Can Toxic Backlinks Hurt My Website Rankings?

One of the most important factors for hitting top rankings in Google search results is website backlinks.

Most SEO professionals know this but not all of them know that quality always precedes quantity.

This means that if you are acquiring website backlinks, you need to consider several factors.

Recently, as a dedicated Digital Marketing Agency, we were working for one of the biggest skill gaming websites in India and their website lost all its rankings. 

After our detailed SEO audit services, we figured out that 96% of the website backlinks were coming from outside India.

The websites that were linked to this site were Argentina, Russia, Italy, China etc.

A lot of these websites were not at all relevant. A lot of these links were coming from explicit adult content and dating sites that were not relevant to the business.

What Happened to this Gaming Website?

Simple, this website got penalized and was not even ranking for any of the keywords in the top 50 results.

It had to.

Google is not going to spare you from such a backlink practice.

So can a bad backlink hurt your website?

Certainly.

Imagine you have a ‘real estate website’ that gets a backlink from another website that offers groceries. 

These two do not match and are unrelated. Moreover, if the groceries website that links to your real estate website is full of duplicate content and links to almost everyone for money, it makes the situation even worse.

The fact is that a bad or toxic backlink can do more harm than a good backlink can benefit.

Want to hire a performance-driven Agency which offers quality Real Estate Digital Marketing Services and efficiently resolves your backlink issue? Contact Uvisible NOW!

In this blog, we’ll discuss what are bad backlinks and how such toxic backlinks affect your search engine results, offer strategies for removing them, and outline steps you can do to strengthen your backlink profile. 

Read on if you’re worried about the value of your backlinks and want to be sure they’re boosting, rather than dragging down, your website’s search engine rankings.

What are Bad Backlinks?

Not all links are created equal when it comes to backlinks. Some links can be damaging to the rankings and reputation of your website. 

Here are a few things to keep an eye out for:

The Danger of Low Domain Trust Scores for Your Backlink Profile

Backlinks from websites with poor domain trust scores might harm your website’s rankings. 

These sites may have a history of spamming, or they may simply be untrustworthy. 

When you acquire a backlink from a site with a poor trust score, search engines may conclude that your site is similarly of low quality.

Why Duplicate Content is Bad News for Your Backlink Profile

A mirrored page is a copy of a website that is hosted on a separate domain. Mirrored pages can be established to help in backlink building. 

This is a spammy practice that can impact the rankings of your website. 

Search engines prefer original, high-quality material, which mirrored pages do not provide.

Looking to learn more about backlink profiles, their types, and what they mean for your SEO? Click on “What is a Backlink in SEO?” and gain a deeper understanding of the impact that backlinks can have on your website’s rankings and overall success.

How Poor Page Layouts Can Lead to Toxic Backlinks

Backlinks from pages with a sloppy layout or design might be harmful. 

A website with a lot of advertisements, pop-ups, or other distracting features on the page might negatively impact the user experience. 

When consumers have a negative experience on a website, they are less inclined to return. This might have a detrimental influence on the traffic and rankings of your website.

Irrelevant content, too many links from a single source, and links from sites with a history of spammy behaviour are all criteria that might make a backlink poisonous. 

It’s critical to be on the lookout for any website backlinks that might impact your website’s rankings and reputation. 

You may assist your website get higher rankings and more visitors by remaining on top of your backlink profile and constantly trying to generate high-quality connections.

Do Backlinks affect my Rankings?

Bad backlinks or toxic backlinks can harm your website’s ranking and even result in penalties. 

Here are some ways in which bad backlinks can hurt your website’s ranking:

1. Penalty from Search Engines

Websites that participate in unethical or spammy linking practices are penalised by search engines such as Google. 

If a search engine discovers that your website contains bad or toxic backlinks, it may penalise it by decreasing its rating or even eliminating it from its index.

2. Lower Trust and Authority

Backlinks provide trust and authority. 

Bad or toxic backlinks can damage the credibility and authority of your website. 

This might have a detrimental influence on your website’s ranking and visibility in SERPs.

3. Negative User Experience

If your website has bad or toxic backlinks, the user experience will suffer. 

When users click on a backlink, they may wind up on a spammy or irrelevant website. 

This might result in a poor user experience and a lower possibility of people returning to your site.

Types of Bad Backlinks to Avoid

Knowing the negative impact that bad backlinks may have on your website’s ranking, it is critical to be aware of a few sorts of bad backlinks that should be avoided at all costs.

1. Paid Links

Paid backlinks are against search engine standards. Paid links are frequently of poor quality and originate from unrelated or spammy websites. 

Google can readily discover bought links and penalise your website for using them.

