Toxic Links: Why They Matter And How To Find And Remove Them

Featured article by Matthew Davis, Inbound Marketer and Blogger for Future Hosting

We all know that links matter for search engine ranking, but not all links are equal. Google profiles the types of incoming links a site has and the balance of link types when deciding on the quality of site. Some links are considered good, some are considered neutral, and some are considered bad. Bad or toxic links have the potential to drag a site down in the SERPs, but, fortunately, there are tools available to mitigate the impact of toxic links.

What Are Toxic Links?

Toxic links are those that send a signal to Google that a site is likely to provide a poor experience for searchers. Google does not trust toxic links or unnatural link profiles, which it defines as “a pattern of unnatural, artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to your site”. Google may apply a manual penalty to sites with unnatural link profiles.

Toxic links take various forms.

– Links from bad neighborhoods are backlinks from the less salubrious parts of the Internet: porn sites, malware sites, and sites that engage in black hat SEO practices. In some cases, entirely innocent sites may be considered part of a bad neighborhood because they share an IP with an affected site.

– In the past, SEOs engaged in bad link-building practices leaving many sites dealing with links from spam sites, spam forum posts, spam blog comments, content farms, blog networks, article directories, and so on, resulting in large numbers of links with identical anchor text from irrelevant domains. None of these links will lead Google to believe that a site is of high quality.

– Paid-for links can be very harmful to a site’s search engine optimization, although the practice was widely adopted by SEOs in the past.

In short, toxic links are those that contribute to an unnatural link profile: a profile that does not appear to have grown organically as the result of links created for editorial purposes.

Finding Toxic Links

If a site has a manual penalty applied, Google will send the webmaster a notification along with a sample of the toxic links, but site owners should be proactive about finding and removing toxic links: manual penalties aren’t the only result and they could have a silent but substantial impact on search ranking.

There are a number of tools that help webmasters and SEOs perform link audits.

– Google Webmaster Toolsshould be the first port of call. It gives site owners the option to download a list of links which can be imported into a spreadsheet and examined for links that break Google’s linking guidelines.

– There are a number of link auditing toolsthat will deliver information about a site’s backlinks, including Majestic SEO, Ahrefs, and Open Site Explorer.

Removing Toxic Links

If, after examining your site’s link profile, you have determined that it contains toxic links, you have a couple of options for removing them.

The first step is to contact the webmaster of the domain in question and ask that the links be removed. You can locate contact information on the website itself or with a whoisrequest on the domain. It’s inadvisable to attempt strong-arm tactics such as legal threats, especially if the bad links are a result of previous SEO efforts. It’s usually better to ask first, but in many cases the request will be declined or ignored: webmasters are growing weary of link removal requests.

If contacting the domain owner is unsuccessful or the volume of toxic links is such that it’s impractical , the next step is Google’s Link Disavowal Tool, which allows site owners to upload a list of links and domains that they would like to be disregarded by Google. The Link Disavowal Tool should be used with care, because errors can result in good links being disavowed.

Removing toxic links is a straightforward, if time-consuming process, and it can have a significant impact on search ranking, particularly if a domain has previously been involved in black hat link-building.

About Matthew Davis — Matthew works as an inbound marketer and blogger for Future Hosting, a leading provider of VPS hosting. Follow Future Hosting on Twitter at @fhsales, Like them on Facebook and check out their tech/hosting blog,http://www.futurehosting.com/blog.