What exactly are toxic backlinks? How can you fix this issue?

Author: Ryan Christopher Walsh
Date: 16/09/2025

 

Introduction

As we all know, anything that is “toxic” by definition is not good.

And, well toxic backlinks are no exception to that rule at all.

What this means is that the business starts to accumulate toxic links (a.k.a spam links) which can begin to increase in number in the business’s backlink profile, then this can damage the company’s search engine optimisation.

Marketing agencies refer to this as search visibility, and toxic links can mean that the business sometimes incurs a Google penalty because of the accumulation of these links. This will massively hamper and then hinder your SEO progress moving forwards; therefore, this is something that you want to avoid doing actively.

 

In this article, we are going to learn about:

  • What makes a backlink deemed as toxic?
  • How can a business identify toxic backlinks?
  • What is the Google disavowing process?
  • Why do bad links need to be replaced with good backlinks?
  • What exactly are toxic backlinks?

Toxic backlinks, or just simply low-quality spammy backlinks, will ultimately end up damaging your companies SEO. The primary purpose of these links is quite simple: the businesses are trying to fool Google into thinking their organic search engine optimisation is much stronger than it actually is.

The business does this by accumulating and purchasing spam backlinks, which can ultimately result in the company incurring a penalty down the line.

Where are toxic or spam backlinks built?

Spam websites

There are websites which exist just purely and simply to sell backlinks. The whole purpose of the sites is sometimes to publish short articles, and to mention hyperlinks on a page which they will have often taken money in return for a link. This is a manipulative link-building practice because the page of the website only exists to sell backlinks to other businesses.

These backlinks are most likely to be deemed as spam, toxic, and therefore should be avoided.

As we will come onto later, there are other ways to build spam links as well they and all of these methods should be avoided like the plague!

Also worth discussing is “negative SEO”; this is when your direct competitors may be jealous of your ranking on Google. This might be so much so that they want to pull your business back down the ranks, so that they can overtake your business and take your work / sales. This process is referred to as negative search engine optimisation.

It should be avoided because it damages a competitor’s SEO in an effort for the business perpetrating it to benefit from overtaking that company online. We would most definitely advise staying away from such methods, as if you your business has been found to have applied negative SEO, a solicitor’s letter will quickly follow, so do not do negative seo.

Do toxic backlinks matter?

Why should we even pay attention to toxic backlinks?

To improve a business’s search engine optimisation, you need to consider what are referred to as Google’s ranking factors.

Now we don’t want to bamboozle you or confuse you; however, it’s essential to know that when it comes to ranking factors, there are in excess of 200 of these Google ranking factors.

And what is widely considered the most critical and pivotal factor in determining how a business ranks on Google is its backlink profile.

Think of the most significant business that you can think of, the largest company that enters your mind, perhaps it’s Apple?

Now, when you look at Apple’s backlink profile, they will have thousands, potentially hundreds or thousands of quality backlinks. There an amazing company, making amazing products, and you will find these global brands, to rank as high as they do on Google, they will have an incredible number of strong and good quality backlinks.

Therefore, when it comes to backlinks, you really need a large number of high-quality backlinks. If you’re going to compete in highly competitive business sectors, you’re going to need a lot of good quality backlinks, exactly like Apple has.

For most businesses, say a company in Cardiff, thankfully they wont need the same number of backlinks as Apple!

As that’s an incredible amount of work, however, if you run a business here in Cardiff, and you want your company to rank at the to of

Google, your going to still need a lot of quality links, potentially hundreds.

 

Toxic links (why you should avoid them)

However, you have to think of toxic backlinks as a kind of anchor, deadweight, the handbrake has been applied to a website’s search engine ranking. It will hinder your efforts, won’t help you move forward, and actually acts as a force to push back.

 

Backlinks are a vote of confidence.

Backlinks are essentially a vote of confidence in a business. If you have powerful backlinks, as seen in Apple’s backlink profile, this massively helps businesses’ search engine optimisation.

However, on the other end of the spectrum, consider spam links, which some other businesss use because they don’t have the time or money to implement quality SEO. Spam links will actually hold your business back, or even worse, it means your business incurs a hefty penalty from Google.

 

How Toxic Backlinks Affect Your SEO

How exactly do toxic spamming backlinks affect a businesses SEO

Business can start to accumulate and gain a large number of spammy backlinks, which will raise the attention of Google’s algorithms, such as

 

Spam Brain.

To be more exact, it will grab the attention of Google’s spam brain and Google Penguin updates which is like a giant computer that is constantly looking for spam businesses which use low-quality SEO methods.

What happens is that Google’s spam detection algorithm will then identify that you have accumulated several low-quality backlinks- they could then issue a penalty.

It then up to Google’s complete discretion, as to whether they start to issue an algorithmic or a manual penalty to be applied perhaps to just page on the website or even site-wide.

 

What is an algorithmic/manual penalty?

Google has a challenging job on its hands; it needs to reward hard work and helpful content marketing positively by placing it high on Google.

On the other hand, businesses really need to be penalised that look to spam the algorithms.

Therefore, businesses which seek shortcuts, and publish pages that have absolutely no use to shoppers, and just build spammy links, are on a one-way street to a Google penalty.

Therefore, businesses which are actively building spam links, low-quality links, and are actually trying to fool Google algorithms.

However, with 10 years of experience behind us, we believe you shouldn’t use spammy methods as a shortcut to success. Because these methods don’t work, it can ultimately mean that the website is at risk of incurring a penalty, which means that it stands to be removed from Google.

 

Doesn’t Google Ignore Toxic Backlinks?

But I’ve heard that Google totally ignores toxic backlinks.

