What’s a bad backlink and how to fix it.
We’ve talked about backlinks before (quite a few times) because they are important and, honestly: pretty powerful. So, here we go again…
This time we want to focus on bad backlinks, how they can harm your website’s search rankings and most importantly - how to remove bad backlinks. .
What’s a backlink?
A backlink is a link on another website that links to your website.
Just as external links on your website take your users to another site - backlinks on other websites can bring people to your website.
How can good backlinks help my website?
Having your website linked to from another external site is a vote of confidence. A way for someone: a business/charity/organisation to say to the users of their website: ‘I trust this source, and happily recommend you go and check it out.’
We believe in backlinks so much that we’ve written all about how to implement a backlink strategy in another blog.
What’s a bad backlink?
Bad backlinks can be summarised in two different categories:
Spammy links that waste people’s time and violate Google’s spam policies.
Links that could harm your website.
How can bad links harm my website?
Bad links can be picked up by Google and in turn the search engine won’t push people towards your site. Worst-case scenario a bad link can get your website completely removed from search engine results.
Bad links are a waste of your time and effort as they won’t have any positive impact on bringing new users to your website or on your search engine ranking position.
Examples of bad backlinks
1. Hidden links
A hidden link is sneaky. It’s when a website developer hides a link, for example hiding a link in white text on a white background. If a user came to your webpage they wouldn’t see any links - but, search engines will see them.
Hidden links seem like a clever way to sneak more backlinks onto your website. But they will harm your site as search engines will recognise that they aren’t accessible, visible or usable for real users of your website.
2. Automated links
There’s such a thing as software that can generate automatic links to have a lot of links going to the same site. Again, they aren’t authentic or real links so they won’t be recognised by search engines as adding any value to your website.
3. Link exchanges
Linking to another website just for them to link straight back to yours. Simply exchanging links doesn’t benefit anyone.
4. Paid links
Exactly what it sounds like: paying people to have links on their site to your website.
How to find bad backlinks on your website
You can either find the backlinks yourself, using a backlink checker, like this one from SEO megastars Ahrefs .
Or, we at Wild SEO Agency can help you out. One of the services we provide is a website SEO audit. We carry out a comprehensive audit of your website and provide you with tailored recommendations to improve your website.
Get in touch with us if you’re concerned that you might have bad links letting down your website.