Samuel Edwards

If you build it, [they] will come. – Field of Dreams. This quote gets recycled a lot to suppose a specific premise: that if you do something well enough, it will naturally attract people. This is one of the key components of a proper search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. If you create an amazing ice cream stand, people will flock to buy your ice cream. If you build a baseball diamond with ghosts of great players, I bet you’ll have plenty of people buying tickets. And if you create content that’s truly valuable, you should naturally attract links, especially those juicy, high-quality backlinks from reputable and relevant sites. That’s the concept behind link earning, but the mechanics are a bit more nuanced. Let’s explore them. The Pros and Cons of Link Earning Like any marketing approach, link earning is imperfect. Link earning has a few qualities that make it a valuable addition to your SEO strategy: Safe. If you don’t have any hand in constructing new links, you can’t possibly be held accountable for conducting a link scheme.In other words, link earning is safe.If you’re especially concerned about the possibilities of a Google penalty, or if you just want to build your SEO dominance as safely as possible, link earning could be the approach for you. Convenient. You should be writing good content no matter what. It’s a brilliant marketing strategy by itself, and it’s necessary if you want to strengthen your onsite authority and optimize for keywords.In some ways, it’s possible to use link earning as an incidental strategy. If you keep focusing on content quality, with some extra attention to promotion, the links should come rolling in. Hands-off. You’re not the one making citations, writing offsite content, or planning a long-term approach. Accordingly, link building is a hands-off strategy.You can get away with not paying anyone and spending less time building links if your strategy relies on link earning. Referral Traffic. High quality backlinks from relevant sites in your niche can help you build more referral traffic. Link juice from authoritative websites is one thing, but relevant traffic from contextual links in content actual humans read is the holy grail of search engine optimization strategies. But there are also some weaknesses you should know about: Inconsistent. Even the best link earning strategies have inconsistent returns.With one article, you might earn dozens of new links.With the next, you might earn none. Even with consistent quality, it’s a bit of a crapshoot. This makes it hard to account for as the cornerstone of your SEO strategy. Unpredictable. You’d be amazed what some people will link to. And what some people won’t link to.I’ve had great posts that didn’t get any attention, and half-assed posts that got results. Your guess is as good as mine why this is the case, but some combination of timing, luck, and other impossible-to-measure qualities will have an influence on your bottom-line results. Reliant on others. Okay, so you don’t have to pay anyone to earn links—but you’re also putting your fate in their hands.If you aren’t getting momentum from link earning and performing website owner outreach, you might be able to write better content or shift your approach, but there’s a limit to how much you can do. 10 Tips for Earning Links It’s one thing to recognize the value of organic backlinks – but how do you actually begin earning them? Well, let’s take a look: 1. Create Link-Worthy Content You aren’t going to generate backlinks – earned or otherwise – if you don’t have link-worthy content attached to your brand. So it’s only natural to start by revamping your content strategy and creating content that others will find appealing enough to cite or reference. Link-worthy content typically comes in four forms: informational, inspirational, educational, or entertaining. In order to attract links to your content from other websites, you’ll need to offer something that’s unique. Original data and research is one of the best options. Interviews with leading experts can also help you gain some traction. Compelling visuals like infographics tend to be effective as well. 2. Work With Influencers It can be helpful to tap your own professional network. If you know any influencers who’ve had success with link building and have large audiences of their own, this is a natural starting point. You could produce a piece of content in tandem with them – leveraging their audience to your advantage – or interview them to create your own piece of original content. 3. Perform Blogger Outreach While there’s something to be said for creating quality content and sitting back and waiting for site links, patience will only get you so far in this industry. You’re much better off going on the offensive and proactively tracking down opportunities. One option is to contact bloggers that have audiences that intersect with your own. Offer to write a guest blog post and provide an accompanying pitch that’s a natural fit for their site. In return, you can usually slip in a couple of your own links. 