Backlinks are on top of the list of SEO ranking factors. That makes it crucial when it comes to ranking on SERPs and boosting organic traffic.

But don't celebrate your thousands of inbound links yet. I've got something to discuss with you that may change the ambiance of your backlink party.

Some of these links could be a huge source of search engine penalties and traffic loss. That's because not all links are same. Some are toxic and must be dealt with accordingly.

Backlinks from Toxic Domains Kill

Toxic domains are domains that have failed Google's quality checks following Penguin update. Most of these are involved in buying and selling links, Private Blog Networks, massive link building exercise, thin content, links from unrelated sources, etc.

Links from such domains are toxic and dangerous. Instead of transferring link juice and rank boost vote to your site, they will contaminate your link profile and make your domain equally suspicious.

Toxic links are the SEO backlinks that have the potentials to ruin your SEO and completely annihilate your SEO marketing. You do not want to see your site completely removed from Google Index because of intoxication.

Recommended: Small Businesses Can Use SEO to Great Effect for Their Ultimate Success

Who Is Creating Your Backlinks?

I do not know who is creating your backlinks. You probably are doing it yourself or you hired an SEO agency to help improve your organic traffic.

While working with SEO services may help in handling your SEO campaigns, the danger is most of these firms ain't what they claim to be. For the most part, they get involved in some black-hat link building activities. Some extend to outsourcing to link sellers on Fiverr and other micro job sites, which is potentially dangerous.

Before you hire any SEO firm for your search engine marketing, you've got to do your due diligence to ascertain the quality of their services. Some domains are registered by some unscrupulous SEO consultants for the sake of links. Trust me Google can quickly unveil them at a reasonable distance.

Victim of Negative SEO?

Negative SEO is an SEO activity done to sabotage and ruin competitor's search ranking. This is actually practiced in the industry and if it's not handled on time, the domain targeted might be penalized by Google and that makes it toxic.

You might have had a backlink from a domain with a healthy SEO profile. But that doesn't give you the liberty to not do anything. With time, some of these 'clean' websites may become toxic because of negative SEO. That brings the necessity to constantly audit your link profile and get rid of toxins.

How to Get Rid of Toxic Links and Clean Your Backlink Profile

This is one of the easiest things to do in SEO. Follow these 3 steps to clean up.

1 - Get the Right SEO Link Auditing Tool

You will need an SEO tool to help and easily create a list of toxic domains linking to your blog. Without this, it may become a very difficult task. I do use and recommend SEMrush. You may want to check out this post on my blog for more information about it.

Here is a link Audit report for one of my clients: dangarous backlinks

21% toxic links is a dangerous status and my client isn't comfortable with this. But nothing to worry about because salvaging this is quite easy.

2 - Clean up Your Domain

Now your SEO tool has helped with a list of toxic domains linking to your site. The next step is to clean up and there are two ways to handle this:

a) Disavow and Ask Google to Ignore the Domains

This is a quick step that requires you to create a disavow text file and upload to Google Disavow Tool. Using the most appropriate tool, you can generate the list of toxic domains with the click of the mouse.

google disavow tool

The disavow file simply has a list of domains Google should ignore while accessing your site. You need just one text file per property in your GSC account. Each time you have more domains to disavow, you'll have to simply download the file, add the domain to it and re-upload.

b) Send a Mail to Webmaster to Take Down Link

The second option (which may not be quick and friendly) is to get the contacts of the webmaster of the toxic domain and actually get to him to remove the link to your site.

Trust me you may face resistance or some slowness in this option. If you have 600+ toxic domains, you'll have to get the contacts of all these, send them mails one after the other with links to the toxic pages. This isn't going to be bread and butter.

After all, it's up to you to decide which direction to take.

3 - Always Keep an Eye on Your Link Profile

It's a mistake to completely ignore your link profile. As an active SEO marketer, you'll have to constantly audit your backlink profile and get rid of domains that may attract search penalties.

Recommended: How to Build High-Quality Backlinks for Your WordPress Blog in 2019

How to Attract Backlinks from Healthy Domains

It's one thing to go create backlinks. It's another thing to attract and earn them. But how do you get links from webmasters and bloggers with healthy domains without you asking for them?

1) Create Link-worthy Content

The Internet is saturated but people need content that stands out. Linkable content is content that has all the meat. This is content that meets the intent of the reader.

Gone are those days of keyword optimization and writing for search engines. We are in the age of Semantic SEO when text content producers optimize for topical relevance not keyword. This is the best approach to create content that attract links.

NB: I have created a post on Semantic SEO you may want to read.

Articles that are semantically fully optimized are often in-depth. Using a Semantic SEO tool, be sure to optimize to its optimum.

2) Create Healthy Relationships with Bloggers

Did you know that having warm relationships with other bloggers in your niche can earn links for your blog? I live this experience everyday. There is nothing as exciting as having blogging friends who link out to your content, then mention you on Twitter or Facebook.

If you've been blogging in solitude, it's time to step out and network with others in your niche. There are simple things to do to create these relationships:

Start by creating excellent content that positions you as an expert.
Read other blogs and drop meaningful comments.
Follow other bloggers on social media.
Link out to their contents from your blog.
Promote their content on different platforms.
Guest post on their blogs and allow them to submit to your blog as well.
Respond to their comments on your blog and social media.
Send out friendly mails, appreciating your friends. Don't try to sell something.
Etc.

Doing these and more will gradually get you connected with many more bloggers, who see you as a pro and someone to trust. If you are a selfish blogger operating like an Island, you end up suffering the consequences alone.

3) Avoid Showing up in Black Hat Forums

SEO black hat forums are places where black hat methods are discussed and implemented. One of the baddest things you are ever going to do is expose your website in such places.

Avoid signing up and participating in black hat discussion. Don't allow your domain name mentioned there. It may happen that someone does that but that shouldn't be you. Keep away completely from such forums.

A Grey Hat SEO Technique Used by Many

'Grey' is between 'black' and 'white'.

I have seen many trusted bloggers indirectly buy backlinks and it works for them. They actually pay their trusted friends to guest post and build their links. If for instance you have someone with access to post on searchenginejournal.com, what you do is pay that person to slide your link in one of his articles.

How much they pay depends on the level of friendship and the Domain Authority of the blog to get the link from. If you want to use this link building approach, here are some points to note:

Make sure you get someone to create links from related domains.
While you may focus on domains with high DA, don't neglect average DA domains as this will certainly grow big.
Avoid domains with high citation flow. This for the most part is spam.

Avoid Fiverr and SEOclerks at all Cost

seoclerks
These are two popular micro job platforms where SEO link selling services thrive. But it's the main source of toxic and dangerous backlinks.

Buying a link building service from these platforms exposes your domain to links you have no control on. The service providers have bought hundreds of low quality domains on which they publish spun articles, creating extremely dangerous backlinks.

Some of the providers do get backlinks from account profiles, which is a thread to SEO as well. Others get from Private Blog Networks (PBN), which is equally dangerous.

Initially, you may have a rank boost but that will be for a short while. The long term won't only be you losing the rankings. You stand a chance of being penalized as well.