2. Spammy or Irrelevant Websites

Your site’s search engine rankings may drop if it receives backlinks from spammy or unrelated websites. 

These websites typically need better writing, recycled material, and spammy external connections. 

Your site’s credibility and authority may suffer if these sites link back to you.

3. Link Exchanges

When two websites agree to connect, they are said to have “exchanged links.” 

Despite appearances, doing business with a spammy or irrelevant website might hurt your search engine rankings. 

Google will punish your site if it finds evidence of link exchanges on it.

4. Beware of Website Header and Footer Links

Header and footer links are frequently used to help visitors navigate, but they may also be used to influence search engine results. 

Excessive usage of header and footer links, particularly those with exact match anchor text, might result in a Google penalty. 

It is critical to utilise these links selectively and to ensure that they are related to the page’s content.

How to Identify Toxic Backlinks

Bad backlinks can’t be fixed unless they’re discovered. You may identify poor website backlinks using a variety of tools and strategies, including:

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free service that allows you to track and analyse the performance of your website in Google search results. 

It also offers information on the backlinks pointing to your website.

To uncover potentially problematic backlinks, utilise Google Search Console’s Links report. 

Backlinks from low-quality, irrelevant, or spammy websites should be avoided. 

You may also use Google Search Console’s Disavow tool to request that Google disregard particular hyperlinks referring to your site.

Backlink Analysis Software

There are various backlink analysis tools accessible to assist you in identifying subpar backlinks. 

These tools assess the quality of website backlinks using various measures such as domain authority, page authority, trust flow, citation flow, and spam score.

Popular backlink analysis tools include Ahrefs, Majestic, Moz, SEMrush, and LinkResearchTools.

Manual Examination

A manual evaluation of your backlink profile is another technique to uncover subpar backlinks. 

This entails examining each backlink and assessing its quality, relevancy, and authority.

This strategy is time-consuming, yet it is quite successful in finding problematic backlinks. 

Look for backlinks from sites that have no connection to the content of your website or have been marked as spammy or low-quality.

How to Remove Toxic Backlinks

Once you’ve identified bad backlinks to your website, you must take action to remove or disavow them. There are various methods for dealing with bad backlinks, including:

1. Contact the Website Owner

If you discover a poor-quality backlink pointing to your website, the first step is to contact the website owner and request that the link be removed. 

You can reach them by email or via a contact form on their website.

In your request, be polite and professional, and explain why the link is damaging to your website. 

Provide them with the URL of the page that contains the backlink and request that it be removed. 

Allow some time for them to respond, but if they do not respond or refuse to remove the link, proceed to the next step.

2. Call for a Review

If your website has earned a manual penalty as a result of toxic backlinks, such backlinks must be identified and removed as quickly as possible. 

Once the problem has been resolved, you can request reconsideration from Google via the Google Search Console.

It is crucial to remember that the review procedure might take up to 30 days because Google gets around 20,000 reconsideration petitions each month out of the 400,000 manual penalties imposed. 

As a result, before submitting the request, be sure that all bad backlinks have been eliminated. 

In addition, offer a full explanation of the activities you took to resolve the issue and prevent it from recurring in the future.

3. Disavow the Backlinks

If you cannot delete bad backlinks manually, you may utilise Google Search Console’s Disavow tool to request that Google disregard such connections. 

This tool allows you to input a list of URLs or domains that you wish Google to ignore while analysing the backlink profile of your website.

However, the Disavow tool should be used with caution. 

If you disavow too many website backlinks, you can unintentionally eliminate some valuable links that enhance your rankings.

4. Create High-Quality Backlinks

You must develop high-quality backlinks from authoritative, relevant, and trustworthy websites to offset the negative impact of low-quality backlinks. 

Content marketing, guest blogging, influencer outreach, and other link-building methods can help with this.

You may increase your website’s trust, authority, relevance, and topical authority by developing a strong and diversified backlink profile, which can assist boost your search engine ranks and deliver more organic visitors to your site.

Summing Up!

In conclusion, we hope you must have got the answers to the following questions:

• What are bad backlinks?
• Do backlinks affect my rankings?
• How to remove toxic backlinks?

And, also understood how toxic backlinks can have a detrimental impact on your website’s search engine rankings, trust, authority, relevance, and topical authority. 

It’s important to identify and disavow bad backlinks and focus on building high-quality backlinks to improve your website’s performance in search results.

Looking for a trustworthy SEO Outsourcing Company to assist you in constructing top-notch backlinks while steering clear of harmful ones? 

Look no further than Uvisible! 

Discover how our services can boost your website’s search engine ranking. Contact us now to learn more.