4. Write an Endorsement or Review Sometimes the best link building strategy is to work in reverse. Instead of trying to get others to directly feature your brand, you can feature them on your site or blog. This could look like writing an endorsement post of their products and services or mentioning the company’s founder in a positive light. Most brands have alerts set up that tip them off when they’ve been mentioned elsewhere. And its only smart business practice for them to acknowledge or link back to the endorsement you’ve provided. Thus, in a sense, you cleverly coax them into giving you an earned backlink without coming across as aggressive or pushy. 5. Comment on Posts Visibility is obviously important in the realm of digital marketing. If you want to consistently earn backlinks from reputable bloggers and brands, it’s important that you make yourself known. One way to do this is by regularly interacting with them online. This

Black-hat SEO (search engine optimization) tactics just don’t cut it anymore. Using old black-hat SEO strategies will not just guarantee that you get heavily penalized; you will also be wasting your precious time and resources. But just in case some online marketers started out post Panda and Penguin and are wondering, what were these ancient black-hat SEO tricks? It might be good to remind not just newbie Internet marketers, but everyone else, that the following can spell doom for your business. Buying Backlinks or Using Link Farms What it is: Purchasing backlinks or participating in networks designed solely to pass link juice. Why it’s risky: Google sees this as a clear violation of its search engine guidelines. Sites can get manual penalties or algorithmic suppression. Example:You pay $50 for 500 backlinks from random blogs with no relevance to your niche. They may appear overnight, but your search rankings quickly drop when Google catches on. As the name implies, link buying helps you rank your site by paying for links. A significant part of SEO is establishing link popularity to measure the credibility and authority of the site. By linking from authoritative and highly credible sites, newer ones would see increases in authority and search engine rankings. Because linking from big sites such as Mashable, Inc.com, WSJ.com, etc., could be very hard to accomplish, enterprising individuals devised a way to offer smaller sites a fighting chance by getting linked from tons of sites to boost rankings and organic search traffic. Major search engines tried to weed out this kind of cheating even before Google Penguin waddled on the scene. But because Google and other search engines had been lenient in the past, a lot of people got caught engaging in this unethical online practice. If you ever come across a site that offers link-building services, be sure to investigate what sort of link building they do. Do this instead: Build backlinks by publishing high-quality content, digital PR, or personalized outreach to relevant sites. Over-Optimized Anchor Text What it is: Overusing exact-match anchor text (e.g., “best SEO services”) in backlinks or internal links, particularly when done in unnatural ways. Example:If every single inbound link to your site uses the anchor “cheap SEO services,” that’s a red flag. It looks manipulative, not organic. Why it’s risky: Google’s Penguin update targeted this specific issue. Over-optimized anchor text patterns are often associated with link spam and can result in devaluation of your backlink profile. What to do instead:Diversify your anchor text. Use branded anchors, naked URLs, and natural-sounding phrases. The goal is to make links appear editorial and helpful—not forced. Cloaking & Sneaky Redirects What it is: Showing one version of a page to search engines and a different one to users, or redirecting users deceptively. Why it’s risky: It’s a form of deception. Google calls this out specifically and penalizes sites accordingly. Example:You build a page optimized for “free email templates” and show that to Google, but users are redirected to a sales page for unrelated software. When a webmaster serves different content to a visitor from what the search engines see, that is known as cloaking. It should be obvious to anyone that this is downright deceitful. How does someone do this? Simple. The webmaster can direct his web server to provide information based on who requests it. Different information is provided to requests that come from web browsers as opposed to those from search engines. Pretty neat . . . but extremely dangerous. The intent of cloaking is to hide the real purpose of a page from the search engines, obviously. The page could actually turn out to be a spammy sales site that offers very little value after pretending to be a text-based version for the benefit of search engine spiders. But they discover the truth eventually. Do this instead: Be transparent with your redirects and user experience. Always serve the same content to both users and bots. Keyword Stuffing What it is: Repeating the same keyword unnaturally throughout a page. Why it’s risky: It creates a poor user experience and signals