What are toxic links and how to remove them?

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What are toxic links?
Toxic links are those backlinks that Google may consider to be of poor or dubious quality. They are usually links that come from pages of dubious security and that are not related to the topic of the page.

Why might your site have toxic backlinks?
There may be several reasons why your page contains toxic backlinks , but the most common ones are the following:

Directory of listings or farms
These listing directories or farms are used by many webmasters to get links for free. These types of links are usually not in line with the topic of the page they link to and do not provide any value to either the user or the SEO.

Negative SEO
Negative SEO refers to the intentional linking from sites of dubious quality or jewelers email database with anchors that are harmful to the linked page. This practice is carried out in an attempt to negatively affect and affect the positioning in search results.

How to see the backlinks of a website?
Knowing how to view a website's backlinks will help you detect and remove toxic backlinks.

The first thing to do is to perform an audit of the website's link profile. That is, check the backlinks of a website .

Depending on the website, this can be a tedious task, since if it is a large website it may have a fairly extensive link profile, while if it is a website that is just starting out, it will be easier to review each link one by one.

So, how do you know the backlinks of a website ? Well, this should be done with the help of tools that we explain below and, in this way, we will get the complete list of links that will include both beneficial links and toxic links.

Ahrefs
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Ahrefs is one of the best tools for analyzing the link profile of a website. It is also very useful for conducting a competitor study and for studying domains to carry out link building strategies.

toxic backlinks ahrefs

It is a very complete and intuitive tool that will help us enormously in the search for toxic links . It gives us values ​​such as the number of links and referring domains, graphs to see the evolution, backlink authorities, type of backlinks (dofollow or no follow), new and lost links...

It also gives us information about all the backlinks of a website: quality, new links, lost links, best by links, anchor text, IP, status, origin, etc.. something very useful to know the status of a link. It also allows you to create reports to investigate the status of the competition.

Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a very practical Google tool available to everyone. It allows us to know the link profile of a website in the “Links” section.

It can give us interesting data such as the most linked pages, websites with the most links and the most frequent link text.

google search console toxic links

One of the advantages is that you can export the list of links so that you can work with it in a spreadsheet. It is a very practical and intuitive tool, and will allow you to interpret the data easily.

With this list, you can use other tools, such as Ahrefs, to conduct a more exhaustive study of the backlinks and conclude which is a toxic link and which is a beneficial link for your website.

How to remove toxic links?
Manually
Or rather, by contacting the webmaster or someone responsible for the website that links to you. This is the first thing that is recommended in these cases, since if you end up making a mistake and it is not a toxic link as you really thought, you can always contact them again to ask them to reinstate the link.

This technique is very likely to fail, as messages and calls are often not answered by the website owner, or are simply denied.

Google Disavow Links Tool
This tool is commonly called the “ Google disavow tool ” and can be found in Google Search Console. Unlike the other technique, it is recommended to be used as a last resort. You must be absolutely sure that the link pointing to your website is malicious.

This option is definitive, that is, there is no turning back. This tool allows you to disavow or remove any link that points to a web page. It is very practical, once the malicious link is selected it will allow you to block it. It even allows you to make lists of links to remove them in one go. In the following video we explain everything you need to know about this file:

Google Disavow: How to disavow toxic or spam links
It is important to remember that once the link is removed it cannot be restored, so it is recommended to use it as a last resort, according to Google's own advice. You can remove a link that was not really toxic and drop in the authority rankings due to misuse of the tool. You must be completely sure.

Why is it important to keep your link profile free of toxic links?
It is important that your page is not linked to by toxic backlinks or links that are not related to the same topic in order to avoid possible penalties and to position better in search engine results.