Bad Backlinks & SEO

What Is a Backlink?

Website links that lead to your company’s home page or website from other external websites are backlinks. 

For example, my blog post on tooth decay in diabetic patients was featured on the American Dental Association’s website. This automatically creates a backlink for my blog and will appear higher on a search engine results page due to the high credibility of my backlink, which is from a certified website. 

They are instrumental in increasing your website’s credibility in search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. 

For example, when well-known research articles, studies, blogs, news articles, or social media handles hyperlink your website’s URL in their content, you automatically get their vote of confidence. This conveys to search engines that you are a trusted platform that provides well-researched, original content. 

Importance of Backlinks For SEO

Creating backlinks from authentic, relevant websites with authoritative domains significantly impacts building SEO for your dental website. A good backlink typically works as a letter of recommendation. Search engines will give you higher SERP rankings, which thereby increases your visibility and reputation online

Google considers quality backlinks an essential ranking factor and a vote of confidence in supporting your clinic’s credibility. Here are three reasons why good backlinks are important:

1. To Get Enhanced Visibility 

Backlinking is especially important and beneficial for businesses with new websites and young domain names. This is because backlinks are adequate for getting noticed by search engines.

When search engines explore websites by crawling, if they find quality, relevant backlinks to your website, they give you a higher page ranking. This will help more people find and access your dental website and become permanent patients.  

2. To Rank Higher SERP Rankings 

Search engines have an array of factors according to which they rank websites. Google, especially, has over 200 ranking factors. Backlinks are among the oldest and most essential factors on that long list. Back in the early 2000s, the number of backlinks trumped quality, but that is not the case anymore. 

Google expects your website to be linked back from relevant pages, with a good traffic flow, and with authoritative, old domain names.

When it finds this, it automatically rates your website with a higher rank, and hence, it will appear at the top of search engine results pages, which 71% of online users view. According to Backlinko, first-ranked pages have four times more backlinks than other sites.

3. To Achieve Organic Traffic from Referral Websites

When your website frequently appears on other articles, blogs, and websites, more people will click to find and explore details about your dental clinic. These are called referral clicks and are a good source of organic traffic. And this is another factor that will increase your website domain’s rating, contributing to your trustworthiness. 

People who visit your website organically tend to stay longer, making your website more engaging. This, too, contributes to your website’s authenticity when Google crawls through it. 

Every factor that comes down to increasing your visibility is a big thumbs up for your clinic’s success online. This is an excellent technique to overpower local competition, too.

7 Types Of Bad Backlinks to Strictly Avoid

Backlinks are one of the top five SERP ranking factors:

I know it, you know it, Google knows it. Moreover, they are also aware of the shady, tricky people who try to pull to have a solid backlink base. This is why they come down hard with unforgiving penalties to defaulters who resort to black hat SEO methods. 

Hence, never cheat this system if you want your dental website to appear on a Google search. Read on to find seven types of backlinks that one must always steer clear of.  

1. Choose Quality Over Quantity

In the world of link building, always go for quality over quantity. You will get higher rankings if you have five quality-rich backlinks rather than 20 low-quality ones. 

Google knows that creating informative, original content is hard and time-consuming, giving more weight to such sites. Try to make such content and connect with industry websites, asking them to share your work.

Google has wisened up since the early 2000s and doesn’t encourage websites with multiple links that don’t possess much value to their readers. Higher referral traffic and search engine page rankings are two main benefits of this practice. 

2.  Never Fall Prey to Unnatural Links

As tempting as it may seem, do not try to cut corners by linking your website to unnatural links. 

Websites that Google doesn’t approve are dangerous, and having any connection will result in severe penalties. This includes paid links, private blog networks, spam sites, sharing links, linking to comment spams, getting bulk guest postings, exchanging services/products for links, and more.

Its advanced algorithm lets Google quickly identify nefarious activity and reduce your page rank. This also includes getting backlinks from websites that have irrelevant content. 

3. Do Not Fall for Backlink from Pages with Irrelevant Content

This is a big no-no in the world of SEO marketing. Though it doesn’t fall directly under Google’s Webmaster guidelines, the authenticity of your website will fall drastically in its purview. 

Google wants to give its readers accurate information that is most relevant to their website, so getting backlinks from random pages unrelated to your service or products will directly contradict this.

For example, if your website sells gardening tools and you get backlinks from websites with content on SaaS companies, Google Penguin will figure this out and demote your rankings.  

4. Avoid Having Deals with Private Blog Networks

One of the most dangerous black hat SEO methods is to get backlinked from Private Blog Networks. These specialized networks create many websites on expired domains to build and add links to other sites.

They operate on a separate fee and fall under the paid and unnatural link-building category. In 2014, the Gotch SEO company was penalized heavily for using such networks. These are money-making schemes, and Google has been cracking down on such networks since 2012.  

5. Always Go for Original Guest Posts

This is a valuable method to gather organic and referral traffic to your website. But people try to take shortcuts by rehashing one blog post in 20 different ways to get 20 backlinks. But Google sees right through this and flags it as plagiarized content. The same goes for low-quality guest posts and blogs.

Search engines can sift through such content with its advanced algorithms and deem it uninformative, making your website invaluable. Another method is to avoid backlinking guest posts altogether and use them as exciting content to engage your readers. 

6. Steer Clear of Backlinks from Spam Websites

This rule is a no-brainer. Stay away from websites that even remotely seem like spammy websites. 

However, correctly identifying these is getting harder nowadays, so even genuine marketers fall prey to them. But there are some basic signs to look out for – Pornography, Pharmaceuticals, and Poker, the three Ps.