manipulation to search engines. Google may demote your rankings or deindex the page entirely. Example: “Looking for the best dog food for dogs? Our dog food is the best dog food because our dog food is made for dogs that need dog food.” This is an age-old spam tactic that even the oblivious newbie may fall for. By keyword stuffing, black hatters cram the page with keywords to make it look very relevant to the eyes of the search engine spiders. The goal of keyword stuffing is to place as many exact-match keywords as possible throughout the content to make it look very relevant to search. Search engines are becoming smarter by transitioning into latent semantic indexing (LSI), which is making keyword stuffing largely irrelevant. Plus, to the discriminating reader, keyword-stuffed pages are hard to read and often just annoying. While keyword-optimizing a content is still crucial, webmasters and SEOs should observe best practices for post algo-update SEO. Above all, remember to write for the reader, not for the search engines, and traffic will flow naturally to your site. Do this instead: Focus on writing naturally. Use variations of your keyword and answer user intent. Hiding Text via GIPHY For the newbie, the only way for search engine spiders to determine what a page is all about is by reading texts. Got that? The search engine spiders are programmed to read texts, but not to determine visuals. We’re not sure how long it will be before search engines come up with a technology that enables spiders to recognize images. But it’s probably in the works. At least until recently, it was quite easy to trick the spiders by hiding texts within images. This fooled them into recognizing an image based on the underlying texts. One of the more common black hat SEO tactics was to hide the texts completely from readers by using font colors that matched the

The term “SEO agency” can’t tell you much. I’ve seen all kinds of operations refer to themselves this way, from one-man operations to firms with thousands of workers and contractors, and including both groups of talented professionals and glorified extortionists peddling false promises and bad strategies. With SEO, it’s not just your money at stake—it’s your reputation. Going with the wrong agency won’t just waste your money; it could potentially harm your domain authority in the long-term, sabotaging your visibility and status for months and years to come. The good SEO agencies out there can do amazing things for you, building your reputation, changing with the times, and keeping your audience loyal and interested, all at a fraction of what it would cost to hire someone full time. But how can you know if your prospective SEO agency is worthy of your trust (and your money)? Use this five-step process to tell for sure. Search For Them Online, Read Reviews No matter where you heard about the agency in question, run a few quick searches for them—not just for their brand name, but also for their line of work and geographic location. This will tell you two important details. The first is the self-service capacity of the agency. Most traditional and white label SEO agencies take care of their own needs first, maximizing their own visibility before trying to use the same tactics for their clients. If you can’t find their site or an info page with a simple search, it could be a bad sign. If an SEO agency claims to be the best, their own online presence should reflect that. Do a quick check: Do they rank for relevant industry keywords in Google? Is their site well-designed, fast, and mobile-friendly? Is their content thoughtful, well-written, and updated regularly? How’s their backlink profile? (You can use free tools like Ahrefs’ free backlink checker or Ubersuggest.) If they’re not applying strong SEO practices to their own site, what does that say about how they’ll handle yours? The way I always like to put it is: NEVER TRUST A SKINNY CHEF!  This test is more than just an evaluation of skill, however. Run some brand name searches alongside your organic searches, and see what people are saying about the agency. If you run into a particularly bad agency, like a low-quality link builder, you’ll likely find plenty of complaints to confirm your suspicions. Look at Their Promises, Check for Ethical SEO Practices Head to their website and look at what they’re promising their clients. The goal here is to look for indications of unnatural sounding or too-good-to-be-true kinds of promises. There’s a big difference between promising “increased organic traffic in the first few months” and “a number one ranking guaranteed by the end of the week.” It’s impossible, even for the best and most experienced SEO providers, to concretely predict results within a specific timeframe or achieving a certain number. There are too many variables in play. SEO shortcuts may seem attractive in the short term, but black-hat techniques (like buying spammy links or cloaking content) can get your site penalized—or even deindexed—by Google. Ask the agency directly: What kind of link-building do you do? How do you approach on-page SEO? Do you follow