Matthew Widdop
Matty is a Junior SEO Executive at Intelligency, helping our clients to improve their digital performance. Matty is currently studying for his Level 3 Multi-Channel Marketer apprenticeship and has completed a Sport Journalism Degree at the University of Huddersfield.
Toxic backlinks are external links to your site from sites that search engines deem to be “toxic” or bad. In this article, we will discuss everything you need to know about toxic backlinks.
When Google is assessing your site to see if it is a reliable and trustworthy source of information, it checks your backlinks. If you have a number of high quality links from reputable sites then Google knows that your site is also reputable and trustworthy. However, if your links are from untrustworthy sites then this can harm your SEO performance and make sure that your site appears lower down the Search Engine Results Page.
Causes of Toxic Backlinks?
Toxic backlinks are created when links are acquired in an unnatural way. For example, people have been known to pay for large quantities of links. This is because Google takes the amount of links you have into consideration, a more reputable source will likely have more links. Therefore, many users were paying for their links from sources across the web. Google cracked down on this and now hands out penalties to anyone who is suspected of buying links.
Other ways people can acquire toxic backlinks is by listing their site on low quality directories, posting links on other sites and exchanging links with other users. Links need to be earned for Google to view it as a reputable link.
How to Remove Toxic Backlinks?
You can remove toxic backlinks by using the disavow tool. The disavow tool is a tool created by Google that allows users to add their ‘disavow’ list which tells Google you don’t want them to take these links into account when ranking your site.
To remove toxic backlinks you will first need to use a Backlink Audit tool. At Intelligency, we use the SERanking backlink audit tool that gives us all the in depth analysis of our backlink profile. Once you have audited your backlink profile, you can simply export your toxic backlinks and add them to the disavow list on Google Search Console.
How to Gain Reputable Backlinks?
Reputable links are links that have been earned, one way to do this is by creating high-quality content for your website that is useful, that other sites can link to when talking about certain topics. You can also earn backlinks through digital PR. Running a digital marketing campaign that is impactful generates interest in your industry and is newsworthy is a great way to have other sites link to you.