Such websites might be linking yours even without your knowledge. So, make it a monthly routine to weed out such backlinks. Use tools like Ahrefs’ site explorer tool, SE Ranking, Site Checked, and more.  

7. Avoid Low-Authority Backlinks from Non-indexed Sites

Google doesn’t grant the ‘authority’ factor to websites that easily. Though the exact procedure remains unknown, original content, firm domain name, and SEO are must-have characters.

Such websites are naturally ranked higher and get more traffic. Hence, it becomes evident that Google despises low-authority websites with plagiarized or phony content and unnatural backlinks. So, it is only wise for marketers to avoid such websites and disavow all backlinks.

You can use Moz’s open site explorer to determine the authorized strength of a website and terminate your connection using Google’s disavow tools. 

“Avoid getting backlinks from non-indexed sites, which will reduce your page rank”, says Charles from San Diego SEO.

Top 5 Tools to Check Backlinks

1. Ahrefs

Considered to be the most popular and trusted tool, Ahrefs’ backlink checker does a thorough job of finding weak backlinks that bring your page rank down. It is mainly spoken for its high quality and speed in website crawling.

It can crawl about four million pages in a matter of seconds. It is well-known for providing accurate information about crucial parameters like domain authority, URL and domain rating, paid and organic keywords, overall global rank, backlinks, and more.

Once identified, these suspicious backlinks can be quickly disavowed using several tools. You can also find out that your competitors’ websites are linked using the Link Intersect tool of Ahrefs’.

2. Monitor Backlink

Monitor Backlink is the go-to tool for monitoring your competitor’s backlinks. This way, you will know if you miss out on major, common backlinks in your industry. 

This is a safe trick to stay relevant and not lose out on organic traffic from your target audience. Its unique feature is to link its free backlink tool to your Google Analytics account. This way, you will always stay in the loop regarding your backlink activity. 

It offers other interesting features: traffic per backlink, Moz rank, rank, and authority of your domain and page. It is best suited for small businesses as the first ten searches are free. 

3. Majestic SEO

This is yet another good checker for websites that are serious about building a solid backlink profile. Most basic functions are provided for free by Majestic, making it an affordable choice for small, medium, and new enterprises.

It crawls websites using its checker tool and doesn’t depend on a third-party medium, making the information even more reliable. It lists strong backlink anchor texts and gives you a detailed analysis. Here is a thorough review of its performance. 

4. Semrush

Semrush is a good tool for looking for an overall package for your SEO and backlink strategies. It allows the audit and analysis of good, bad, and toxic backlinks, which can be disavowed using Google’s tools. 

The process of analyzing backlinks is also in-depth about the generating processes. But one must opt for the paid version as the free trial doesn’t offer many options to explore. 

5. Open Site Explorer

SEO giant Moz’s tool is one of the oldest tools on the web for checking the quality of your backlinks. It’s an all-time favorite of marketers for its increased focus on the profiles of inbound links. It also allows you to do thorough research to find new strong backlinks. 

Reviewers have mentioned that Open Site Explorer’s high speed at breaking down the quality of backlinks is one of its strongest assets. Click here for an analysis of its workings.

Bad Backlinks & SEO FAQs

1. How Can Bad Backlinks Be Removed?

As backlinks from suspicious websites can be troublesome, you are advised to terminate them immediately. 

The first step is to contact the concerned website owner and request that the linking be stopped. If that doesn’t work, disavowing backlinks is the most effective way to remove them permanently before Google crawls your website.

First, download a backlink checker tool like Monitor Backlinks or Open Site Explorer, then link to an SEO checker like Moz Ahrefs and upload all of Google’s webmaster tools backlinks onto the dashboard. Finally, find spammy backlinks and disavow them using the disavow backlink section of Google Console. 

2. How Harmful Are Backlinks from Irrelevant Websites for My Page Rank?

Backlinks are among the top three ranking factors for page rank and SEO. They matter a lot in making your website visible to your target audience. Hence, any kind of tampering with this factor will hurt your rankings substantially. This includes getting backlinks from websites that contain irrelevant content.

As a result, you will lose your domain rank and authority, URL ranking, referral domains, and, finally, your overall SERP ranking. Therefore, ensure you get only backlinks from helpful, informative, and genuine websites that produce content that will engage your readers.

Also, I see that these are do-follow links and not no-follow links, as they are not considered by Google when determining page rankings.

3. How Do I Identify Bad Backlinks Linked to My Website?

In today’s time, there are many backlink checker tools to pinpoint rotten backlinks that will undermine your domain authority correctly. These tools are no longer expensive and can be used by amateur marketers.

One such tool is the Google Search Console or Webmaster tool. You can identify harmful backlinks and then disavow them on the same platform. Other options include Ahrefs’ backlink checker, Site Ranking, Majestic SEO, Semrush, and more.

4. How Important Are Backlinks to Improve SEO?

Backlinks are the most significant vote of confidence your website can get. Google sees this as a mark of your website’s content quality, as other people endorse it. Hence, the more backlinks, the better. But again, you can choose to have five backlinks from highly informative sites rather than having 40 from random websites.

Backlinks are crucial to ace your SEO game. Your online reputation, viability, and visibility heavily rely on it. Google wants to present only the best websites to its readers, and backlinks are one of the most reliable ways to tell Google about your authority in the industry.

5. How Long Does a Bad Backlink Take to Affect My SEO Rankings?

Google regularly crawls all websites under its purview. So, you are advised to check all your backlinks monthly or even weekly. However, precisely answering this question entirely depends on the type of backlink.

Because even if you have a backlink from an irrelevant website with high domain authority, your rankings won’t be affected much. However, some mention from spammy, paid, blog networks, and non-indexed or low-authority websites can potentially be penalized by Google.