
Believe it or not, there is a such a thing as a bad backlink.
Yes, links mean traffic and a boost to your rankings in search results. In fact, Google incorporating links into its algorithm via PageRank is a major part of its success. But that doesn’t mean they’re all good.
Some links can actually detrimental to your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts and, like a toxic friendship or overripe banana, need to be thrown or forced out.
The Truth About Links
Most websites would agree (the successful ones, at least) that it is better to have one link from a respected website in your industry than to have two or three links from off-topic or spammy websites — especially if these irrelevant websites contain no other content besides the links. Most websites follow the established rule — Links that are advertisements or sponsored links should be marked ‘NoFollow,’ which tells search engines not to view them as recommendations. Having ‘NoFollow’ tags can discourage spammers from targeting your site and give you more control. Paid links can also discourage Google from ranking you, so using the ‘NoFollow’ attribute tells search engines that your organic links are trustworthy. Since Google’s Penguin Algorithm was announced in April of 2012, checking all backlinks to your website has become critical to your SEO. Penguin was created to reduce the ranking of sites that used link spam to artificially boost rankings and actively concentrates on attempts to manipulate search engine results. So, manually-implemented “unnatural link” penalties have been handed out to websites much more frequently. Unnatural links are any links acquired using methods that violate Google’s quality guidelines. For example, buying and selling links on your website. This is an unnatural link building technique and you will see consequences if you don’t put a ‘NoFollow’ tag on them. Another example of unnatural links can be seen in those from link-swapping schemes. Google has gotten smarter and can recognize when sites are swapping links with each other to boost each other’s link profile. Another indicator of a bad link-building technique is ‘exact-match anchor text.’ For example, it would be unnatural for every single one of your links to use the phrase cheapest apartments in New York, rather than a mix of what you’re selling and your brand name. All of Google’s unnatural link penalties are done for the sake of transparency and trust. Google rewards sites that aren’t trying to pull the wool over their user’s eyes.How Do You Find Your Bad Backlinks?
Before doing anything else, you should make sure your site is registered and verified with Google Search Console (be sure to verify both www and non-www versions of your domain). If and when you receive a penalty, Google Search Console (GSC) will notify you and allow you to recover your website – as long as the penalty was manually issued. Once you’re all set up, you can use the tool to discover your backlinks! To do so, follow these steps in Google: 1. On the GSC page, click your site. 2. Click Search Traffic on the dashboard and then click links to your site. 3. Click more under who links the most. 4. Click ‘download more sample links.’- Linking page relevance. Do the page and domain have anything to do with your page’s topic? Be on the lookout for pages dedicated to hosting links to other sites, as this is a sign of reciprocal link schemes.
- Linking domain quality. Is the site linking to your page a legitimate website, or does it look like a shady directory site or content farm dedicated to serving ads and affiliate links? Note that pages with ads and affiliate links can be legitimate, so you’ll have to use your own judgment when deciding if a domain is legitimate or not.
- Anchor text. Again, relevance is key here. Is the link’s anchor text on-topic for both your page and the linking site’s content? A link with random text dropped randomly into the page content will not look good to Google.
- Diverse anchor text. If all (or most) of your links contain keyword-rich anchor text, your link profile will look unnatural. A good link profile will contain a wide variety of keywords, as well branded terms and generic words like “here” or “this”.
- Diverse domains. A large number of links from a small number of domains does not look natural to Google. A natural link profile shouldn’t have more than a few links from each domain. This, of course, excludes Web 2.0 platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and WordPress.
- Natural link velocity. Link velocity refers to the speed at which a page builds links. Pages typically build links slowly and evenly over time. Building a huge number of links in a short amount of time is the sign of an unnatural link scheme. Of course, this does not apply to pages that go viral. So you must balance this criterion against the other two to determine the quality of your link profile.