Backlinks or URL links from other sites pointing back to your site are integral to a successful SEO plan. Websites with top Google rankings have 3.8x more backlinks than others, while 52% of marketers believe that backlinks can increase their search engine rankings. That may probably be why marketers spend around 10% of their marketing budget on backlinking.
While good backlinks from authoritative sources can improve your website’s reputation and relevancy with search engines, the bad ones may reflect negatively on your site, consequently impacting its organic traffic and business revenue.
If you are not getting optimal search engine results despite fine-tuning your site content and architecture, run a link quality analysis to find bad links; take steps to remove them and reap the following benefits:
1. Improves Google Rankings
Removing bad backlinks from your website makes it winning content for Google Search Engine Result Pages, which, in turn, lets the search engines know that you are a reliable site with valuable and superior quality content. Conversely, more good links on your site improve your site’s credibility and reputation, thus increasing its Google ranking.
The Penguin update has become a core search tool in Google helping detect spammy websites, which has gradually improved the quality of sites.
Nevertheless, before knowing how to remove bad backlinks from your site, check for those hampering your SEO efforts so you can easily distinguish which links need removal. Use a link analysis tool to check bad backlinks and narrow the selection to the most problematic links.
Next, get them on Google or Excel spreadsheets to be reviewed manually. You must check only a few links to get a precise idea of bad backlinks, like:
- Links with 404 warning
- No-follow links
- Expired links
- Links from link networks
- Links from blogs
- Site-wide links
- Links featuring over-optimized anchor text
- Link directories
- Links from irrelevant sites
- Unrelated outbound links
So, check for such bad backlinks; remove them and adequately place quality backlinks on your site to elevate search engine rankings and increase qualified traffic.
2. Helps to Avoid Google Backlink Penalty
Since the introduction of Google’s Penguin update in 2012, quality backlinks have become the talk of the internet. This update helps digital marketers optimize their backlink strategies so they can use their online platforms to ensure no penalization. Since Google’s Penguin update fights web spam, it quickly attacks and filters websites with false backlinks to specific sites.
So, if you are using bad backlinks on your site, your chances of facing a Google backlink penalty may be high. Nevertheless, you can avoid this penalty by removing bad backlinks from your site.
Google bad link penalties are manual and algorithmic. An unusual level of bad backlinks on your site may bring in Google’s algorithmic penalty, where you do not receive official notification but a decrease in rankings and organic traffic. A manual backlink penalty applies when Google’s web spam team suspects you use link schemes to manipulate site rankings.
Google sends notifications of its manual actions through its Search Console message center, or you can also go through the Manual Action report section of Google to get details of affected pages, the source of the issue, and how to fix them.
3. Higher Domain and Page Authority
Domain authority, or the scoring factor that estimates a website’s strength, is a crucial SEO metric experts use to measure site quality. A significant part of domain authority is the number and quality of backlinks, and sites with higher DA scores due to more good backlinks have better chances of ranking in the SERPs than other sites.
Further, Page Authority is also a vital SEO scoring metric based on the quality of backlinks. Page Authority measures a URL’s strength on the page level and higher PA scores because more quality good links indicate better web page rankings in the SERPs for its target search queries.
Overall, this builds brand authority. The more quality backlinks you have on your site, the more authoritative you appear, and you can use this credibility for business growth, with more and more users likely to trust your site as others have vouched for it. Getting rid of bad backlinks may be time-consuming, but having an expert on board may help.
And once you remove bad backlinks, building backlinks that increase visitor traffic and improve rankings will be easy.
4. More Traffic and More Sales
The most apparent advantage of removing bad backlinks is increased traffic. When high-authority sites link to your site, it sends several targeted visitors or leads. And these are prospective, high-quality visitors with a keen interest in your products and services, as the search engine algorithms perceive.
Quality backlinks also improve conversion rates by building trust among the visitors of the linking websites, who tend to be more authoritative than those on average quality blog sites or social media platforms. And since sales generally depend on business ranking and traffic to your site, the higher they are, the more opportunities your business will have to make sales.
5. Expands Your Advertising Reach
Removing bad backlinks and having more quality links on your site will make product marketing easier. Besides making more sites willing to link to yours, quality backlinks will solidify your web presence among visitors, making it easier for you to reach out to them through Google AdSense and Facebook Ads.
The Bottom Line
To conclude, bad backlinks are traffic degenerators that do not help you build credibility and brand authority in the market. So, to be on the right path to achieving business success, remove bad backlinks from your site and get more quality links from trustworthy sources.
