As you know, SEO is the backbone of a website. Having a good SEO score means your website and content will have good SERP rankings. This way, you will get more leads and organic traffic. 

However, sometimes you will notice a steep decrease in your organic traffic. You may wonder, what’s the problem even when you’re uploading SEO-optimized content? In such cases, toxic backlinks are to be blamed. 

If you don’t know how to remove toxic backlinks, this article is perfect for you. I will discuss everything about toxic links and the process of removing them. Let’s get started. 

What are toxic backlinks?

Toxic backlinks are also known as bad backlinks. These backlinks can affect your website’s visibility negatively, which will end up affecting the overall SERP rankings. But why so?

This is primarily because these toxic backlinks violate Google’s guidelines. These will be against the spam policies as someone placed them only for SEO purposes instead of user benefit. 

Google evaluates your backlinks to gauge your website’s authority and reliability. Specific types of external links can positively impact your SEO efforts. Google’s guidelines and algorithms are designed to deter manipulative link building tactics, often disregarding or devaluing links obtained through dubious methods.  

However, an excessive number of harmful backlinks can lead to a manual action, commonly known as a Google penalty, indicating that your site has participated in systematic spamming. Such a Google disavow can result in your website being demoted or completely removed from search engine results.

How toxic backlinks can impact SEO score?

You may think, why do you need to remove toxic backlinks from your website? For starters, Google will penalize your website and you will lose credibility. If that’s not enough, toxic backlinks can impact your SEO score. 

So, if you don’t know how to remove toxic backlinks, you must learn it sooner. Here’s how such backlinks can destroy your website and content SEO score. 

1. Decreased search engine rankings

One of the biggest impacts of toxic backlinks on SEO score is decreased search engine rankings. If you notice that SERP rankings of your content are decreasing day by day, you may have toxic backlinks present on your website or content. 

This is because Google checks for harmful backlinks on websites. And if your website has too many bad backlinks, Google will assume that you’re using unethical practices to manipulate rankings

Thus, Google will start punishing your website. As per Keystaragency, excessive bad backlinks result in 10% penalized sites. Your website’s position in the SERP will lose all its value. On top of that, your audiences won’t be able to find your content. 

2. You will receive harsh Google penalties

Let’s say your toxic backlinking case is more severe. If that’s the case, Google will give you harsher penalties. When the team determines that you’re doing a backlink violation, they will start implementing manual actions. 

These actions are so severe that you may lose complete site visibility. In other words, your website won’t even exist at all. So, make sure you take precautionary steps while you still have time

3. Less organic traffic

When your rankings fall, there’s no way you could save the organic traffic. No matter how hard you try, it will drop nevertheless. This has to do with less SEO visibility. 

Your search engine visibility will decline over time. This will directly impact the foot traffic you receive on your website. The loss of traffic will ultimately improve your business’s performance. The sales will be reduced so as the ad revenue. 

4. Wasted time and effort

This is another significant drawback of having toxic backlinks. Remember that you will spend quite some time and effort to build your website’s SEO. It’s not an overnight process and sometimes takes months or years. 

Now, what you build for over a year can be destroyed in merely seconds. If Google identifies your website as spam, all these efforts will go in vain. 

Causes of bad links

Before you know how to remove toxic backlinks, you must know the primary causes. Knowing why you’re having bad backlinks in the first place will help you correct your mistakes. You will ensure that you’re not getting the same toxic backlinks again in your site. 

1. Buying backlinks

I cannot emphasize this enough. You should never ever buy backlinks. You should never pay or allow any other types of compensation to get DoFollow links to pass the SEO score. This is more hurtful than you will ever know. 

Let’s say you’re paying for a specific type of backlink. In such cases, the website owner can include a NoFollow backlink to your content or website. This will affect the SEO score. 

2. Exchanging backlinks

A link exchange happens when two websites mutually agree to link to each other with the primary goal of boosting SEO. Having an excessive number of links can raise Google’s suspicions. If your site has been involved in link exchanges, it’s advisable to remove the links.

3. Using bots

Link-building bots are automated programs that generate backlinks, often in user-generated content sections like comments and forums. Backlinks created by these bots are usually harmful, so steer clear of services that offer a large number of backlinks in a short time.

4. Depending on private blog networks

Private blog networks (PBNs) are collections of websites managed by a single entity to provide backlinks to a specific site or multiple sites.  

Search engines like Google can detect PBNs, making it risky to own or purchase links from them. In most cases, it’s advisable to remove these potentially harmful low-quality links.

5. Improper business listings

Listing your business in low-quality directories with minimal editorial standards and a poor user experience can generate harmful backlinks. Exercise caution with directories that charge for listings, as they may not always be reputable. While not all directories create toxic backlinks, some can pose risks. Stay vigilant when building directory listings.

How to find toxic backlinks?

Manually checking for bad backlinks is time-consuming and inefficient, even for popular websites. For example, using the Google search query “link:www.example.com -site:www.example.com” often yields messy and irrelevant results.  

Instead, streamline the process with specialized tools. SE Ranking’s online tool, for instance, quickly performs a backlinks check and provides valuable insights, including:  

  • Newly gained and lost backlinks over a specific period  
  • Countries of the referring domains  
  • Most commonly used anchor text  
  • Your website’s most linked pages  
  • The number of links from Education and Government domains  
  • The ratio of dofollow to nofollow links  
  • Alexa Rank of referring domains, among other stats  

With a clear understanding of what toxic backlinks look like and their common sources, you can identify and address them efficiently. The tool also offers filters, customizable columns, and export options, enabling seamless data transfer to other tools or the creation of tailored reports.