Google’s webmaster guidelines? The answer you’re looking for includes white-hat practices like high-quality guest posting, content creation, technical site optimization, and clean code—not private blog networks, link farms, or keyword stuffing. Any agency promising “guaranteed rankings” or “fast results” without explaining how they’ll get there is likely cutting corners. Generally, the more outlandish the promise, the less likely the agency will be able to fulfill it. Or, if they can fulfill it, it’s probably through illegitimate means. For example, if an agency promises 100 new links to your site in a week, you can bet those links won’t be good for your site. Start a Conversation, Ask the Right Questions If your prospective SEO agency passes the first two steps, your next step should be to get in contact with a representative. Send an email or make a phone call, and prepare to make a number of judgments based on your experience. First, see how long it takes to get back to you. If you receive a response quickly or get in contact with a person immediately, take it as a good sign. Have a natural conversation about your needs and the SEO agency’s capabilities, and trust your instincts. Trustworthy agencies: Break down their approach step-by-step. Provide regular, transparent reporting. Offer a dedicated contact for questions and feedback. Aren’t afraid to say “we don’t know yet, but here’s how we’ll find out.” If you’re being left in the dark or feel like you’re constantly chasing updates, it’s time to move on. Bad signs to watch for are: long delays to get in contact with you, hasty pushes toward closing a sale, promising whatever you ask for, difficulty communicating, egregious spelling and grammatical errors, and frequent subject changes. Again, trust your gut here; are these people you want to deal with long-term? Scrutinize Their SEO Strategies In the conversation or shortly thereafter, find out what types of strategies they use. If they refuse to tell you, you know you’ve stumbled on a questionable agency. Listen for a combination of many different strategies, like onsite optimization, content creation and syndication, high-quality link building, social media marketing, and other peripheral services. If you hear anything about excessive manual link building, the use of a content farm, or anything else that sounds like it might be a scheme, abandon ship. Bad tactics aren’t just risky shortcuts—they’ll compromise the integrity of your entire strategy. Ask for References and Testimonials You never can be too careful. If your agency has passed steps one through four above, it’s almost certain that they’re a reputable, white hat organization and you can trust them with your domain. But sometimes it pays to do that one final check. Ask your agency contact for a handful of

You have a beautiful website, even a decent backlink profile, but no traffic, no leads and no revenue. If your website isn’t ranking at the top for key search terms – branded or unbranded – your business could stagnate or even fail. The longer you wait to fix the Google rankings problem, the more it’ll cost you in exposure, traffic, and conversions. You know the most valuable and cost-effective SEO exposure comes in the form of growing organic search engine traffic. Let’s explore some of the most common reasons websites don’t rank on Google and what can be done to fix the issues. 1. Your Website is Brand New When it comes to SEO, patience is a huge virtue. If your website is only a couple of months old, you can’t expect it to rank well for competitive search terms. Ranking #1 on Google takes time. In fact, what once took weeks and months, now takes years. You aren’t doing anything wrong – that’s just the way it is! SEO takes time. In order for your website to rank well, you need high quality content and lots of powerful backlinks. A site that’s only a few weeks old doesn’t have the robust foundation that’s required. Furthermore, Google seems to have an unofficial waiting period where new(ish) websites are suppressed until they can be thoroughly examined and evaluated. There’s even a name for it: The Google Sandbox. Experience suggests that a website will typically remain in the Google Sandbox for a period of three to six months. Though it can be considerably shorter or longer depending on the niche and quality of the website. Use this time to create quality content and flesh out a backlink strategy. The more competitive your niche, the more difficult it will be to play catch-up with incumbents. 2. Your Website (or Individual Website Pages) Is Not Indexed There is a big difference between being indexed and ranking on Google. A website must be indexed in order to appear in Google’s search results. Otherwise Google has no way of knowing your site exists. If your website isn’t indexed – or is improperly indexed, for that matter – you won’t appear in search results for any terms or keywords.  