In short, harmful links are low-quality backlinks that lower Google’s opinion of your site. These links can be described as toxic, manipulative, unnatural and spammy, and the effect is the same whether you created them or not.
Link building is essentially websites giving you ‘votes’ so that Google can understand if you are an authoritative voice in your industry. Backlinks from authoritative sites with content that is relevant to your business can lift your position in search rankings, but irrelevant or spammy links can drag you down. Backlinks are one of the most important components of SEO, since they provide an indication to Google’s web crawlers that the website being linked to contains valuable, relevant and interesting information.
But what is a spammy link? Are spammy links the same as toxic links? Can too many harmful links hurt your site’s ability to rank? There can be some crossover between these definitions, which of course adds to the confusion, so let’s break it down…
Some SEO’s use the phrase “toxic link” to include the type of “spammy” link that Google says their algorithms simply ignore. But, a spammy link is the type of link no one would actually purposefully build in order to improve rankings, but that most sites accrue anyway.
Usually, they consist of gibberish pages, generally very low Domain Authority (usually less than 20), with irrelevant anchor text. They can also include low-quality directories and low-quality guest posting.
Still, Google knows that if your site is all of a sudden inundated with unusual spammy backlinks with irrelevant anchor text, it’s unlikely that you have been building these to improve search results. For the most part, Google will simply isolate and ignore these in their algorithms.
Put simply, this isn’t as harmful as manipulative link building, however, it certainly isn’t something you want to include in your link building and digital PR strategy. Spammy links are often just more annoying than damaging, but that’s not to say they can’t hurt your website in the eyes of Google if you give them a chance to do so. There’s no good reason to have more spammy links than you will accrue naturally, so when it comes to link building, you need to concentrate on building the most natural and healthy backlink profile possible.
A “toxic” link is generally considered to be a link that has the potential to harm your website’s ability to rank. Some SEO’s will say that any link that would be considered an unnatural link as per Google’s documentation on link spam should be considered “toxic” and could hurt your site.
Many of these types of links, though, have their origin in manipulative link building and black hat SEO tactics, which are unethical attempts to trick Google’s search engine algorithm in order to gain higher rankings. To combat any “SEO cheating”, Google penalises websites they catch using these black hat tactics.
Manipulative links are specifically those that have been made with the intention of manipulating PageRank and other ranking factors to improve Google rankings without regard for user experience or for the context in which it appears. Whether created knowingly or unknowingly, these types of links can do a lot of damage to your website and your rankings.
There are a number of ways to build links in a manipulative manner, but they all have one thing in common: they are aiming to deceive Google’s algorithm into thinking a page or website is more authoritative than it is, so that it will appear higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Some examples of manipulative link building includes;
The perfect backlink profile differs for every industry and individual website. No two ‘perfect profiles’ will ever look the same. But, above all else, the perfect backlink profile is the natural backlink profile.
Just like it looks unnatural to have the majority of your backlinks coming from low domain authority, irrelevant sites, it looks equally as unnatural if 80% – 90% of your backlinks are coming from high domain authority websites.
The most natural backlink profile will have diversity and variation across domain authority and follow/nofollow links, but most importantly, the majority of links should be coming from topically relevant and niche-related sites.
In short, a backlink profile should make sense for the website.
So, what are the best practices when it comes to building a natural backlink profile?
Google says you should disavow backlinks if you have “a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site”. Google’s disavow tool enables you to inform Google that you do not want those backlinks to be considered when reviewing your backlink profile.
Conducting a backlink audit is necessary to check that your website is in good shape, and your house is in order, before you begin working on implementing a Digital PR link building strategy. This means you need to ensure there are no toxic backlinks, or a considerable amount of spammy links, that could hinder future SEO efforts, or worse, trigger a Google penalty. Even if you have never engaged in any underhanded link building, it is still a good idea to carry out a backlink audit so you can develop a strategy to manage any unwanted links or negative contributions to your wider SEO efforts.
The best way to avoid penalisation is to have an intelligent and strategic approach to your Digital PR and link building, that is informed by your wider SEO and onsite content blueprint. A natural backlink profile, and in turn higher rankings, take time and effort to build correctly. However, sticking to honest SEO practices will only benefit you in the long run. That doesn’t mean though, that you can’t speed up the process with a legitimate method…
If reading any of the above has made you wonder about tackling unwanted spam links and building an authoritative, and very natural, backlink profile; why not let NORTH do the heavy lifting and help maximise your online performance? Drop us a message, we’d love to chat.