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2025/10/13 2025/10/13

What will happen when you stop paying for SEO yet our direct competitors do not?

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Date: 13/10/2025
Subject: Organic SEO/Local SEO
Author: Ryan Christopher Walsh

 

Introduction

Let’s face it: we are in a cost-of-living crisis within Great Britain, and businesses are feeling the pinch too.

This means that many companies are looking for ways to save a few quid and cut their monthly expenses.

Businesses in the United Kingdom might therefore begin to think it’s a good idea to invest less in their search engine optimisation over the coming months. However, many companies find that after one or two months, there is little decline in organic traffic, yet past this the organic rankings might fall off a cliff.

Therefore a business can start to move down Google’s ranks if that marketing investment is not sustained with a company such as Ryan C Walsh.

It’s widely thought that organic traffic can drop by 25% to 40% in months five to eight, that’s if you don’t investing.

Also thought that this can decline even further and faster after this point.

 

Outdated content marketing

Then you have outdated content marketing to think about, perhaps also a lot of technical issues that start accumulating with website, and the website no longer being deemed relevant because the content marketing is no longer answering the shopper’s query.

For example, the question “What are the best and most energy-efficient washing machines in 2020?” , well that’s not going to be served on the first page of search results of Google 2025 because the page is no longer relevant. Those washing machines might not even be made anymore!

AI-powered search results and LLM’s

There are now many different ways people are finding businesses online, whether through Google’s AI Overviews, Chat GPT-5 or say

Perplexity of other artificial intelligence-powered search results. In short, there many ways shoppers can use to find businesses.

In this article, we will therefore examine carefully what happens when you stop paying for search engine optimisation (SEO) and whether it results in a gradual decline in customer vistor numbers to a website- or does it mean that your sales fell off a cliff?

How long does it take for SEO to stop working?

Many leading search engine optimisation experts widely believe this: businesses get lulled into a false sense of security when they stop working with marketing agencies that sales are unaffected. The reason is that there are often no notable drop-off enquiries in month one or month two after you stop paying.

Often, the work that has been implemented in the past will carry you forward for a certain amount of time, a bit like when the fuel warning light comes on in your car, you do have that amount of time before the engine completely stalls.

However, most experts feel that by months 4 to 5, with some major core algorithm updates have rolled out, you will start to drop off down

Google’s organic ranks as some of your direct competitors work on improving their SEO

 

Why can’t I pause and then come back to the work later?

Quite simply, if you stop investing, some of your direct competitors may not. So, for example, take any business, lets say a construction company, you might think—well, we don’t do much work over the winter; so lets stop paying the SEO company. However, if your direct competitors are investing and making consistent efforts to improve their SEO over the winter, they could emerge in the spring, often in a higher place on Google.

Search engine optimisation, therefore, requires consistent effort

 

What if the competition is just like light-years ahead?

This can often the case: you form a business that has just been set up and needs to start generating revenue straightaway. However, the problem is that direct competitors might have been investing in their organic SEO for, well sometimes decades before your business.

Therefore, there is a way to tackle this, but it involves more work in the shorter time frame, which will cost more.

 

So what exactly happens when we stop paying for organic / local SEO?

As we mentioned earlier, the website’s keywords may be stabilised for say a few months. Yet after that point we often see the organic rankings drop.. This is because Google bot will be indexing and crawling the website, yet noticing there’s no new links, no new content marketing, and that your falling behind your direct competitors in Cardiff. This is when the direct competitors will often move higher, simply because there content marketing is more relevant more up to date.

Content marketing and link building slow down, and website glitches begin to appear, leading to a drop in rankings when most businesses stop investing.

Major technical issues can accumulate.

Links can start to die off (deleted) as external websites stop linking to a domain name. This can often have a dramatic impact on the business’s organic search engine optimisation (SEO), as backlinks remain a primary ranking factor and therefore one of the main ways on getting a business onto page one of Google.

A breakdown of exactly what happens when a business stops Investing in organic search engine optimisation

 

Month 1 to 2 often no particular significant changes

This is often like a car coasting for a bit because of the momentum built by my engine previously; it is the same with businesses’ organic search engine optimisation. That is, you can coast forwards often for 1 to 2 months, but after that, you start to experience a decrease in organic traffic unless you keep improving the businesses SEO.

 

Months 3 to 4

This is often when the business starts to dip in organic traffic after they stop work on improving their SEO, leading to fewer leads / sales for the business. At this point, the backlinks might start to get deleted, as it’s clear to the Googlebot that there is no new content marketing added to the website.

Other businesses around you might be updating their websites more reguargly; adding quality content marketing say each week, this is why, when a company starts to get overtaken by direct competition.

 

Months 6 to 12

During these months, there will often be many Google algorithm updates, perhaps including a few core Google algorithm updates being rolled out during that period.

As the Google algorithm updates roll out, assessing your website against your competitors might mean its clear the direct competitors have built more links, have better content marketing, and have kept their websites updated

This is when it becomes clear your business is no longer investing in search engine optimisation, and it might start to lag behind direct competitors.

 

Chat GPT-5 mentions and citations on AI

It used to be the case for as long as we can think, businesses would primarily focus on their organic rankings on Google and GMB (Google My Business) rankings, as well as investing in Adwords.

However, there are new ways of gaining more business— that’s via artificial intelligence platforms such as ChatGPT and Perplexity which basically use citations.

