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? You’ll learn more about this in this post.
Ever since Google's Penguin 4.0 update back in 2012, backlinks (and links in general) have been a hotly debated topic.
SEO specialists have always had mixed opinions about toxic links—whether it’s about the degree of toxicity, whether they’re a ranking factor, or simply whether they matter at all for the domain’s SEO in general.
In recent years, this topic has come more into the spotlight, as Google has consistently demonstrated that its search engine is designed to distinguish on its own between low-quality links and toxic links.
What Are Toxic Links—and Should You Be Worried About Them?
Toxic backlinks are either low-quality backlinks or backlinks intended to manipulate search engine rankings.
Google considers such links to be a violation of its Webmaster Guidelines. As an SEO specialist, you should therefore focus more on the quality of links rather than the quantity to avoid a drop in rankings or a penalty.
Here are some examples of toxic links:
- Links from domains that have nothing to do with your own website.
- Links from domains whose sole purpose is to engage in link building.
- Links from domains that are not indexed by Google.
- Links that spam the comment sections of websites.
- Links from a link network, which often all share the same IP address, anchor text, and domain.
- Links from porn and gambling sites.
Here, for example, SEMrush’s Backlink Audit identified no fewer than 4,078 backlinks on our client’s website that had been targeted by spam links over an extended period. As you can see in the image, a significant portion of them were pornographic in nature—in other words: toxic! Many of them also came from the same IP addresses, and they all appeared within a short period of time.
How Does a Link Become Toxic — and How Can You Spot Toxic Links Yourself?
There can be various reasons why a link becomes toxic.
1. Pages with low authority
In most cases, domains with very low authority also provide low-quality links. These may be pages that aren’t indexed at all or pages with a nonexistent backlink profile. They may also be pages related to pornography, gambling, etc.
A good way to assess a domain’s authority 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’s rating is below 10, you’ll need to review the domain or link and consider whether it should be removed.
2. Mirror sites
These may be multiple copies or clones of websites (with different URLs) that all link to your website. They usually use exactly the same anchor text, have the same page structure, and so on.
Google will consider these pages to be duplicate pages created solely for the purpose of building a larger link profile for its own domain.
3. Private Blog Networks (PBN)
PBN is a method in which a collection of websites is built and maintained for the sole purpose of creating backlinks to other websites—typically, these are old, expired domains that are purchased and restored.
Many SEO specialists would argue that Google will never detect a PBN. However, Google has been actively tracking down PBNs for many years and has been penalizing sites as far back as 2014. Ultimately, Google will detect PBNs, and its penalties can be quite devastating for 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 does Google detect toxic links?
1. Manual Actions for Toxic Links
If your website receives too many toxic links, Google may take manual action to penalize your website. Google has a dedicated team that monitors spam links and checks whether websites are violating its Webmaster Guidelines.
Your website may be subject to a manual penalty if:
- Your competitors keep reporting your website for spam links.
- If Google's algorithm detects something irregular in your website's backlink profile.
- Some niches are known for having spam links. If your website falls into this category, there is a high risk of a manual penalty.
2. Your website will be flagged by the algorithm
Unlike manual actions, Google’s search engine also uses its crawlers to scan websites for toxic links. If its crawlers detect too many toxic links pointing to your website, it may impose an algorithmic penalty.
When Google imposes an algorithmic penalty, you receive no warning. That’s why you need to identify the issue yourself to get your website back into the search results. But remember, it isn’t necessarily toxic links that have caused your website to be penalized—Google uses about 200 factors to rank websites, so there could be many reasons why your website has been penalized.
Just like with a manual action penalty, your website will be removed from the SERPs until the problem is resolved. You should therefore review your website step by step with a keen SEO eye and examine any changes made 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.
- Conduct organic outreach link building.
What should you do about toxic backlinks?
If you discover a toxic link or a link network, you may want to use Google’s disavow feature, which can be found here.
Here, you need to upload a .txt file listing the toxic links (or domains).
The formatting should look like this:
What is the state of link building in 2022?
As mentioned earlier, Google has consistently documented in recent years how its algorithm has become better at distinguishing between toxic links, and claims that the search engine can ignore low-quality links as well as toxic links
The team at Ahrefs put this to the test back in December 2021, when they simply tried to disavow ALL 3,476 backlinks to three of their most popular blog posts.
The study aimed to test whether links actually affected rankings. Interestingly, they immediately saw a drop in traffic and rankings for their three blog posts; one of them lost 18% of its search traffic, and some of its rankings had fallen from 1st to 4th place.
This study shows just how important your backlink profile can be for your website. Just think about what a strong backlink profile could do if your website were ranked fourth—with good content and a strong technical profile—but lacked a backlink profile.
So, do we even need to use the disavow feature in 2022?
Just because Google claims that its algorithm can distinguish 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. A Twitter poll from January 2021 shows that 32% of respondents did not believe that disavows were an important tool anymore. Of those surveyed, 42% felt that it depends on the situation. I can certainly understand that.
Personally, having worked with backlink profiles for several years, I believe we need to keep a close eye on our backlink profiles on an ongoing basis, and we should use the Disavow tool if the backlink profile is in really bad shape.
We can’t ignore the fact that there are plenty of spam links out there, and even though Google is getting better at spotting these links, we also need to keep an eye on changes in our backlink profile to avoid manual actions. For example, if you notice a link network or mirror pages linking to your site, it’s a good idea to submit them to the disavow page to ensure they’re ignored, rather than blindly relying on Google’s algorithm.
But be careful! The Disavow tool should be used with caution. As Google itself states:
This is an advanced feature and should be used with caution. If used incorrectly, this feature could 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, then just don't disavow it.
Get help identifying toxic links
Does identifying and rejecting toxic links seem like too much of a hassle? At Amplify, we’re an SEO agency specializing in link building and SEO best practices. So if you’re concerned about your website’s backlink profile, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
FAQ – Toxic Backlinks
Toxic backlinks are poison for your SEO. These are low-quality backlinks or those intended to manipulate Google's rankings.
If you've discovered one or more toxic backlinks, you can submit them for removal via Google Search Console. You'll need to upload a .txt file containing the toxic domains.
If you have a lot of toxic backlinks, you risk Google penalizing you and your rankings. They’ll do this if they determine that your website violates their Webmaster Guidelines.
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