What is a Toxic Backlink? How to Disavow it?
Perhaps, you have already known what a backlink is, or you haven’t. Backlinks influence a blog domain and page authority and for some reason also have impacts on the blog’s SEO. However, not all backlinks are good for a blog because there are also backlinks that negatively affect a blog’s authority and SEO; these are called spammy or toxic backlinks. You need to be aware that having toxic backlinks can make your blog’s authority dropped and spam score rises. If this happens to your blog, it is very possible that Google will no longer display your blog on the SERP. So, keep an eye on the toxic backlinks and this article will tell you how to get rid of them.
What is a backlink?
Backlink is a term given to links that point to our blog, be it the homepage or certain blog pages. Simply put, backlinks can be thought of as citations to our blog content where a link pointing to our blog is found in the citation. If you have a blog and other bloggers put a link to your blog on their blog, that's called a backlink.
Backlinks can also be found in the comments column on the blog. For example, when you comment on an article on a blog and you put a link to your blog in that comment, that link is also called a backlink. Sharing links on social media also includes backlinks because a social media is basically a web page.
In essence, a link is called a backlink if it points to an external source or a different domain. If the link leads to a different page under the same domain, then it is called an internal link. Backlinks and internal links play different roles. Especially internal links, their function is to build cohesion between one page and other pages on one blog.
Lately, there are many backlink service providers circulating on the internet; most of them are paid services. These backlink service providers offer services to put links pointing to your blog on their website. Some use guest posting techniques, blogrolls, and also "sneaky" techniques such as hiding links on web pages and so on.
Ordinary bloggers are easily influenced by the backlink provision campaign so they buy the service. Without them knowing it, it's not the backlink that big search engines like Google want.
In addition to the disrespectful methods above, many bloggers are also looking for free backlinks by creating accounts on various websites and placing their blog links on these websites, for example in the profile section. Does this method work? In our experience, this method is quite successful but it is not a quality backlink.
What do backlinks do to a blog’s SEO?
Backlinks affect domain authority and page authority scores . The more backlinks that point to our blog, the higher the domain authority of our blog. Why is that? Backlinks affect domain authority scores because backlinks are a reflection of the level of trust people have on our blog.
You must have put other website links to your blog, especially when you quote information from that website (eg Wikipedia or Google Support). You dare to put other website links on your blog because you believe that the website provides reliable and responsible information. That is why the more backlinks that point to your blog, the higher your domain authority.
Quality or healthy backlinks can increase traffic to your blog because visitors to websites that place a link to your blog click on the link because they want to get more information. This is the same as when you read the bibliography of an article to find another article because you want to know more about what the article covers.
How about the SEO of a blog? Can the number of backlinks affect the SEO of a blog? As mentioned above, that backlinks are directly proportional to domain authority, then backlinks have something to do with SEO. Here's the explanation.
Search engines always want to present information that is responsible and does not mislead readers on search results pages (SERPs). In the middle of 2021, Google did a massive update and one of the updates was called the penguin algorithm. In essence, Google performs a strict filtering of search results and will only display web pages that are most relevant to the search keywords and come from trusted sources. This means that backlinks have a direct effect on blog SEO because Google will prioritize blogs that have a high domain authority score.
However, domain authority score is not the only one that is affected by backlinks and affects SEO. We must be wary of unhealthy backlinks because they will increase our blog's spam score. In contrast to the domain authority score, the higher the spam score the worse a blog is in the eyes of search engines. This means that the spam score is a cannibal for the domain authority score. If a blog has a high spam score, search engines will blacklist the blog and not display it on search results pages.
Based on the brief explanation above, it is true that backlinks affect blog SEO because both domain authority scores and spam scores come from backlinks.
Healthy and Toxic Backlink
Backlinks are divided into two categories, namely quality or healthy backlinks and toxic backlinks. A backlink is said to be of quality if: (a) it comes from a website that discusses the same theme, (b) comes from a website that has a high domain authority score, (c) comes from a website that has a low spam score, and (d) comes from a website that puts your blog link in the content and not elsewhere (hidden) on the website page. Meanwhile, a backlink is called toxic if: (a) it comes from a website that does not discuss the same theme, (b) comes from a website that has a domain authority score lower than the spam score, (c) comes from a website that has a high spam score, and (d) comes from a website that hides a link to your blog somewhere on that website.
