Your website probably has hundreds if not thousands of links linking to it from other websites.
These links are known as 'backlinks' and are a weighted factor that Google and other search engines use within their search algorithms to determine your website ranking.
But what happens if the links aren't wanted? Some links aren't relevant and others can come from undesirable parts of the web such as spammy sites, and these bad links can affect your sites appearance in search results. This is because Google can start to penalise your website for the 'black hat' technique of excessive, irrelevant and ultimately toxic link building.
We've had to disavow swathes of bad links from some websites that have suffered the search ranking cannibalism of bad links, so we're experienced in this area of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). This article will help to share our experience and explain what to do and where to start if you're worried or confused about how to deal with bad links.
What is a bad backlink?
In recent years, link schemes were used to superficially inflate search rankings for websites that wanted to enhance their SEO. Link scheme activity includes:
- paying for links
- exchanging goods or services for links
- reciprocal links (link to me and I'll link to you)
- automated link farms
Manipulating PageRank through ‘black hat’ link building was histroically relatively easy, but today if you want your website to rank well you need to use a more honest 'white hat' approach, giving people a reason to link to it.
How the Penguin got tough on bad links
In April 2012 Google put the web in the wash using the Penguin Algorithm. The algorithm determines if a websites backlinks violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can implement penalties in search engine results based on its findings. The guidelines are simple and highlight what Google considers to be unacceptable linking behaviour:
“Any links intended to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme.”
It's a general definition that is backed by some pretty painful penalties. If you have a bad link then Google will de-index the page that it links to. A hefty response that will badly affect your search rankings. This means that the offending webpage is removed from Google's search results and index, and that is not easy to recover from.
What do I do if I have bad links?
First you get a message from the Google Search Quality Team saying something like “We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines...” a helpful alert, but also a bit of a worry.
Sometimes the quickest way of removing these links is to simply get in touch with the site owners that are linking to your website and ask them to remove the link.
If you're not having luck with the site owner or it is taking to much time, then you can ‘disavow’ those links. Google has released a disavow links tool which allows you to tell Google that you don’t want to be associated with the bad link and it will be removed from consideration when Google is attributing a rank to your website. This is a useful tool – but be sure to use it properly and how to tell between a good link and bad one.
How do I find out if I have bad links?
You may not get an alert from Google in Webmaster Tools, but you've noticed a drop in your rankings. As part of your troubleshoot or diagnostic, it is worth testing to see if you have bad links. You can check this by seeing who is linking to your website using a tool like Open Site Explorer, which provides a report of all backlinks to your website. This will identify any links that look suspicious and you can remove this link using the steps on the Google Disavow support page.
Alternatively we can run this for you. As mentioned earlier in this blog, we've experience implementing this process and are effective at completing what can sometimes be a time consuming and laborious task, especially if you have a high volume of inbound links to your website.
Actively engaging in cleaning up bad links is vital to any SEO strategy. With over fifteen years of running successful SEO campaigns for a range of clients with proven results, our team can take the hard work out of improving your websites performance making it an effective tool that ranks highly and brings you increased business.
If you are worried that your site has been affected by bad links or you are interested in finding out more about our SEO campaigns, please contact enq@barkweb.co.uk or you can call on 01323 735800.