How to Audit and Check Toxic Backlinks: Complete Guide

Backlinks are the backbone of your website’s SEO strategy. They can greatly influence your search engine rankings, bringing in organic traffic and enhancing your online visibility. However, not all backlinks are beneficial. Toxic backlinks can harm your site’s reputation and even lead to penalties from search engines like Google. To maintain a healthy backlink profile, it’s essential to audit toxic backlinks regularly.

In this comprehensive guide, we will walk you through the steps on how to audit toxic backlinks to help keep your website in good standing with search engines.

What Are Toxic Backlinks?

Toxic backlinks are links from other websites that harm your site’s SEO. These could be links from spammy websites, low-quality directories, or sites unrelated to your niche. Search engines, particularly Google, may view these links as manipulative and could penalize your website, causing a drop in rankings or even removal from search results altogether.

Examples of Toxic Backlinks:

• Paid Links That Are Easily Identifiable: If a website’s primary purpose is to sell post placements with backlinks, it’s likely to be considered toxic. Example: A low-quality site with an “Advertise Here” button and articles filled with unnatural links.
• Links from Irrelevant Websites: A guest post about “best CBD products” on a website about cars is an example of an irrelevant backlink, which is likely to be toxic.
• Links with Unnatural Anchor Text: A health-related website that has backlinks with anchor texts related to Forex or cryptocurrency could signal unnatural link-building practices.
• Old Domains with Low Authority: An older referring domain that receives minimal traffic and has a low domain authority score could be a spammy site that passes minimal link juice.
• Mismatched Language Links: If a site in English receives backlinks from a website in a completely different language (e.g., Korean), this could be considered toxic.
• Sitewide Links: If a backlink appears too many times on the same donor website, this might indicate low value or manipulative intent. For example, a website with 8K links to the same page on another site.

Toxicity Score: Measuring the Impact of Toxic Backlinks

A helpful way to understand link toxicity and its impact on your website is by using a metric like SEMrush’s Toxic Score. A site’s toxicity is scored using a 0–100 scale, with 0 being clean and 100 being extremely toxic. The more toxic links in a site’s backlink profile, the higher its toxicity score. Ideally, you want your site to register as close to 0 as possible.

How to Audit Toxic Backlinks: Step-by-Step Guide

Knowing how to audit toxic backlinks is essential for maintaining your website’s SEO health. Here are the steps you should follow to audit your backlinks thoroughly:

Step 1: Gather Your Backlink Data

The first step in auditing your links is gathering all the data. There are several tools available to help you collect information on your link profile. Some popular options include:

• Google Search Console: A free tool from Google that provides insights into your website’s backlinks.
• Effeect’s Link Counter Tool: This tool helps you quickly gather and analyze your page’s links, providing insights into outgoing links from your website.
• SEMrush: Another popular SEO tool that helps you track and analyze your backlinks.
• Ahrefs: A powerful SEO tool that offers detailed SEO link analysis.

Once you have chosen a tool, download your entire backlink profile for analysis.

Step 2: Analyze Your Backlink Profile

With your backlink data in hand, it’s time to analyze it. Look for patterns or anomalies that might indicate toxic backlinks. Pay close attention to:

• Source Website Quality: Is the linking website reputable? Does it have a high domain authority?
• Relevance: Are the links coming from websites related to your niche or industry?
• Anchor Text: Is the anchor text natural, or does it seem overly optimized or irrelevant?
• Frequency: How frequently do these links appear? A sudden increase in backlinks could be a sign that something’s wrong.

Step 3: Identify Toxic Backlinks

Once you’ve analyzed your backlink profile, It’s time to know how to audit toxic backlinks:

• Manual Check: Go through each backlink manually and check if it fits the criteria for toxic backlinks mentioned earlier.
• Domain Authority Check: Tools like Ahrefs and Moz can help you check the domain authority of the linking sites. Low authority sites are more likely to be toxic.
• Check for Penalized Sites: Ensure that none of the linking sites are penalized by Google.

If you’re wondering how to check bad backlinks, the same methods apply. Look for links from low-quality sites that don’t align with your content or industry.

Step 4: Disavow Toxic Backlinks

After identifying toxic backlinks, the next step is to remove or disavow them. Here is how you can do it:

• Contact Webmasters: Reach out to the site owners and request the removal of the harmful links. Be polite and provide clear reasons why you are requesting this.
• Use Google’s Disavow Tool: If the webmaster doesn’t respond, you can use Google’s Disavow Tool to tell Google to ignore these links when assessing your site.
• Monitor Results: After disavowing links, monitor your site’s performance to see if there’s an improvement in rankings and traffic.

How Toxic Backlinks Affect Your SEO

Toxic backlinks can really hurt your site’s rankings. They can expose your site to algorithmic and manual penalties from Google, which can cause your site to tumble down the rankings. Understanding how to audit toxic backlinks and take corrective action is vital to prevent such penalties.

Types of Penalties:

• Algorithmic Penalty: This occurs naturally as a result of an algorithm update, where changes in ranking factors can affect your site negatively if toxic backlinks are present.
• Manual Penalty: This is a direct penalty from Google, often triggered by algorithmic issues or competitor reports, where a manual review results in a penalty notification through Google Search Console.

