Toxic backlinks - poison for your website's SEO
What are toxic links? How do they affect your SEO? And what should you do about them? Find out in this post.
Ever since Google's Penguin update 4.0 back in 2012, backlinks (and links in general) have been a controversial topic.
SEO specialists have always been divided on the subject of toxic links - whether it's the degree of the toxic link, whether it's a ranking factor, or whether it even matters for the SEO of the domain in general.
In recent years, this topic has become more prominent as Google continuously documents that their search engine is designed to differentiate between low quality links and toxic links.
What are toxic links - and should you fear them?
Toxic backlinks are either low-quality backlinks or backlinks that aim to manipulate search engine rankings.
Google considers such links to be a violation of their so-called Webmaster Guidelines. As an SEO specialist, you should therefore be more focused on the quality of links rather than the quantity to avoid falling rankings or penalties.
Here are some examples of toxic links:
- Links from domains that have nothing to do with your own website.
- Links from domains with the sole purpose of link building.
- Links from domains that are not indexed on Google.
- Links that spam comment sections on websites.
- Links from a link network that often all have the same IP address/anchor texts/domain.
- Links from porn and gambling sites.
For example, SEMrush's Backlink Audit identified no less than 4,078 backlinks on our customer's website that had been attacked by spam links over a longer period of time. As you can see from the image, a good proportion of them were pornographic in nature - in other words: toxic! Many of them also came from the same IP addresses and they all came within a short period of time.
How does a link become toxic - and how do you spot toxic links yourself?
There can be various reasons why a link becomes toxic.
1. Low authority sites
Most often, domains with very low authority also provide low-quality links. This could be sites that are not indexed at all or sites with a non-existent backlink profile. It can also be sites that deal with porn/gambling etc.
A good way to see the authority of a domain is to use a tool like Ahrefs or SEMrush - simply enter the website into the tool and it will display a DR (domain rating). If the domain rating is below 10, it will require a review of the domain/link and you should investigate whether it should be removed.
2. Mirror sites
These can be multiple copies or clones of websites (with different URLs) that all link to your website. They often use exactly the same anchor text, have the same page structure, etc.
Google will consider these pages as duplicate pages for the sole purpose of building a larger link profile for their own domain.
3. Private blog networks (PBN)
PBN is a method of building and maintaining a collection of websites for the sole purpose of creating backlinks to other websites - typically old, expired domains that are purchased and restored.
Many SEO specialists will argue that Google will never detect a PBN. However, Google has been actively tracking PBNs for many years and has been penalizing sites as far back as 2014. Eventually, Google will catch PBNs and their penalties can be quite devastating to a website's rankings.
How can toxic links affect your SEO?
Now you know what a toxic link is and what makes it toxic - but how do toxic links get detected by Google?
1. Manual actions for toxic links
If your website gets too many toxic links, Google can take manual action to penalize your website. Google has a dedicated team that keeps an eye on spam links and whether websites are breaking their Webmaster Guidelines.
Your website can be targeted for manual penalties if:
- Your competitors keep reporting your website for spam links.
- If Google's algorithm spots something irregular in your website's backlink profile.
- Some niches are known to have spam links. If your website falls into this category, there is a high risk of manual penalty.
2. Your website is spotted by the algorithm
Unlike manual actions, Google's search engine also uses its crawlers to scan websites for toxic links. If their crawlers spot too many toxic links pointing to your website, it can impose an algorithm penalty.
When Google imposes an algorithm penalty, you get no notice. It is therefore necessary to find the error yourself to get your website back in the search results. But keep in mind that it's not necessarily toxic links that caused your website to be penalized - Google uses around 200 factors to rank websites, so there could be many reasons why your website has been penalized.
Just like manual penalties, your website will be removed from the SERP until the issue is resolved. You should therefore review your website step-by-step with a keen SEO eye and review any changes to the site to find and fix the error.
Here are some of the things you can do to avoid being penalized by Google's algorithm in the future:
- Identify and take action against toxic backlinks.
- Continuously add informative and relevant keywords to the website.
- Do organic outreach link building.
What to do about toxic backlinks?
If you discover a toxic link or link network, you can use Google's disavow function, which can be found here.
Here you need to upload a .txt file where you list the toxic links (or domains).
The formatting should look like this:
What will link building look like in 2022?
As mentioned earlier, in recent years Google has continuously documented how their algorithm has become better at distinguishing between toxic links and claims that the search engine can ignore low quality and toxic links
The Ahrefs team put this to the test back in December 2021 when they tried to disavow ALL 3,476 backlinks to three of their big blogposts.
The study was to test whether links actually affected rankings. Interestingly, they immediately saw a drop in traffic and rankings on their three blog posts, with one of them losing 18% of their traffic from search and some of their rankings dropping from 1st to 4th place.
This study shows how important your backlink profile can be for your website. Just think about what a strong backlink profile could do if your website was in fourth place with good content and a strong technical profile, but without a backlink profile.
So do we even need to use the disavow feature in 2022?
Just because Google claims their algorithm can differentiate between low quality and toxic links doesn't mean we should throw in the towel.
However, you can get a sense of that when the topic is discussed so much. In a Twitter poll from January 2021, 32% of respondents didn't think disavows were an important tool anymore. Of those surveyed, 42% said it depends on the situation. I can understand that.
For me personally, having worked with backlink profiles for several years, I believe that we should continuously monitor our backlink profiles, where we should use the disavow tool if the backlink profile is in bad shape.
We can't ignore the fact that there are plenty of spam links out there, and while Google is getting better at spotting these links, we also need to keep an eye on our backlink profile to avoid manual actions. For example, if you see a link network or mirror pages linking to your site, you may want to upload these to the disavow page to ensure that they are ignored rather than blindly trusting Google's algorithm.
But be careful! The Disavow tool should be used with care. As Google itself writes:
This is an advanced feature and should only be used with caution. If used incorrectly, this feature can potentially harm your site's performance in Google Search results.
One thing is for sure: if you're not 100% sure whether a link could harm your website, don't disavow it.
Get help identifying toxic links
Does identifying and disavowing toxic links seem too long-winded? At Amplify, as an SEO agency, we specialize in link building and SEO best practices. So if you are concerned about your website's backlink profile, don't hesitate to contact us.
FAQ - toxic backlinks
Toxic backlinks are poison for your SEO. They are low-quality backlinks or those that aim to manipulate Google rankings.
If you have discovered one or more toxic backlinks, you can submit them for removal via. Google Search Console. You need to upload a .txt file with the toxic domains.
If you have a lot of toxic backlinks, you may risk Google penalizing you and your rankings. They do this if they deem your website to be in violation of their Webmaster Guidelines.
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