What Are Toxic Backlinks and How Do You Fix Them?

Backlinks are one of the most significant ranking factors in SEO. While high-quality links can positively influence your website, the incorrect links can quietly sabotage your efforts and cause a decline in performance. These excessive links are called toxic backlinks, and neglecting them can be an invitation to ranking problems, higher spam scores, and other long-term disadvantages to your SEO.

In this post, you’ll learn what toxic backlinks are, where they come from, the key role they have on SEO, and the safest ways to get rid of them while building a clean, strong backlink profile.

Finally, you’ll also see how Digi Uprise protects brands through ethical, data-driven strategies that build domain authority without the threat of toxic backlinks.

Toxic backlinks are low-quality or harmful links to your site. They generally originate from spammy, suspicious, irrelevant, or manipulative sites. 

Google has algorithms that track unnatural link patterns. If you have these backlinks, it could be viewed as an attempt to manipulate rankings.

Another consideration is that toxic links usually increase your spam score. A high spam score is a warning to Google that your site is linked to spam-like or risky behavior. While the spam score is not a specific or direct Google ranking factor, having a spam factor consistently above the threshold is generally a danger zone.

Toxic backlinks can come from many places, at times without intention and sometimes through negative SEO. Below, you will find the most common sources:

• Spammy or hacked websites

• PBNs (Private Blog Networks)
• Paid link schemes and/or link farms

• Automated blog comments

• Irrelevant foreign domains

• Scraper sites that copy your content

• Low-quality directories and bookmarking sites

• Negative SEO attacks by competitors

Many of these sources create large volumes of links, making the toxic pattern even more harmful.

There are many ways these backlinks influence your site. You may not notice any influence after a few weeks or even a few months, but there can be long-term negative consequences that are serious.

Toxic backlinks affect SEO in the following ways:

• You develop a spam score that negatively impacts your domain or site reputation.
• You have a backlink profile that isn’t natural.
• Your ranking may drop or you may see algorithmic suppression.
• In severe cases, Google may issue a manual penalty.
• Your domain authority, trust flow, and general site credibility decrease.
• You see a decline in organic traffic, and your sites have difficultly ranking for any low competition keywords.

The more toxic backlinks added to your domain, the less likely you are to recover SEO value and the longer it will take to recover.

Detecting such backlinks as early as possible protects your website, before it impacts you in SEO.

Here’s a simple table to help identify the most common red flags:

Other warning signs include:

• Websites with no traffic or are baseless websites
• Foreign-language sites that link without context
• Blogs made up entirely of ads, spun content, or auto-generated articles.

Detecting them early allows you to prevent long-term SEO issues.

Cleaning such backlinks is an important aspect of maintaining a strong foundation of SEO.

Here are step-by-step instructions on how to do so.

Use a third-party tool, such as:

• Semrush

• Ahrefs

• Moz

• Majestic

These tools provide information on toxic scores, spam scores, trust flow, and suspicious domains.

Reach out to the website owners and request that they remove your backlink.

Make your message short and sweet by simply noting the specific link, or mention the link in your subject line, and ask them to remove it.

If the site does not respond, or you can clearly see it is spammy, you will need to disavow. Disavowing lets Google know that you do not want it to count these links when considering your website.

To disavow:

• Export toxic backlinks into a .txt file

• Add “domain:” before extremely harmful domains

• Upload the file to Google’s Disavow Tool

Be cautious — disavowing too many good links can also harm rankings. Only disavow confirmed toxic backlinks.

Once everything has been disavowed, typically within 2-12 weeks you will see your spam score improve as Google re-crawls the disavowed links.

Keep an eye on it month after month so you don’t wind up in such a problematic situation again.

In order to maintain a good backlink profile and to prevent toxic backlinks negatively affecting your ranking, create strong, safe, and relevant links.

To build strong backlinks, follow these best practices:

• Developing original, high-quality, and helpful content
• Receiving placement in relevant blogs or interviews
• Using branded, natural anchor text
• Earning editorial backlinks when it adds value
• Participating in expert quotes, PR campaigns, or collaborations

• Staying away from cheap “1,000 links for $10” packages
• Avoiding mass directory submissions
• Not participating in link exchanges or private networks
• Checking websites before agreeing to guest posts
• Monitoring your backlink profile regularly

Toxic backlinks are one of the most damaging secret factors of SEO. If not dealt with early, they can create a higher spam score, hurt your authority, and naturally lead to a more significant ranking decrease. The bright side is that with the right method, you can monitor, delete, and disavow backlinks and links you do not control.

By performing regular backlink audits and actively link-building with responsibly high-quality, safe links, you can develop a strong link profile that will benefit your SEO over the long term. 

For expert assistance in creating quality, high power backlinks, consider Digi Uprise. Follow us on Instagram to learn useful insights and more about backlinks.