Everyone is after the formula to make their business successful online in this modern digital age. So let us tell you the secret formula, and it is a comprehensive SEO strategy. A comprehensive SEO plan that understands the soul of your business and the goals you expect from the business is the only way through which you can boost your business online these days. But making an SEO plan is not a simple job. It requires expertise from a professional SEO company that can understand your goals and objectives. Also, SEO involves many crucial things that can severely affect the plan’s outcomes. One of such critical factors is backlinks. So today, we will talk about toxic backlinks and how you can avoid them for successful SEO outcomes.

 

But before that, let’s talk a little about how SEO works and how backlinks are important in SEO.

 

SEO and backlinks

SEO involves various techniques and strategies that optimize your online presence to rank better in search engine search results and is more credible for your audience and the search engine. Once your business rank higher in the search results, it will be more prominent, visible, and attractive to the audience, and hence your organic traffic flux will grow. And more traffic implies more revenue generation. It might seem a simple process to many, but that’s not the case, as many things affect an SEO plan. And one of them is backlinks.

 

Backlinks are like the backbone of any comprehensive SEO plan. Quality backlinks are like credibility certificates that the content you are producing is very engaging and informative and many people like to link to it as an informational source. It helps in ensuring the search engine that your website has relevant, informative content and is a credible source for your information for the audience. It greatly helps in improving your ranking in search results. But the problem is that all backlinks cannot be taken as quality backlinks. Some of the backlinks can be toxic backlinks that can lag your SEO strategy’s growth rather than improve it. So, let’s talk about these toxic backlinks, how you can identify them and how to avoid them. So, let’s get started.

 

What are Toxic Backlinks?

We have talked about the significance of backlinks and how they are essential to strengthen any SEO plan. Indeed, everyone working on making a business successful online is always looking to score as many backlinks as possible. But the crucial thing that most people fail to comprehend is that it’s not the quantity of the backlinks that matters; It is actually the quality that counts. Unfortunately, there are certain kinds of backlinks that can lag the efficiency of your SEO plan rather than improving it. Such backlinks are toxic backlinks. Toxic backlinks are those backlinks that do not come from a relevant or search engine trusted websites and are solely there for improving ranking in search engine results.

 

Toxic backlinks can adversely affect your SEO strategy. They have the potential to discredit your website in search engine’s vision and can also result in losing the engagement of the potential customers. So it’s essential to identify and fix these toxic backlinks. Let us find out the things that make a backlink toxic.

 

What makes the backlink toxic?

Here are a few things that can make backlinks spammy or toxic:

 

• Your backlink can be spammy if it’s linked to a website whose only purpose is to link to other websites.
• If your backlinks are linked to web pages that are irrelevant to your content or are out of context.
• Linking to websites that are not indexed by the search engine can also make the backlinks toxic.
• Backlinks can also be spammy if they are forced into blogs.
• Hidden links in the header are also considered toxic links.
• Backlinks tagged as promotional are spammy for the search engine.

 

Toxic Backlinks and Organic Performance

The question that may arise here is why are toxic backlinks such a big deal? Can’t we ignore them? Well, you can never ignore the existence or risk of toxic backlinks as they badly affect the performance of your SEO plan. Search engine algorithms keep a keen check on spammy backlinks. The search engine can not only question your credibility, but you can also be penalized. Moreover, your competitors in the market can also report your website on toxic backlinks. It can affect your SEO plan in the following ways.

 

• Spammy backlinks can result in losing search engines’ trust and credibility.
• They can badly affect your search result ranking.
• Also, toxic backlinks can contribute to lesser traffic flux, ultimately impacting your revenue generation.
• Poor user experience is another drawback of spammy links.
• And in some adverse cases, your website can be added to an algorithmic filter by the search engine.

 

All these things show how toxic backlinks can negatively affect your SEO performance and organic traffic flux.

 

How to find toxic Backlinks?

 

The number one and most crucial step to fixing toxic backlinks is identifying them correctly. For better performance of your SEO plan and achieving the set SEO goals, it’s crucial to look for toxic backlinks regularly. Here is how you can identify toxic or spammy links:

 

• Set SEO regular audits, especially when you feel a sudden drop in traffic flow.
• Several backlinks audits can help you list out the toxic backlinks.
• Once you have the list of the toxic backlinks, the next step is to analyze which particular toxic link is lagging your traffic flow. Fixing those toxic links can help you regain your traffic and rebuild a trusty relationship with the search engine.

 

How Fix Spam Links?

As you might have an idea now about how toxic backlinks can affect your organic traffic and your revenue generation. So, let’s get started with how to fix these toxic backlinks. There are two main approaches to moving forward with setting spam links. One is by removing them, and the other is by disavowing them. So, let’s take a look at both these approaches:

 

• Once you have identified the toxic link causing trouble, you need to move forward to fix it. In the cases of super spammy links, it is better to eliminate them, if you have access to them or you need to contact the website from where the link comes from. Request them to remove that link.
• The other approach to fix the spam link is to disavow it. This approach is usually followed when you cannot remove the spammy links. In this approach, you send a request to Google to ignore certain links through the Google disavow tool. Using this tool, you have to upload a file containing all the spammy links. This step might take time, but it will ultimately help ensure that toxic links are not affecting your traffic flux anymore.

 

How to Prevent Toxic Backlinks?

There are specific steps that you can take to avoid getting toxic backlinks in the first place. Here they are:

 

• It’s not a good idea to pay for backlinks. It’s better to create informative and engaging content to which other credible websites can link. It is how you can earn quality backlinks which are way better than hundreds of toxic backlinks.
• Adding backlinks in comments to other blog posts can leave a wrong impression. Google might take it as a weird way to boost your SEO. It can end up badly for your website’s credibility.
• Making searching for toxic backlinks a regular part of your SEO plan can help you avoid spammy links.

 

How to Remove Spammy Backlinks from Website

The biggest problem you might face related to spammy backlinks is how to get rid of them. So here are some simple yet effective ways to remove toxic backlinks:

 

Type of Links Spam You Want to Identify

The first step to getting rid of spammy links is to identify the links you don’t want. Here are the links that you need to avoid at every cost:

 

• Links from the websites that are penalized by Google.
• Backlinks that link to websites in the foreign languages
• Links to irrelevant websites
• It would help if you also avoided backlinks from the link farms and bad neighborhood websites, for example, gambling websites, etc.

 

Find from Where These Backlinks Come From

The next step is to identify the source of spammy links on your website. Regular audits are necessary to check on toxic links, especially at times when you are experiencing a sudden dip in your website traffic. Several tools can help you single out the toxic links and the domains they link to.

 

Request Removal from Webmaster

Once you are sure about the toxic links that mess up your traffic, you need to remove them immediately. You can email the source website and request the removal of the link. But usually, it’s of no use, but it still is a mandatory first step for the removal of spammy links.

 

Create and submit Disavow File to Google

Most of the time, removal requests are not answered. In such cases, you need to notify google about the toxic links so that it can ignore those links in the future. For this step, you need to prepare a disavow file and upload it using the Google disavow tool. This step might take several weeks, but it’s worth the wait as it will ensure that the toxic backlinks are not affecting your website’s traffic anymore.

 

Final Thoughts

That was all about toxic backlinks, what they are, how they can affect your SEO performance, and how to get rid of them. Hopefully, following these simple steps, you can get rid of spammy backlinks and ensure a natural flow of organic traffic to your website. It will help you in boosting your business and multiplying your revenue.