When you build a website, you make conscious efforts to gain links from other high-quality sites to build your own online reputation in the search engine’s eyes. This is called backlinking, which happens to be a critical part of your SEO online marketing strategy.
But even after you have a strong backlink profile, your website may continue to gain links from other websites, with or without your direct involvement.
Overtime, this may lead to an accumulation of dead or low-quality links on your website, which are aptly called toxic links.
The presence of toxic links chips away at your SEO efforts and poses a threat to your search engine rank.
Search engines perceive a website’s authority from the quality of backlinks that it has. If your website has a bulk of low-quality websites linking to it, Google may think of your website as one of the low-quality ones and, as a result, may strip it of its rank, penalize it, or remove it from the search index.
But that’s not even the worst part. What’s worse is that the consequences of a toxic backlink profile come unannounced. This means you can either wait for the search engine to tank your website and then scramble to get it fixed. Or you can adopt a proactive strategy and perform regular link detox to remove toxic links from your website.
Most website owners turn to SEO internet marketing services to remove toxic links, but some of them often choose to do it themselves. Regardless of who does it, you must know how it is done.
Landau Consulting, a New Jersey SEO company,has created thisinfographic discussing toxic links, their consequences, and how to get them removed. Check it out and be aware of how to avoid getting penalized for a crime you didn’t even commit!