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There are a few elements that can help you significantly improve your entire off-page SEO strategy, and backlinks continue to be one of the most important factors search engines consider when ranking your page. Therefore it’s crucial to keep the quality of your backlinks as good as possible and to avoid toxic backlinks at all costs if you want Google to identify your page as legitimate.
According to MOZ:
Backlinks are especially valuable for SEO because they represent a “vote of confidence” from one site to another.
Having a strong SEO backlink strategy can help your website rank higher, gain more trust, and be more valuable to search engine algorithms.
What Are Backlinks?
In order to ensure the quality of your backlinks, make sure you have a thorough understanding of what a backlink is. Backlinks, also known as “incoming links ” and “inbound links”, are responsible for connecting one website to another; For instance, if website A decides to write an article about “How To Perform Top SEO Keyword Research” and links to your website, “website B,” this represents a “vote of confidence” for your website.
As your site gets more good quality backlinks, search engines will assume that it has value and that it is worth ranking highly on the search engine result page (SERP).
What Are Toxic Backlinks?
These are links that are harmful to the “reputation” of your website. Many websites utilize black hat SEO strategies to manipulate the search engine’s algorithms in an effort to rank higher in the results pages of search engines like Google.
Many of these sites are overstuffed with information that is not necessarily relevant to the market that your website serves. Having these spammy, unrelated websites as backlinks has no positive effect on the overall SEO performance of your site; in fact, it may have the opposite effect.
High levels of toxic backlinks can have a negative impact on your website’s rankings. In the worst-case scenario, if Google notices an alarmingly high concentration of toxic backlinks on your site, you could receive a penalty and have your site removed from its database.
Where Do Toxic Backlinks Come From?
Toxic backlinks can originate from a wide range of places, but typically these links come from:
- Spammy Websites: Spammy websites are those that advertise dubious and pointless products or information. The majority of the time, these websites are crammed with spammy backlinks, some of which may point to your website. Despite the fact that these pages might claim to offer details or facts on a subject, this is frequently not the case.
- Paid-Link Mills: Paid linking refers to a website that pays a third party for a backlink that links to it. The majority of these paid link farms or mills are illegitimate websites that offer no value to yours.
- Forum Or Blog Comment: Backlinks can occasionally come through forum or blog comments that point to your website. If these comments come from sketchy/illegitimate websites that have no relevance to your niche, your website’s quality could be compromised.
How to Check for Toxic Backlinks?
You can check for toxic backlinks by doing an audit of your whole website. There are several tools available where you can run such audits and find toxic backlinks. Semrush’s backlink audit tool is one of the most reliable tools out there. This tool collects its own data and has access to a wide collection of backlinks when connected to Google Search Console.
After establishing a connection between semrush and your Google Search Console account, you may examine a comprehensive list of the domains referring to your website, including links that are toxic, potentially toxic, and non-toxic.
How to Remove Toxic Backlinks?
Once you have identified and compiled a list of the low-quality backlinks you have on your website, you can start the removal process:
- It is recommended that you first get in touch with the website’s owner and ask that the link to your website be taken down. This step might be challenging since sometimes it can be difficult to find a direct point of contact for the website that is referring back to your site.
- After contacting the site owner, you must wait for a response; occasionally, you may receive a prompt reply, and other times, you may not receive one at all. However, it is always advised to hold off on the last step for at least a month to wait for a reply.
- If you don’t hear back after contacting the site owner, you can move on to the last stage. By using the Google Disavow tool to file a disavow request, you can remove the toxic backlink for good.
The Bottom Line
Backlinks are as important as ever for your website’s position and exposure. Ensuring that your site is free of toxic backlinks is the first step towards improving the general health of your site and boosting your SEO ranking.
It is always advised to do a backlink audit from time to time after filing the disavow claim to make sure that your website maintains the best possible health and to ward off potential Google penalties.
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