If you’ve never taken the time to research how Google indexing works and what needs to be done to encourage search engine crawlers to sift through your site, now’s a good time to learn. If you’ve already indexed your site, perhaps you accidently de-indexed it by mistake? Double-check to make sure this isn’t the case. You can also click here to check your Google website rankings.  3. Google Has Penalized Your Site Google doesn’t like when people try to hack their way to the top of the rankings using spammy tactics. They have specific rules and expectations for how websites are to be optimized and structured. It’s possible that you’ve inadvertently broken some of these rules and received either a manual or algorithmic Google penalty.  Google has something known as Manual Action penalties. If you previously ranked well – or feel like you should be ranking far better than you are – it could be that your site has a Google penalty attached to it. The best course of action is to check the Google Manual Actions report and correct any issues that are highlighted.   Google Manual Action reports are filed when a human reviewer within the company has determined that you have a hacked site, user-generated spam, spammy free host, structured data issues, unnatural links to your site, unnatural links from your site, thin content, cloaking and/or sneaky redirects, pure spam, cloaked images, hidden text and/or keyword stuffing, AMP content mismatch, or sneaky mobile redirects. Google offers clear instructions on how to correct each of these issues. 4. Your Target Keywords Are Too Competitive It’s entirely possible that you’re targeting keywords that are too competitive and broad. For example, a new pizzeria that tries to rank for the word “pizza” doesn’t stand a chance. The same goes for a mechanic that wants to achieve a first page ranking for the search term “auto repair shop.” These are search terms that take years of hard work to capitalize on. Your website is far more likely to rank if it targets long-tail or geo-specific keywords. Instead of going after the term “pizza,” try something like “best pizza restaurant in Boston.” Or rather than rank for “auto repair shop,” you could try “collision repair for Ford trucks.” Specificity tends to produce superior results. 5. Your Competition is Performing Negative SEO on Your Website You aren’t the only one optimizing your website in the hopes of ranking on page one of Google. Every one of your competitors is doing the exact same thing. And it’s possible that they’re doing more than you are. Most people view SEO as a battle against Google, when it’s really a competition against the other businesses in your industry or niche. If you want to rank higher, you have to outperform them. This means producing a higher quantity of quality content and generating more backlinks to your pages. Work harder and smarter – eventually it’ll yield the results you’re seeking. And, despite the talk of negative SEO, most competitors are nailing you simply be performing better than you: their on page SEO content is better and their links are better. They’re outperforming and outclassing you.  6. You Don’t Have Any (or Enough) Inbound Links The right content plus authoritative backlinks pointing to this content is what generates positive search rankings for your website. If you have a lot of quality content but no backlinks, you’re missing a key ingredient. (It’s also possible that you have backlinks from the wrong sources.) Using a tool like Ahrefs or Moz, take the time to study your backlink profile. Find out who is linking to you, which pages have good links, and where you need to improve your SEO. This will take time and manual effort, but it’s

A significant and sudden drop in your Google rankings can create feelings of rage and fright. It’s especially terrifying if you have no idea why your Google rankings dropped so suddenly. With 200+ Google ranking factors, there are a multiplicity of reasons why a site’s Google ranking might suffer an abrupt plunge. If your Google rankings dropped overnight, it doesn’t have to be permanent. Luckily, a majority of Google ranking issues can be remedied with a bit of time and effort. Although, if your Google rankings drop overnight, it can sometimes take months to years of heavy work to fully recover the lost ground. But, don’t despair! Recovery from a sudden drop in Google rankings is possible! Let’s look at some of the most common issues that could cause a site’s search engine ranking to plummet AND how you might fix them. Your Website is New(ish) The number one issue we see when it comes to drops is typically related to new websites. New sites get a lot of love from Google. And a lot of hate. It’s complicated. When your site launches, Google will have never heard of it, and it won’t have your site indexed, which means you can’t show up in any search results. When Google first indexes your site, the Google algorithm might give you an artificial ranking boost (since Google’s algorithm naturally favors new sites temporarily), leading you to believe you’ve earned those ranks all on your own. After that introductory period, your rankings will probably drop again as Google tries to make better sense of who you are and how authoritative you are. If your site is less than five years old, chances