Toxic Backlinks: What Are They and How to Fix Them?

Link buildingLink building is a process of acquiring links pointing to your website. These links are obtained by creating content, participating in social media or commenting on other blogs. is a pretty important component of any effective SEO campaign. By generating a healthy collection of high-quality linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages. to a specific webpage, search engines like Google use this as evidence that your content is relevant and beneficial to their audience. The result: your site is propelled upwards in those all-important search rankings.

An immense amount of work is required to land on the first page of Google. However, that work can quickly become undone if your high-quality backlinks are superseded by those which are toxic.  

To limit the potential damage caused by toxic backlinks, this guide is here to help explain what toxic backlinks are, how to identify them, how to fix them, and much more.  

What are toxic backlinks? 

As the name suggests, toxic backlinks – also known as spammy or bad links – are harmful to a website’s search ranking performance. These are unnatural links found on low authority or external junk sites. Aside from harming your site’s search rank, it can also lead to further penalties being dished out by Google.  

There are different ways in which toxic backlinks can be created. Perhaps the most common is due to working with the wrong SEO company. For instance, you may have been enticed by the low price advertised for an assortment of beneficial backlinks. There’s just one issue: these links are the opposite of beneficial and are gained from spammy sites. 

This doesn’t necessarily mean an SEO firm acted with deceitful intentions from the get-go. It could be a case of them not being updated about current industry practices or not adhering to webmaster guidelines. Yet this laziness, lack of attention, or whatever you want to call it can ultimately lead to severe damage to your site’s online marketability.   

There’s also the possible situation where unscrupulous competitors do purposefully attack your site with toxic backlinks. This devious tactic is used to negatively impact your site’s organic rank with lasting consequences. The thought process being your site plummets down the search rankings, opening the door for the competitor to take its place.   

How do toxic backlinks impact SEO and website traffic?

In recent years, Google has put in a concerted effort to limit the destruction caused by toxic backlinks. In fact, many spammy links are now being completely ignored by the search engine giants. Yet some are still slipping through the net, and they can cause a lot of unnecessary heartache for your SEO campaign.  

If these unnatural links stick around, they can have a negative impact on your website’s SERP rankings. Even if you are on the first page for your targeted keywords, this link toxicity could see your site disappear from any meaningful search visibility – effectively wiping out your organic trafficOrganic search traffic (sometimes called natural or unpaid search) is the traffic that's driven to a website because of unpaid placement on a search engine results page. from the likes of Google.  

It can get even worse. If Google realises your site has a high volume of toxic backlinks, they can exclude your site entirely from their database. If you fail to remove these bad links, a Penguin penalty can also be sent in your direction.  

Due to how they can erode your SEO efforts, it is imperative you take the necessary actions to remove toxic backlinks as soon as possible.  

What backlinks are viewed as toxic?

Technically speaking, any backlink that’s irrelevant to your website’s content is viewed as “bad”. An exception to this rule is if you receive an editorial link from a major publication. However, there are certain types of backlinks you want to 100% ensure are never associated with your site. These include: 

• Link farms and link directories 
• Penalised domains 
• “Bad neighbourhood” domains (about adult, drugs, etc.) 
• Foreign language websites 

• Exact-match anchor textAnchor text is the text highlighted by a hyperlink. The words highlighted are crucial for SEO, informing Google’s crawling bots about the content of the site linked to. links in large volume 

Fortunately, Google is aware nobody attempting to rank high would purposely build links on the likes of penalised and “bad neighbourhood” domains. As a result, they tend to ignore these poisonous backlinks completely.  

When it comes to foreign language sites and exact-match anchor text links, the story is different. Google could view these as your attempt to manipulate the rankings, and they can punish you as a result – even if you weren’t behind these toxic links being created.  

Using Technology to identify toxic backlinks

You know the types of toxic backlinks to watch out for. Yet this doesn’t help in terms of identifying where these links are coming from. The positive news is that there are many tools available to help you fix the issue of toxic backlinks. The following options are all highly rated:  

• Moz 
• SEMRush 
• Ahrefs 

As you would expect, each piece of software offers its own set of features, metrics, and pricing plan. This is especially pertinent in terms of their definition of what is – and isn’t – a “toxic” backlink. For example, SEMRush’s app may deem a link as “toxic”, whereas Moz might not flag it as spam because they use different definitions. 

It’s impractical to pay for and use multiple SEO tools such as those listed for finding toxic links, which is why it is recommended to use Monitor Backlinks. This platform lists everything from Domain Authority by Ahrefs to Moz’s spam score, giving you a more accurate overall picture about your backlinks – all in one place. This is helpful when you come across links that teeter between ‘likely harmless’ and ‘spammy’.  

Ultimately, getting rid of toxic backlinks is a fairly time-consuming process. Due to this, you want to be absolutely certain that it’s worth going after a specific link. This is why, above all else, you must select an expert backlink tool for identifying bad links. 

