impact over the coming weeks, having already made a significant jump on cleaning up your backlink profile.
Why Regular Backlink Audits Are Essential
One thing to do regularly is check your backlink profile to catch toxic links early. Other companies hire a backlink-building company to maintain a clean and fresh backlink portfolio on their website. This proactive approach would prevent harmful penalties due to unpleasant backlinks.
Final Thoughts
You don’t want toxic backlinks to be a problem for your SEO performance. But in the end, you can still quickly see and disavow them with the right tools and approach. Keep your backlinks in check by regularly monitoring them and taking action if there’s anything broken. It will protect your site from penalties and your rankings.
Backlink-building packages are the solution for businesses wanting to grow quality link-building. As you may remember, not all backlinks are created equal, and quality always wins over quantity in SEO. Happy cleaning!