How to Remove Toxic Backlinks?

To answer your question on how to remove toxic backlinks, start with a backlink audit to pinpoint the toxic ones. Manually analyzing thousands of links can be a tedious and time-consuming process. Thankfully, several tools can simplify this task by allowing you to filter backlinks based on various parameters. We’ll outline some effective strategies for this in the upcoming steps.

1. Collect the backlink data

The first step in addressing bad backlinks is to compile a comprehensive list of all links directing to your website from various sources. You can use various tools for this purpose. Simply enter your website’s URL and click “search.” This will generate data on all Google-ranked sites linking to your website, along with details such as their domain strength.  

Alternatively, you can use Google Search Console for this task. First, ensure that your domain is connected to Google Analytics. Then, access Google Search Console, navigate to the “Search Traffic” section, and select “Links to Your Site.” 

On the following page, click “more” under the “Who links the most” section. Finally, choose the “Download more sample links” option to export a CSV file containing a list of your backlinks.

2. Identify the bad backlinks

As previously mentioned, conducting a thorough and objective backlink audit is essential for identifying and removing spammy links from your site. This step is crucial for eliminating harmful backlinks, and while it’s possible to do it manually, this approach can be labor-intensive, especially when dealing with thousands of links.  

Using tools to filter backlinks and gain insights can simplify the process. For each backlink you evaluate, consider whether the content of the linking site is relevant to your website. If it isn’t, the backlink is likely not contributing much value to your link profile.  

Google Search Console provides a list of your backlinks but doesn’t distinguish between spam and valuable links, leaving them without much context. Tools can provide additional insights, such as the domain strength of the websites linking to you. Identifying links from sites with lower domain strength can help prioritize which ones to remove.  

Another effective strategy is to search the linking website on Google. If the site isn’t indexed, it may be penalized by Google, which is a strong indication that the backlink should be added to your removal list.

3. Remove the bad backlinks

In this step, you reach out to the owners or webmasters of the websites that are linking to you. The goal is to politely request that they remove the harmful backlinks. Be courteous in your communication, and clearly specify the exact location of the backlink you want them to remove.

4. Track and monitor

Simply sending a removal request to the webmasters of linking sites isn’t enough to ensure the removal of bad backlinks. You need to monitor the status of your requests to confirm whether they’ve been addressed. If you don’t receive a response within 8-10 days, you can send a follow-up email.  

To keep track of this process, you can use an Excel or Google spreadsheet to record the links, contacts, and the date you sent the request. Alternatively, if you’re using a tool, you can add notes about your outreach efforts

It’s also helpful to set calendar reminders to follow up after a week. Schedule it when you send your initial email and mark it as “done” if you get a response before the follow-up date.

5. Remove the remaining backlinks

When some webmasters don’t respond to your request or refuse to remove bad backlinks, you can use Google’s Disavow Tool to disassociate harmful backlinks from your site. To do this, you’ll need to create a disavow file.

Start by identifying all the toxic backlinks pointing to your site and listing them in a text file format that Google can process. Open a text editor on your computer and create a new file, saving it in .txt format for compatibility with Google’s tool.

You can organize your disavow list by adding comments, marked with “#” before the text. This allows you to categorize domains and URLs for your reference, while Google will ignore these comments. When adding domains, use the format “domain:website.com” and include “www” for domains that use it; omit “www” for those that do not. If you want to disavow specific backlinks from a domain, include the full URL.

Once your disavow file is properly formatted, go to Google’s Disavow Tool, select your domain, click “Disavow Links,” and upload your disavow file. After submitting, wait for Google to re-crawl your site and reassess the backlinks. Keep in mind that this process doesn’t immediately impact rankings, but it plays an important role in improving your website’s link profile health.

Regarding how long it takes to see the effects, there are several factors to consider. The time it takes for search engine crawlers to revisit your site and crawl the updated backlink profile can range from a few weeks to a few months. 

The impact of disavowing bad backlinks may not be immediate, as other factors such as website content, user engagement, and competition can also influence your SEO rankings. Therefore, continuous monitoring and analysis of your website’s performance are crucial to assess the long-term effects on your rankings.

Ready to remove bad backlinks?

Your website’s inbound link profile significantly influences its search engine rankings, making it essential to identify and eliminate harmful backlinks to avoid penalties.

Removing spam backlinks can be a challenging and time-intensive process. It often involves reaching out to webmasters, using Google Search Console’s Disavow Tool, or even implementing 404 errors to eliminate low-quality content

I hope now you know how to remove toxic backlinks. Do you have any other questions? Let me know in the comments below. 

Frequently Asked Questions

To clean up toxic backlinks, start by conducting a comprehensive backlink audit using tools like Google Search Console or specialized platforms such as SpyFu. Identify harmful links by evaluating their relevance, domain authority, and indexing status.

Yes, removing bad backlinks is essential to maintain your website’s SEO health and avoid potential penalties from search engines. Toxic backlinks, often originating from spammy or low-quality sites, can harm your site's ranking and reputation.

Yes, toxic backlinks can significantly harm your SEO. These links often come from spammy, low-quality, or irrelevant websites, and search engines like Google view them as indicators of manipulative or unnatural link-building practices.