These are backlinks from sites that are out of your area of focus or specialization. These links do not add any value to your content and are likely to be considered as spam by the search engine.
Domain authority (DA) is a factor that describes the quality of a website; the lower the DA, the more potentially dangerous it can be to your SEO.
Links coming from other websites, particularly those with sparse, low-quality content, are regarded as spammy. Many of these sites are purely created to exchange links and this makes it a big ‘no-no’ to search engines.
A link exchange is when two (or more) websites agree to link to each other in order to gain more backlinks from relevant sources. While these can be a natural part of SEO, excessive or unnatural link exchanges may get flagged by search engines. The probability of Google noticing these backlinks as unnatural will be high, since its algorithm is designed to look into unusual patterns.
This free tool by Google enables you to monitor your website performance and more. It allows you to discover which sites link to you and to evaluate the quality of these sites.
These paid tools offer you detailed analysis of your backlinks, such as Domain Authority, Spam Score and Relevance of the linking site.
That being said, it is essential to also have a manual check of your backlinks. See if the sites linking to you are relevant and related to the contents of your site.
A link farm is a set of sites whose only purpose is to provide links to one another, thus contributing to the growth of the circle of references. Most of these sites actually do not provide any useful content – they simply exist for the purpose of manipulating rankings. LinkFarms go against the principal of white hat back links and areto be strictly avoided..
Popular search engines such as Google are able to identify link farms. Getting a spot in one could easily see a site’s rank plummet and gain a manual action penalty from Google. So, avoid link farms or any provider that obtains their backlinks through a network of sites. Aim to go for natural backlinks or providers that manually outreach to niche-relevant, high-quality publications.
Links should be from trusted sites whose destinations are related to your industry. This shows search engines that your site contains useful information.
Establish working relationships with highly ranked websites in your niche – to obtain organic backlinks in exchange for collaborations, guest posts, or citations.
Do not engage in link games, including exchanging links in large quantities, using PBNs, etc. Search engines are extremely efficient in identifying such scams.
To eliminate the possibility of receiving penalties, it is necessary to conduct regular backlink audits. It is a way to monitor your account and backlink profile, and also to remove negative links that may harm your work. If you have located toxic backlinks, you will have to use the Google disavow tool to avoid any penalties.
Speaking about what the disavow tool may be, it is a special service provided by Google to assist bloggers and webmasters who face problems with links to their sites. The disavow tool by Google lets the webmaster ask Google to exclude specific backlinks while ranking their site.
Generally, you should use the disavow tool only if you have a lot of toxic links that cannot be removed manually.
Create a simple text file that contains these dangerous backlinks. Submit this file via Google’s disavow tool using the Search Console, and Google will ignore such links while evaluating your site.
If you have already gotten a penalty, you have to identify the cause. You must check your Google Search Console report to discover which manual action or algorithm update caused the penalty. Afterward, remove or disavow harmful links. If possible, these bad links should be deleted or removed on a manual basis. If you cannot, use the Disavow Tool to ignore them.
After you are finished with cleaning up your backlinks, you can then submit a reconsideration request to Google to inform them of the measures you have taken in solving the problem. Monitor the request(s) submitted and your site ranking and performance after making the request. Recovering from rankings may take some time though.
Low-quality backlinks attract penalties, and avoiding them is a continuous process. Backlinks should be checked often, proper link acquisition techniques should be followed, and the use of the disavow tool should not be neglected in order to keep your site in good SEO shape. In the process of link building, you should pay attention to the quality of the links and the relevance of the linked sites. Do not employ unscrupulous tricks which, in the long term, can jeopardize your site and lead to its de-indexation.