are there will be much more volatility than other established websites, regardless of other factors like your link profile, internal linking structure and site dwell-time. Remember, new websites compete with authoritative brands that have been on the internet for a very long time (some more than 30 years). Don’t expect to beat them with a few links and some well-written copy. AI can likely do it better! When it comes to flux and drops in Google rankings, volatility (a.k.a. Google dancing, which we discuss a bit more in detail below) is expected and normal for new sites. You’re Not Diversified in Your Google Ranking Factors The second most common reason for a Google rankings drop is an over-focus on one ranking factor to the exclusion of all others. For instance, it is possible to have too many internal links and over-optimized content. Did you know that the most important Google ranking factor is diversity across the overall factors? It’s not backlinks as some would erroneously suppose. So, when a site focuses too much of their SEO efforts on building backlinks, to the exclusion of other factors, they are more likely to see a drop in their rankings. Excessive backlinks (particularly if they are not natural or diverse enough) can look like unnatural links to Google, which might be a factor if your Google ranking dropped dramatically. We cover this in more detail in our complete list of the most statistically significant Google ranking factors. Canonicalization Issues Problems with canonicalization are somewhat similar to issues with duplicate content. These problems crop up when Google has indexed a page from your site with multiple different URLs. Canonicalization issues can occur when two versions of a domain name are indexed or when a single domain name is indexed with both HTTPS and HTTP. Unfortunately, this type of problem is easy to encounter through no fault of your own. Anyone who links to your site with an incorrect version of the URL can cause canonicalization trouble for you. If this happens, it’s important to reach out to the webmaster of the site with the bad link and attempt to have it changed. Host Server Problems Google is typically quite forgiving of short-lived server problems on your site: If your website is down for maintenance or experiences a day or two of availability problems, your ranking should be unharmed. However, if the webcrawlers have trouble accessing your site for several days, it could have a negative impact on your ranking. If you’re planning to take your site down for maintenance, you should make changes on your server so that a 503 code is generated; this indicates to the outage is temporary. Detection of Malware The presence of malware on your site won’t directly harm your ranking, but the impact it has on the traffic you get from search results is just as significant. If Google observes the presence of malware on your site, it will add a warning for users next to your listing in the search results. If the problem becomes too extensive, Google may blacklist your entire domain. Various tools are available for finding and removing malware on your website. Once you succeed in dealing with the infection, Google will be able to remove the malware warning from your search results listing. Google Updates & Search Algorithm Changes If you’ve been playing by the rules with your website, and your site hasn’t been experiencing any technical problems, your drop in ranking may be due to an algorithm change by the search engines. SEO rankings usually drop after Google algorithm updates and unfortunately, many people experience a dramatic Google ranking drop. In an effort to improve the overall quality of their results, Google and the other engines have made many adjustments to the way they index and rank web content. It’s not just about backlinks and site speed. Google updates and Google Core Updates, in particular, can cause immediate and sudden changes to Google rankings, regardless of the industry. It’s hard to find a business owner who hasn’t been impacted by a Google algorithm update ranking drop. Take a gander at any Google search sensor to tell whether or not major flux is occurring: While most of these algorithm tweaks result in a more gradual impact on rankings, an overnight rankings drop could occur

Spammy backlinks are as old as the internet. But how do you stop spam backlinks and keep your link profile clean and pristine? We’ll find out in this guide to spam backlinks. Determing Spammy Backlinks with AI Anyone who’s engaged in link building for SEO can tell you the anxiety of getting penalized (manually or algorithmically) for having spammy links. With the help of AI, Google can now more easily determine whether your link is built “naturally,” with the intention to increase value to web users, or “unnaturally,” with the sole intention of increasing your rank. Google has also gotten better at devaluing and demoting links from shady sources. Which is a good thing and a bad thing. Let’s explain, but let’s first determine and define what a spam backlink is. What is a spammy backlink? SPAM backlinks are as