As stated by Google’s John Mueller, that Google’s algorithm will ignore low-quality links. Therefore implying that there’s nothing to worry about. However, based on our experience, we must say that this is not the case; therefore, this is not the end of the conversation, but rather it simply represents the best-case scenario where some backlinks can sometimes be ignored.

It’s our interpretation that Google may ignore a very low number of spam links sometimes, yet if it’s clear as day that business has been building spam links on purpose, trying to manipulate the search engine rankings, and this is when Google wades in and slaps a hefty penalty on the website.

The point that we are trying to make is this: from our experience, a few toxic backlinks will actively be ignored sometimes. However, suppose it’s really clear that businesses are trying to fool Google by using spam link-building practices a lot . In that case, we think this is when Google throws a book at the company and then issues a significant algorithmic or, indeed, a manual Google penalty.

 

Where Do Toxic Links Come From?

When exactly do spam/toxic backlinks even come from?

Millions of websites cater just to selling backlinks.
For example, you probably already received a lot of emails from companies offering websites with supposedly “good quality” backlinks that come with a high domain authority.

The truth is, there are millions of websites set up just for the sole purpose of sending out backlinks to other businesses; however, Google quickly notes that these businesses are selling spam links, using outdated spam methods of search engine optimisation. As those websites get penalised, the website that links to them also runs the risk of incurring a penalty- there can therefore be a knock on effect.

You can therefore start to see how potentially millions of businesses could result in an algorithmic penalty at once globally, as issues quickly arise because they are all interlinked. That’s because they have all chosen to link to each other, so if it becomes clear that every single one is using manipulative link-building methods, this will result in an algorithmic penalty applied to all the business.

An excessive number of keywords is written in the anchor text.

There will always be keywords that you want to improve your ranking for on Google; these are often commercially important to that business, and potentially, if you rank at the top of Google for that keyword, it could mean that your business generates millions of pounds in extra sales sometimes.

It is therefore understandable that some businesses will look to cut corners; sometimes, they do this by optimising and writing keywords excessively and repeatedly into whats called the “anchor text”.

This is a very outdated method of search engine optimisation (SEO), which can result in the business incurring a penalty. It is clear as day, that by writing the exact keywords over and over again into the anchor text, you are trying to fool Google, your trying to optimise your website in a spammy way.

Instead, if you’re wondering how to write your website’s anchor text the right way, it’s straightforward: write a short sentence or just a few words that accurately describe where that hyperlink is pointing to.

Don’t cram it full of keywords you want to rank for, as this will ultimately incur a penalty for your business.

 

How to Identify Toxic Backlinks

How can you go about identifying toxic backlinks?

There are backlink checking tools that don’t cost that much to use every month; however, detecting spammy or toxic links really is a skill set that is best left to a backlink builder.

You might think, well we would say that, we run an SEO agency, we are bound to be banging your own drum and promoting your SEO services. However the facts of the matter are you must hire a highly experienced link builder, because say disavowing toxic backlinks, is best left to an SEO expert.

 

How To Fix a Toxic Backlink

Can you give me some recommendations on how to fix toxic backlinks

 

Manual removal

This could actually be best way of removing spammy links- that’s manual removal of the links.
When you’ve built spammy links, if you can therefore go and remove them at the source, then this is the best way of removing the link.

 

Disavowing backlinks

It’s actually possible to tell Google that you built spam links and wish to distance yourself from the spammy links as you now know they are causing SEO issues.

. There is absolutely no guarantee that the links will be disavowed; however, you will have taken a step forwards to try to distance yourself from the spam backlinks.
However, we must emphasise that uploading a Google disavow file should be completed by an link building expert.

 

Toxic Backlink FAQs:

Toxic Backlink Frequently Asked Questions

How do I even know if my business has any toxic backlinks?

There’s only one way of checking, and that is to use a quality backlink checking tool.

This can then be used, for example, to export a list of backlinks into Excel, which will show you precisely the websites linking directly to your website on a dofollow or nofollow basis.

Although some of these backlink checking tools can actually give you a score, a domain authority score, it’s actually incumbent on the backlink builder and the SEO agency to decipher whether those backlinks are toxic or not and whether they need disavowing.

If you were to hire a highly experienced agency, such as us here at Ryan C Walsh, we can immediately see whether backlinks are actually low quality or not. You actually get a feel for it, and it becomes instant to decipher whether a backlink is low quality or high quality; however, if you have no experience doing this work, we highly recommend outsourcing this work to a highly experienced marketing agency to do it on your behalf.

 

How many toxic backlinks will be considered too many?

This is a bit like the old-fashioned saying, “the straw that broke the camel’s back”.

What this means is that most SEO agencies believe there is some allowance; however, what you most definitely don’t want is any toxic backlinks at all if you can manage that.

The reason is simple as what happens is, as soon as the scales have tipped, with too many low-quality backlinks being accumulated, you will instantly receive an algorithmic or a manual penalty from Google. This means that when you wake up in the morning to check your rankings on Google.co.uk, the website may have entirely disappeared from Google because of a penalty.

To avoid this from happening when you actually need quality links, therefore, avoid spammy backlink building.

Do I need to replace low-quality backlinks with good-quality backlinks?
Most definitely, as we mentioned earlier on in this article, toxic links will actually set businesses’ search engine optimisation backwards.

However, high-quality links that have good domain authority, gained from respected websites actually catapult your business’s SEO forward.

 

Come to one of the best agencies around

Who is Ryan C Walsh?

This agency has been named after its owner, Ryan Christopher Walsh. He is one of, if not the most experienced, SEO consultants in Wales. We can say this with great confidence and certainty simply because we have been improving various businesses’ search engine optimisation for over 11 years.

 

Come to one of the best SEO agencies in Cardiff, talk to Ryan Christopher Walsh about how we can improve your business’s search engine optimisation (SEO) today.