7 Types Of Bad Links That Google Hates

Google has been clear about the types of links that it doesn’t like in its effort to make the search community more trustable and dependable. They have set higher standards to ensure that they can maintain the best experience for all users worldwide.

One of the main ranking factors of 2022 is offsite elements or link building. Building high-quality backlinks are something SEO Experts should always do as a standard. These backlinks can be counted as votes of confidence from another website towards the target site. The quality and quantity of backlinks play a big part in their consideration. But still, there are so many SEO professionals trying to do whatever they can to obtain more backlinks and get a higher chance to rank on a better position on SERPs of Google

We’ve done some research and based on the knowledge we’ve gotten through our experience over the years, here are the 7 types of bad links or low-quality links that Google absolutely hates.

Directory Links

A directory can be considered as the origins of the search engines since in the past, whenever internet users search for a website, they will go to the site and get directory links coming from the database. However, this type of link building has little to no value in SEO because anyone in the world can easily post their website and record it into the system or the database. This concept is considered a threat to the natural link building concept.

Some directory submissions include article directories which are not considered a good practice of SEO. The main purpose of an article directory is to allow webmasters to post their articles and share them with other people, but it doesn’t have to be related to the website that it’s promoting. In other words, if you submit your website to low-quality directories, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the website will get a link from the directory. The website only has to be associated with the article that you’ve submitted.

Comment Spam / Guest Post Spam

This type of spam is very common and a lot of people are doing it without knowing the consequences. When you’re leaving a comment on a blog post, most of the time, webmasters are using some plugin in order to detect spammy comments and prevent them from being published. Sometimes, some people are using spun content or gibberish to leave comments on other people’s blog posts thinking that it will help them improve their link profile and rank higher on SERPs.

The same concept also applies when you’re doing guest posts. Webmasters check the quality of the content and make sure it’s valuable to their readers. If you’re submitting a low-quality article, spammy blog comments and spammy content, it’s very likely that your guest post or guest blogging will be rejected. These kinds of spam are not providing dofollow links now as Google introduced the nofollow attribute.

Links From Foreign Sites In A Different Language

Google is trying to make its search engine more user-friendly by providing the best experience for all users around the world. That’s why Google has been giving more priority to websites that are targeting a specific country or region. Previously, if you’re getting links from foreign sites in a different language, it will not have any impact on your website. But recently, Google has updated their algorithm and these types of links are not considered as valuable as before. There is now no reason to get a backlink from a Chinese language website with an English external anchor text, it will be flagged as a mismatch and clearly doesn’t make sense from the search engines’ perspective.

Link Building From The Countries You Don’t Do Business In

This is another update from Google, which is trying to devalue the links that are coming from the countries you don’t do business with. In the past, if you were getting links from websites in Japan, it will have a positive impact on your website. However, recently, this type of link building is not considered as valuable as before. The same concept also applies when you’re getting links from websites in the United States. If you’re targeting a specific country or region, try to get links from websites within that country or region.

This is one of the most common types of bad backlinks that people are doing without knowing the consequences. When you’re trying to get links from websites in a different country, it doesn’t matter if the website is relevant to your business or not, they will not have any impact on your website either way.

Links From Irrelevant Sites

This type of backlink is very common and it’s very easy to get them. All you need to do is to find a list of other websites that are not related to your business and start getting links from them. In most cases, these types of links will not have any impact on your website. However, if Google detects that you’re getting links from irrelevant sites, it’s very likely that your website will get penalized.

In order to avoid getting penalized, make sure that you’re getting links from websites that are relevant to your business. If you’re not sure if the website is relevant to your business, you can always use Google’s search engine to check the website’s relevance.

Misleading Anchor Text

When you’re trying to get links from websites, make sure that you’re not using misleading anchor text. For example, if you’re getting a link from a website with the anchor text “football equipment”, but turns out that landing page content is all about sunglasses. It’s very likely that Google will detect it and your website will get penalized

In order to avoid getting penalized, make sure that you’re using relevant anchor text. Use Google’s search engine to check the anchor text’s relevance if you’re not sure if the anchor text is relevant to your website.

Links From Low-Quality Sites

Another common type of bad backlinks is links from low-quality sites. These types of websites are usually created for the purpose of SEO, which means that they’re not providing any value to their readers. In most cases, these websites are filled with spun content, gibberish and intrusive ads. If you build links from low-quality sites, it’s very likely that your website will get penalized by Google.

In order to avoid getting penalized, make sure that you’re getting links to your site from high-quality websites. A good way to determine the quality of a website is by using Google’s PageRank tool. You can also use other tools such as Mozbar and Ahrefs to determine the quality of a website.

Conclusion

Stay Away From Link Scheme And Build High-Quality Links

If there’s one thing you take away from this article, it should be that.

If you just realised that you are using these techniques to improve your backlink profile position, I would highly suggest you stop and focus on building high-quality links instead and try to make them as natural as possible.

If you are experiencing difficulty with backlink management or are unsure whether your website has these types of bad links built in your backlink profile, contact us today for a consultation! Our team of experts and outreach specialists are all working with our agency inhouse so you know we only do high quality and dependable work. We can check your backlink profile using google’s webmaster guidelines and check whether you have such links that are hindering your web pages from getting better domain authority. In our consultation, we will also check if you have any broken links on your site and how we would optimize your site to rank higher on google search results.

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