No blogger wants to get toxic backlinks but we can't always control them. We don't know which websites include our blog links until we do a website audit either by using a service like Ahrefs or Semrush.
Toxic backlinks can come from websites that violate Google or Bing rules. If our blog links are found on websites like this (such as porn sites, online gambling, and so on), then we will get toxic backlinks. In addition, websites that are not relevant to our blog can also generate toxic backlinks. For example, if you have a blog about cars and your blog link is found on a culinary blog, then you get a toxic backlink.
Link text (anchor text) also affects the quality of backlinks. Almost any link that contains words like money or gambling can also be considered a toxic backlink. Furthermore, if one link and the same link text are found on many websites, then the link will be considered as spam and become a toxic backlink.
How to check if a backlink is toxic?
Toxic backlinks will increase blog spam scores and hurt blog SEO. If you experience a drastic decrease in traffic, then don't rush to blame the search engines or yourself for being incompetent in using SEO keywords. Toxic backlinks come from various websites whose behavior is only spam. Many websites like to copy the contents of our blog so that our blog link is also listed on the website; they use an auto-generate content script that Google hates. Unfortunately, our blog got carried away and got splashed by Google's anger. It is important to prevent your blog content from being auto-generated.
Like it or not, we are forced to do a backlink audit to find out which domains have our blog links. We can use the free backlink audit service provided by both Ahrefs and Semrush. These two services display a table that lists the source domains of our blog backlinks. We need to log those domains and test each domain's spam score. Any domains that have a spam score of 17% and above must be addressed by disavowing links.
But before you do that, you should first check your own blog's spam score. If your blog is experiencing a drastic drop in traffic, try checking your own blog's spam score. If you are surprised to see your blog's spam score, then you have toxic backlinks which may be the result of your own carelessness, or the behavior of naughty bloggers out there.
How to disavow toxic backlinks?
To disavow links, we need to have an account on Google Search Console and register our blog there. I recommend using the URL Prefix property type because this property type has more advantages over the domain property type. Here is a complete way to disavow the link.
- Create an account on Google Search Console
- Identify the source of the toxic backlink
You can use Ahrefs or Semrush to get a list of backlinks but first you have to create an account on the website. If you don't want to create an Ahrefs or Semrush account yet, you can visit this toxic backlink checker to get a list of backlinks that damage your blog's reputation (free version only shows you 5 links).
- Go to this link to access the disavow feature
You must have a GSC account first. After that, you can choose the property you want to manage with this feature.
Create a text file (*.txt) using Notepad and make a list of the domains you want to disavow based on the identification report that you have created. Check each domain's spam score first and prioritize disavow backlinks from domains with high spam scores. Note the format for writing the contents of the text file below:
domain:toxicsource.com
domain:fiat-tux.fr
domain:runonflux.io
https://something.blogspot.com
https://somethingelse.blogspot.comNote that you can disavow links by domain or URL. List all domains and URLs that you think are sources of toxic backlinks in this text file.
- Upload the text file to the Google Search Console you are currently opening above.
Once you've successfully uploaded the text file, there's nothing else you need to do; let Google do the rest. This disavow process can take from a few days to a few weeks. Apart from disavowing links from toxic sources, make sure not to try to get backlinks in a way that Google doesn't like. Check your blog's spam score regularly so you can control toxic backlinks and this is a never ending job for bloggers.
How to increase quality backlink?
Disavow toxic backlinks without increasing quality backlinks is a futile job. While waiting for Google to disavow the link you uploaded, do the things below to get quality backlinks.
- Keep writing fresh and interesting content.
- Guest post on a friend's blog that has a low spam score and a high domain authority score. Also make sure that the theme of your friend's blog matches the theme of your blog.
- Visit other people's blogs who have the same niche as yours and comment on their posts by putting a link to your blog.
- Reduce spamming activity if you do it often before.
- Edit and improve old content.
- Avoid buying backlink provider services because you don't know which website your blog link will be on later.
I firmly believe that by doing the things above, although it takes time, the number of quality backlinks will increase. Thus, your blog's spam score will also decrease until your blog's SEO returns to work.
Please, only relevant comments are accepted. Comments that are irrelevant and/or containing active links will be deleted. Thank you.
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