Your Question is What is a Toxic link? How can we say that a link is toxic? What can be done to remove Toxic Links from a site? well. Lets Discuss.
A link or hyperlink is a highlighted text or image by clicking on which a user is directed to the reference website asset in the link. They may also be directed to the same webpage or website. So, different websites can point to a particular website through hyperlinks.
Backlinks or links inbound to a website are important in the world of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Backlinks from different websites (which are considered relevant, trustworthy, and authoritative in their respective fields) to a target website can increase the target website’s ranking and authority. Search engines use links as one of the factors to determine the ranking of websites.
Usually, a website’s traffic and reputation grow organically over time. As the website becomes popular due to its content and relevance in the field, it earns references or links from other similar websites or blogs.
This increases a website’s ranking and credibility. These earned links are a natural consequence of a website’s evolution. But regarding toxic links, this may not always be the case.
What is a toxic link?
Not all the backlinks to a website give equal reputation to a website. Some backlinks may even harm a website’s ranking or the search engine might remain indifferent to them while considering rank.
Toxic links are the backlinks that harm a website’s SEO thereby costing the website its ability to rank well in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). Such links originate either from suspicious websites or might have been obtained through illicit means. Also, If a link is not editorially initiated, contextually irrelevant, and doesn’t add much value, then it may be considered inorganic and toxic.
Toxic links present a danger because websites having such backlinks are likely to be penalized by an algorithmic or manual action from the search engine at some point in time. This would result in decreased website rankings, or even de-indexing or ban from the search engine, depending upon the degree of violation of guidelines.
How can we say a link is toxic?
If we have backlinks from websites that have major cyber-security issues such as hacked websites, then such links are considered toxic links. Links from excessively monetized websites that have multiple pop-ups and aggressive advertising are also considered toxic links.
Links that have been obtained from link trading websites, link farms, and other websites created specifically to produce a high volume of links are also considered toxic links. It is advisable to stay away from private blog networks which are basically link farms in disguise.
To sum up, paid links, links received from link schemes, link wheels and blog networks, and links from porn, gaming, pharma, or payday loans sites are considered toxic links.
If a link is not relevant to our website or users it should not be in our profile- this can be used as a good rule of thumb to stay away and identify suspicious or toxic links.
Toxic links can be identified from other factors or actions as well, these can be:
- If we have received Google Webmasters warning related to toxic backlinks profile of the website.
- If our website’s organic traffic level has decreased suddenly, then it may be possible that it has been hit by Google Penguin algorithm or served with a manual penalty by Google. Toxic backlinks might be the possible cause of such decreased traffic.
- We can do a backlink audit of our website. There are various tools available to analyze backlinks to a website. These tools assess a website over multiple toxic markers and then categorises the possible type of link toxicity.
What can we do to remove Toxic links from a site?
Now that the toxic backlinks have been identified and categorized through the use of various tools, various actions could be taken to remove them. These actions could be taken according to the
Toxic links could be a few in numbers, but the chances are that an old website might have hundreds or even thousands of backlinks pointing out to them. One might have to go through all individual links and decide on a case-wise basis to determine their relevancy and then the action required to be taken on them. Not all the toxic backlinks pointing to our website could be removed. But one can try to identify and remove as many as one can.
The following actions could be taken:
Outreach request to webmasters
Asking website owners to remove links related to our website or brand is the best way to get rid of those toxic links. It takes effort and skill but would work with a lot of success rate.
Form outreach messages for each link’s webmaster and if multiple links are from a single domain, they could be bundled into a single outreach message. Find out contact information from sites holding the concerning backlinks. Keep the outreach message simple, to the point, and polite as far as possible. Also, give a possible explanation of why we want that particular link to be removed.
Once outreach messages have been sent, monitor the actions taken from the next week. Keep regular updates on the progress and follow up. If the link is gone, send a message of thanks to the website owner. If the link persists, send a follow-up message.
If the website owner replies with a refusal, then give a few more efforts to convince him. But this should not be pushed too far to annoy the owner, as it may result in more toxic backlinks.
The thing with manual outreach is that it has to be polite and persistent.
Resort to legal recourse
Sometimes, manual and polite outreach might not yield desirable results. Using a lawyer and legal means to get a toxic link removed is an effective way, but it is a bit expensive.
However, if our company or website is a larger one, this approach might appear pretty reasonable. This approach can be highly effective if the toxic links are connected to some objectionable material, copyright, hate speech, etc. as getting them removed would have legal backing.
This highly effective approach, in most cases, would be less worth the time, money, and effort. So, use it wisely.
Disavowing Links
When there is a huge number of toxic backlinks, one can ask Google to ignore or not consider such links. This is called as disavowing links, i.e. one acknowledges here that those links have nothing to do with our website and we are not responsible for those links. Disavowing could be done after outreach efforts have failed or possible legal actions have been exhausted.
With the help of appropriate tools, one could select multiple links to be disavowed. We can choose to either disavow the URL or the domain. On the tool, one could also export the disavow file so that it can be uploaded to the Search Engine’s account as evidence of the action taken.
One should keep in mind that disavowing links doesn’t help us shield completely from the Google Penguin penalty. Even after this one has to even manually remove each and every toxic link in case of a Google penalty.
After the toxic backlinks are removed, a reconsideration request has to be filed with Google. This is a way of saying that mistakes were committed on our part. This reconsideration request contains an outline of steps taken to rectify the penalty along with supporting documents as evidence of such an action.
This also contains a promise that one would follow best and ethical SEO practices in the future and follow all guidelines of the Search Engine.
It may take more than a week for Google to respond to our submission and then after verification, the penalty might be lifted up.
Performing a backlink audit is a time-consuming and onerous task, but its result is totally worth the effort. It is better to hire or take the services of a good SEO consultant or a company to stay away from such troubles.
Build healthy links to overcome toxic links
Removing toxic backlinks may be called a defensive strategy. Attracting excellent backlinks to a website would be a good offensive strategy. Such healthy links are organic or natural backlinks.
They are placed by real persons on their website when they think such links serve a useful purpose for their audience, adds value to their website, and are totally relevant.
Using the previous methods, more than 97% percent of toxic links could be tackled. It would be better to invest time and resources to attract high-quality links as algorithm such as Google’s Penguin (which deals with toxic links also) is based on some kind of ratio between low and high-quality links.
By earning organic links, one can boost a website’s credibility and ranking. More the natural backlinks, the more likely they would be considered by Google and inorganic or toxic links would be ignored as they decay or lose value over a period.