Bad backlinks, whether unsolicited or solicited, hurt your search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. Google crawls through the backlinks linking to your website and assesses them based on their authenticity. Crawl bots generally dislike links from shady, low-ranking websites. If you don’t run a backlink analysis on a routine basis, bad backlinks might tank your site ranking and traffic.
The best approach here is to create an extensive backlink cleanup routine. A properly executed strategy to eliminate spam links improves your Google search engine results page (SERP) ranking, website ranking, and website authority. Moreover, readers are more likely to trust sites mentioned by major publications.
The Google Penguin update in 2012 significantly changed the way backlinks worked. Google created a stringent set of guidelines penalizing websites that received backlinks from unscrupulous, spammy sources. This setup prevents black-hat SEO strategists from bombarding their sites with fake links for rankings.
However, the update posed a new problem: black-hat strategists spammed competitors with toxic backlinks to hurt their credibility. Sadly, Google does not discriminate between solicited and unsolicited links yet. You’ll have to perform manual backlink cleanup strategies to combat these attacks.
Your website loses domain authority if you don’t eliminate bad backlinks promptly. Google crawls through all your internal and external links. It categorizes your website as spam if too many shady websites, link farms, and spambots link to it. If left unattended, your website rating will gradually drop.
Moreover, getting associated with disreputable sources ruins your reputation. Your readers might see your brand in a bad light if websites that specialize in gambling, pornography, and conspiracy theories, among other controversial topics, frequently mention it.
The key to effective backlink cleanup is organization. Create a straightforward plan to detect and eliminate toxic links. Prompt disavowal mitigates SEO damage. Below are a few strategies to start removing bad backlinks.
Sending disavowal requests for every backlink you receive from a non-major publication might tank your website traffic and ranking. Backlinks serve as the cornerstone of any SEO link-building strategy. Instead of opting to eliminate all the links leading to your pages, filter out the unsolicited ones from shady, unknown sources (i.e., pornography sites, online gambling).
Use Google Analytics or third-party site auditors to track the source of the toxic link, then contact the page author to take the page down. However, note that 86% of users typically remain anonymous online. Unless you’re contacting a legitimate blog or publication, do not expect to find the original page author — much less the site admin.
Compile all the toxic links that you cannot remove in a .txt file. Use Google Analytics reports to zero in on all the toxic links potentially hurting your website. Of course, third-party auditors can also help you with this part of the process.
Add a “domain:” prefix to each toxic link, save the .txt file, then submit through the Google backlink disavow tool. Make sure that file size does not exceed 100,000 lines or 2MB.
SEO strategists often use the Google backlink disavow tool to manually remove bad backlinks. However, first-timers might find the system challenging. While it enables site admins to mitigate the damage of problematic links, they do not tell you which links to remove.
If you want a straightforward tool that automatically detects spam links, try the following:
Toxic backlinks are either ones that display signs of low quality or are blatant attempts to manipulate search rankings. This means that toxic backlinks may be coming from sites that have been set up for the purpose of linking out, sites that are not topically relevant, or sites that aren’t indexed by Google.
Backlinks are important for SEO because they signal to Google that another resource finds your content valuable enough to link to it within their own content. As a website earns additional backlinks, search engines infer that the website possesses valuable content worth ranking well on the SERPs. 30 Nov 2020
The Penguin penalty was set up to locate and penalize poor-quality websites based on their backlink profile. This algorithm works under the assumption that poor sites will generally link out to other poor sites.
You can place links on your site to public articles on other websites. The links can contain a title, and often a brief description is fine. But you cannot post the articles on your site. This is a violation of copyright law, and you would be infringing on the copyright owners' intellectual property. 12 Apr 2011
You do not need permission to include a link on your website that goes to another website. Nor is it copyright infringement if you do include such a link. ... Never include another website's trademark on your site without permission.
Google updates its algorithm almost twice a day, so what classifies as good and bad backlinks might soon change. Fortunately, a proper link-building strategy helps you stay updated. Extensive link analysis combined with modern backlink cleanup routines protects your website from harmful SEO elements, including bad links.
Do not neglect Google Analytics. Website auditing tools like Moz, SEMrush, and Ahrefs streamline link analysis, but Google Analytics provides in-depth, extensive reports — which site auditors don’t always detect. For best results, use multiple systems and platforms when analyzing links.
Are you having doubts about whether securing multiple backlinks will help your website’s performance? Let Automatic Growth shed some light on the issue. Check out our piece on mass backlinking to learn more!