For added convenience, it is also advised you use a downloadable CSV file. By doing this, you can order and sort your data, which is beneficial when deciding which external websites to contact about those bad links directing to your site. 

How to fix toxic backlinks

To eradicate any present toxic backlinks, there are two main steps to take. These are contacting a website directly to request removal and using the ‘disavow links’ tool by Google.  

Contact webmaster to request link removal 

The first step in the process is to contact the webmasters of any offending websites directly. It is an awkward and arduous step, admittedly, but it’s one that must be made in the mission to fix your toxic backlinks.  

Why? Because Google requests you do it before they can step in to help.  

Trying to find contact information for a webmaster can be difficult. This is especially the case when it comes to dodgy websites where they don’t want their contact information plastered around for everyone to see. If you cannot find an email address or generic contact page, which will be the situation 90% of the time, you will have to do some digging.  

In this situation, you should start by using the WHOISA whois directory is a database that contains information about domain ownership. Domain Lookup tool. Simply add the site’s domain nameA domain name is the address of a website and is a necessary part of the process of establishing a web presence., do a quick search, and it will share with you whatever contact information is publicly available. In most cases, the listings will be devoid of a real name or email address.  

If you cannot find an email address, or you contacted the webmaster but didn’t receive a response, you should get in touch with the site’s hosting company. Generally, they will be able to provide assistance if you ask them to help in removing any identified spam backlinks. Use WhoIsHostingThis for instant information on who the host is for a site. 

The Google Disavow Tool 

Even after you go through with all of the above, the most likely scenario is you will have to turn to Google to resolve your toxic links problem. This is done through the platform’s disavow links tool page. 

Before you go to that page, however, you will have to put in some legwork. This is because you first need to produce a list of links you want to disavow.  

This list, which is created in .txt format, can contain two types of URL links. Firstly, you can decide to disavow a website’s specific page/URL address. Alternatively, you can disavow the entire website and all of its pages. If you go with the latter, you have to add a “domain:” prefix for Google to recognise it correctly.  

For added clarification, you have the option to add comments along with your list of URLs. Comments are indicated when you use a # to start a line. For example:  

# One page to disavow

http://toxic.link.com/example/paid-links.html

Once the list is complete, you can upload it to Google. Note: only one disavow list is allowed for each property you own.  

If there are any issues with your list, Google will notify you of any errors immediately. You can then rectify these issues and attempt to upload it again. Once accepted, you will need to display some patience. Google can take a few weeks before the list is incorporated into its crawling index.  

Remember: proceed with caution when using Google’s disavow tool. It should only be utilised when absolutely necessary. Also, make sure you do a complete analysis of your site’s backlinks profile – one slip-up, and you could end up disavowing high-quality backlinks and sinking your organic rankings.  

Tips to prevent link toxicity and protect your backlink profile

You have put in all the necessary steps and got rid of the toxic links, this must surely mean that your work is done? Sadly, this won’t be the case. Protecting your backlink profile – and by extension, preventing link toxicity – is a continuing effort.  

To maintain a healthy backlink profile, there are numerous steps you can take. These include:  

• Regularly monitoring for toxic links: If your site is prominent in the Google search rankings, it is ripe for attacks from competitors. This means toxic backlinks are going to be produced consistently. It also means you need to keep a regular check for these spam links. When done consistently, the job is small enough to not cause you too much of a headache. 
• Only use reputable SEO agencies: Aside from competitors trying to bring you down, the other source for toxic links is SEO agencies that take shortcuts. They might promise you the world – well, the #1 spot on Google – for a bargain price, but it’s a classic case of you get what you pay for. As a result, if you decide to outsource your link building strategy, only use a highly rated SEO agency (like us!). A good SEO agency will be able to locate great blogs to provide quality backlinks via a Blogger Outreach service.  

• Avoid old link build strategies: Paid links, backlinks within spun content, links within comments – these tactics used to produce results back in the day. Nowadays, they are a sure-fire way of catching Google’s attention for all the wrong reasons. If you’re link building in-house, ensure you stick with organic methods where your efforts are rewarded.  
• Limit exact match anchor texts: Exact match anchor texts are an effective way to target specific keywords. With that said, if you go overboard with using these anchor texts to link back to your website, they could get flagged by Google. Always attempt to vary up the text used for your link building.  

By staying on top of your link building efforts, you can significantly reduce the impact toxic links have on your site’s organic search visibility.  

How Click Intelligence can help 

It doesn’t matter what area of SEO is involved – for it to be done effectively, you need to utilise an extensive amount of time and resources. This is no different with identifying, removing, and monitoring toxic backlinks.  

This is where Click Intelligence can help. With our Managed SEO services, there’s no need for you to worry about checking for spam links, using the Google disavow tool, spending precious time that’s better served in another area of your business, etc. Our experts know everything there is to know about toxic backlinks.  

With our knowledge, innovative methods, and state-of-the-art technology, we ensure toxic links don’t hamper your SEO campaign. We keep continual track of your backlinks, remove any issues that crop up, and preserve a healthy link profile for your site.