old as the Internet itself, so most people will know what it is, at least in a general way, just from hearing the word in context. Still, not everyone is so Internet savvy, which is why it’s important to define exactly what a SPAM backlink is. To be succinct, SPAM backlinks are like fleas on the hide of your digital puppy (or the analogically challenged, the puppy is your, or indeed any, website). They take without giving anything in return and are a major nuisance to anyone plagued by them. If you’ve been hit by a spam link attack, you’re not alone: SPAM backlinks usually manifest in the form of comments to blog posts, replies to forum threads, and so forth. They can even appear as “ghost” link redirects wherein a competitor or nefarious party seeks to harm your website by redirecting a site with thousands of spammy links to a page on your website. We’ve also been the blessed beneficiary of this type of link spam. Visit VIAGRAATAB.com and you’ll see. It’s more than frustrating. Even though Google has gotten better at discounting these types of links, they can still harm your website’s Google rankings. How spammy links harm your website The offending SPAM backlinks– which, by the way, is just another way of saying “junk” – will contain a backlink. Backlinks are like breadcrumbs or a signpost pointing from one site to someplace else (usually the spammer’s own site or its affiliate(s). The goal of such things is usually monetary, but it can vary. For instance, SPAM backlinks may also be created on behalf of one’s own website without the knowledge or consent of the owners or administrators. Wherever they point to in the end, these SPAM backlinks will hog site resources, damage your site’s credibility (no one likes to read machine-generated gibberish!), and generally cause a lot of unwelcome maintenance / clean-up headaches for those affected. Worst of all, if your website gets a reputation with Google for allowing, promoting, generating, or otherwise engaging in SPAM-based activities, they may just decide to de-index your website, which is a fancy way of saying “Now you see it, now you don’t”. De-indexed websites can obliterate years of hard work in a millisecond. Not all links are created equal, however. Some backlinks pass on positive ranking juice, others pass on negative ranking juice and still others are ignored by Google altogether thanks to SpamBrain. Toxic backlinks are backlinks that harm a website’s search engine optimization (SEO), or the ability to rank well in a Google search. Paid links, links received from link schemes, link wheels and private blog networks, and links from porn, gaming or payday loans sites are all considered toxic. Difference Between High and Low Quality Backlinks Unfortunately, not all backlinks are created equal. High quality backlinks are extremely valuable, increasing your reputation, improving your domain authority, and ultimately increasing your visibility in Google. But low-quality backlinks can actually have a detrimental effect on your SEO, lowering your authority and earning manual penalties that can seriously compromise your inbound traffic. Knowing the difference between high- and low-quality backlinks is crucial if you want your SEO campaign to succeed. Pro tip: use our free backlink checker to test the proportion of your high to low quality inbound links. Low Quality Backlinks Low quality backlinks can damage your reputation with Google and compromise your visibility in searches. Typical Source The source you use to build your backlink is the most obvious indicator of its quality. As a general rule of thumb, the lower the quality of the site, the lower the quality of the link will be. Posting a link on a disreputable, very low-ranking, or poorly designed site is going to carry a negative impact. Similarly, posting any link on a source designed specifically to manipulate rank is sure to earn you a penalty. However, you’ll have to consider more than just the quality of your source; you’ll also have to consider its appropriateness. Anything completely unrelated to your industry could qualify your backlink as low quality due to its lack of relevance to the source. Intention. The intention of your link is also a contributing factor to its quality, and yes, Google has ways of telling why you build the links you do. The biggest thing to watch out for here is the intention to directly improve your domain authority or rank; if Google determines that a link has no purpose other than to artificially generate traffic, it will be treated as low quality. Structure. The structure of your link usually correlates to its intention; for example, if your link is posted by itself in a blog comment, with no introduction or explanation, it will usually be seen as spam. However, if your link is structured in the context of supporting content that’s free from spam indicators like “click here,” you won’t have to worry. Link Type. If Google starts to see that you’re posting the same link on all your external sources, such as a link to your homepage, it can be treated as a bad link. You want your links to be relevant to specific