In link building, relationships matter. Building links is akin to building relationships with publishers or experts in your field. The more links pointing to your website, the more authoritative and trustworthy it appears—similar to having a strong network of connections. However, not all links are beneficial. Some can be toxic, just like certain relationships.
In this article, we’ll help you understand toxic backlinks, why they can harm your website, and how to avoid them effectively.
What are toxic backlinks?
Toxic backlinks are those backlinks that can negatively impact your organic search rankings. As Majestic defines it, “Backlinks are considered ‘toxic’ when they weaken the organic placement of a website.” Toxic backlinks usually look like backlinks that go against Google’s link spam guidelines.
You can read more about Google’s link spam guidelines, but we’ll extract the highlights below:
- Buying or selling links for ranking purposes
- Excessive link exchanges (“Link to me and I’ll link to you”) or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking
- Requiring a link as part of a Terms of Service, contract, or similar arrangement without allowing a third-party content owner the choice of qualifying the outbound link
- Advertorials or native advertising where payment is received for articles that include links that pass ranking credit, or links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites
- Low-quality directory or bookmark site links
- Keyword-rich, hidden, or low-quality links embedded in widgets that are distributed across various sites
Toxic backlinks can also often be confused with spammy or manipulative links. It’s important to distinguish toxic links from spammy or manipulative links:
- Spammy links: Random, usually harmless links, often generated outside your control (e.g., links from “netlify.app” or “web.app”)
- Manipulative links: Specifically created to deceive Google’s algorithms, such as keyword-heavy anchor text like “best coffee shop in Covina”
If you see these pointing to your site, it is a good idea to try getting these removed or disavowed if you’ve received a penalty from Google or believe they are hurting your website. Next, we’ll discuss why toxic links are bad in the first place.
Why are toxic backlinks bad?
We shouldn’t have to explain why toxic links are bad because the danger is in the name, but let’s discuss the potential pitfalls that toxic links present. If you have a lot of toxic backlinks pointing to your site, these can bring undesirable attention to your website from Google. If Google sees that these links follow a particular pattern, then they may issue a penalty to your website via Google Search Console. When you are issued a penalty, your rankings will likely drop off. You’ll begin to lose critical organic traffic.
For example, let’s say the toxic backlinks pointing to your website all target a specific set of anchor text or are built from a catalog of private blog networks (PBNs). After Google’s Penguin update, Google’s algorithms now actively seek out websites that are using links to manipulate rankings. Google issues penalties in response.
Even if you didn’t build these links yourself because you inherited them from another website owner, you could still be at risk. So it’s best to take action on these links if you believe they are hurting your website’s organic traffic or rankings.
How to avoid toxic backlinks
As we mentioned at the start of this article, links are a lot like relationships. And just like having a toxic ex or toxic best friends, the way to handle toxic backlinks is to cut them out. In the world of link building, the way we cut them out is by disavowing them.
When we disavow toxic backlinks, we’re telling Google, “Hey Google, we found this malicious link that’s pointing to our website. We’re telling you this because we don’t approve of it and hope you won’t judge our website based on it.”
We’ve previously written about how you can disavow backlinks, so we’ll keep this brief. I suggest you check out this article on how to run a backlink audit if you want a more in-depth explanation.
To disavow toxic backlinks, you’ll need to review all the backlinks pointing to your website. You can do this by reviewing them in Google Search Console or by using a tool like Semrush or Ahrefs. Then, after you’ve reviewed them, add any of the links you believe are toxic by adding the URL or domain name to a TXT file. Finally, you’ll upload this TXT file to Google Search Console, effectively telling Google’s ranking algorithm not to consider these groups of links.
Final thoughts
If you have toxic links pointing to your site that are holding your growth back, it’s best to cut them out! By first understanding what toxic links are and how you can identify them, you are already one step closer to success. The next step is just compiling each of those links into a simple TXT file and sounding the alarm to Google.
While our expert link builders at Redefine can’t help you cut out a toxic ex relationship from your life, we can help with toxic backlinks. So if you run into any questions or would like our team to help clean up your link profile, reach out today.