Spammy Backlinks vs. Toxic Links: What’s the Difference?

While “spammy” and “toxic” are terms often used interchangeably, they aren’t the same. Understanding the difference is key to effectively managing your backlink profile. Learning how to audit toxic backlinks involves distinguishing between these types of links.

Spammy Backlinks:

• Definition: Spammy backlinks typically originate from low-quality sites that produce content with the primary goal of manipulating search engine rankings. These sites often engage in link schemes, sell links, or use automated tools to generate backlinks in bulk.
• Examples: Links from sites with irrelevant content, links generated by automated bots, or links from directories that list thousands of unrelated sites.

Toxic Links:

• Definition: Toxic links are a broader category that includes any backlinks that could potentially harm your site’s SEO. While many toxic links are spammy, toxic links can also come from sources that might not be immediately obvious, such as low-quality guest posts, private blog networks (PBNs), or sites that have been penalized by Google.
• Examples: Links from a penalized site, excessive keyword-rich anchor text links from questionable sources, or links from private blog networks designed to manipulate rankings.

It’s important to note that while all spammy backlinks are generally toxic, not all toxic links are spammy. For example, a backlink from a once-reputable site that has since been penalized by Google can become toxic, even if the site wasn’t spammy to begin with.

How to Check Spam Backlinks?

To check spam backlinks, use SEO tools like Google Search Console, Effeect, Ahrefs, or SEMrush to gather your backlinks and identify those from low-quality or irrelevant websites. Unlike toxic links, which are specifically harmful and can lead to penalties, spam backlinks often come from unrelated sites, use unnatural anchor text, or appear in patterns that suggest automated link generation. 

Look for links from irrelevant sources, repetitive keyword-rich anchor text, and sitewide links across multiple pages. While spam backlinks may not always harm your SEO directly, they are usually low-value and should be monitored and addressed to maintain a clean backlink profile.

Does Google Ignore Toxic Backlinks?

In some cases, Google might ignore toxic backlinks, particularly if they originate from obviously spammy sites. In 2019, Google’s John Mueller mentioned that Google already ignores links from sites where “there are unlikely to be natural links.” However, it’s risky to rely on Google to ignore these links. Google doesn’t always catch every toxic backlink, and they could still negatively impact your SEO. It’s better to proactively identify and disavow these links rather than hoping they’re overlooked.

How to Handle Toxic Backlinks?

1. Ignore Toxic Backlinks: If your site’s SEO isn’t affected, you don’t need to worry about taking any action on those unnatural links. advanced algorithms often identify and ignore spammy links.
2. Contact a Site Owner: If a toxic backlink is from a source that’s willing to cooperate, contact the site owner and politely request the removal of the link.
3. Disavow Toxic Backlinks: If a site owner does not respond or refuses to remove a link, disavow the link through Google Search Console. This tells Google to ignore the link in its ranking calculations.

Preventing Toxic Backlinks in the Future

Preventing toxic backlinks is just as important as removing them. Here are some tips to help you keep your backlink profile clean:

• Build Quality Content: High-quality, valuable content naturally attracts good backlinks. Focus on content that people want to link to.
• Avoid Link Schemes: Never buy links or participate in link exchanges. These are sure-fire ways to accumulate toxic backlinks.
• Regular Audits: Make backlink audits a regular part of your SEO strategy. This allows you to catch toxic backlinks early before they cause damage.
• Use Nofollow for Low-Quality Links: When you have to link to low-quality or non-relevant sites, use the “nofollow” attribute to prevent them from impacting your SEO.
• Monitor Backlinks Continuously: Use tools to regularly monitor your backlinks. This makes it easy to spot and fix any toxic backlinks.

Conclusion

Toxic backlinks can severely damage your website’s SEO, leading to lower search rankings, reduced traffic, and potential penalties from Google. Regular audits are crucial for identifying and neutralizing these threats. Understanding how to audit toxic backlinks helps maintain a healthy backlink profile, keeping your site competitive and aligned with search engine guidelines, which protects your long-term SEO success.

FAQs

1. How often should I audit my backlinks?

It’s recommended to audit your backlinks at least once a quarter. Regular audits help you catch and disavow toxic backlinks before they cause significant harm.

2. Can I remove toxic backlinks myself?

Yes, you can remove toxic backlinks by reaching out to the webmasters or using Google’s Disavow Tool.

3. What happens if I don’t remove toxic backlinks?

If toxic backlinks aren’t dealt with, they can cause your search rankings to drop, reduce your website’s traffic, and even lead to serious penalties from Google.

4. Is it necessary to disavow all toxic backlinks?

No, it is not necessary to disavow all toxic backlinks. According to Google Search Advocate John Mueller, if you weren’t involved in buying or deliberately creating those links, you don’t need to disavow them. Google’s algorithms are generally good at ignoring links that are naturally spammy or low-quality without needing action from you. Disavowing should be reserved for cases where you know links were acquired in ways that might violate Google’s guidelines, such as through link-buying schemes.