Talk to any of the top SEO consultants in the world, and they will tell you that there are strong crossovers between organic search engine optimisation and getting businesses mentioned on the LLMS., One way to do this is to get a quality content marketing indexed, which means the work needs to be of very high quality to serve two purposes: your business being displayed more often on LLMs and also improving organic rankings at the same time. For this to happen the work must have a high Google E-EAT score.

The point we are trying to make, you loud and clear, is that if your business stopped investing in SEO, it’s perfectly possible that your visibility we reduce—both with your SEO and with large language models (LLM’s) such as ChatGPT—would decline.

This could be catastrophic for the business, as it could give its direct competitors a massive advantage.

For example, when somebody is looking for a high-value item, they might ask an LLM like ChatGPT to find a local company. Also turn to Google to find a local company, so if the same business appears on both; LLMS and Google, they will be more likely to be contacted by a shopper.

An FAQ regarding what happens when a business stops paying for SEO

Why do other companies delete backlinks?

So, one of the most significant reasons why businesses drop down Google’s organic ranks sharply is quite simply because their backlink profile has been weakend.. This might be because of having a high-powered backlink, such as a link from the Guardian newspaper that page might suddenly get deleted- which might cause the website itself to be moved down the organic ranks.

When you look at some companies backlink profiles, most businesses have a high number of backlinks; some even have hundreds of thousands quality do-follow links.

This is what gives the website authority, its strength, and the reason it ranks where it does in Google’s results.

As these backlinks are broken or removed by the linking page, it simply means our impact on organic rankings is dramatic.

 

Why is it important that content marketing is kept up to date?

Have to put yourself in Google’s algorithm’s shoes —think like Google would, just one second: it wants to serve the most relevant, up-to-date answer to the customer. Google also has billions of pages to choose from.

So why would Google’s algorithms pick outdated pages, written seven years ago that are no longer relevant?

Exactly, that’s why information needs to be kept up to date, relevant, and well-written.

Why is it important to choose an SEO agency you can afford over the long run?

Some businesses here in Cardiff, South Wales sometimes go to the biggest agency they can find, which often comes with a pretty hefty monthly price tag per month for SEO services.

However, what you have to remember is that it can take a long time for leads to start flowing from the organic SEO work, sometimes as long as 6 months for local search engine optimisation.

This is why you need to find an SEO business that offers the best value to you, not the most expensive provider, that’s because you might run out of funding for your marketing before the leads start to flow in.

 

Who is Ryan Christopher Walsh?

Ryan Christopher Walsh is one of the best SEO consultants in South Wales. He runs an agency, Ryan C Walsh Online Marketing, and has done so for the last 10 years. It is therefore one of the most highly experienced search engine optimisation consultants in this area.

We take on SEO packages ranging from 500 PCM to 2000 PCM for businesses here in Wales.

Therefore, if you require bespoke and high-quality search engine optimisation, then why not give us a ring today

 

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2025/09/18 2025/09/18

Top Google Business Profile Optimisation Tips

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What are your top tips for optimising a Google Business Profile?

Google Business Profiles are an essential marketing tool for businesses of all sizes. Potential customers use these profiles to gain important information about your business, such as its opening hours, to read your business’s reviews and also to gain directions directly to your business.

To put it quite simply, if you have a well optimised Google Business Profile, this can help to improve your local SEO- which can help to draw in more customers, as well as improve the reputation of your business if you have a lot of positive business reviews.

 

Author: Ryan Christopher Walsh

Date: 18/09/2025

Google Business Profile can be a critical marketing asset for any business. The reason is that it if you get shown in the top 3 results, this is a brilliant position just below the Google Adwords and above the organic search results.

The point we are trying to make is simple: if your business consistently ranks in the top three of Google Business Profile results, you can attract more customers, entirely free of charge.

 

In this in-depth article, we will cover:

  • Why your business needs a Google Business Profile account
  • How you can claim your Google Business Profile
  • How to verify your listing
  • What you need to optimise and improve your Google Business Profile
  • How to keep your account up-to-date

 

Why should I go through the effort of setting up a Google Business Profile account?

It’s simple.

When customers want to find anything in the city of Cardiff, they often turn to Google.co.uk for the answers.

Therefore shoppers often turn to their smartphone for the answer, whether that’s a nice Samsung smartphone or perhaps an Apple device, most of us usually ask Google to find a local business for us. Whether that’s the closest Greek restaurant, or where we can buy a new mattress

Often, then right in front of the customer, will be Google My Business results.

This is why it’s so important; and why its still crucial for companies to get displayed in the Google Business results, as you can potentially attract thousands more visitors every single year to your business profile.

A detailed and reliable survey indicates that 46% of all searches are conducted on Google, are actually defined as customers looking to find local businesses or information about local events. This means that if your business is not ranking high on Google, you can most definitely be missing out on a tremendous amount of business.

 

The local three pack

It was the case, quite some time ago, that Google would actually show around seven businesses within the Google business results. Therefore, there was a considerable opportunity for a company to appear here; however, as things change, it’s now just 3 businesses which are shown here.

Businesses now have to fight fiercely for just three positions within the Google business results; therefore, it’s very hard for companies to appear here. This is why businesses need to now make serious effort to improve their local search engine optimisation if they do not appear in the Google Business results.

 

How can we claim our Google business listing?

Perhaps it is the case that your Google listing already exists; therefore, it’s just a matter of typing your business into the search bar on Google, choosing your business and then simply clicking on the “claim business” button.

This is most definitely worth verifying and claiming you’re listing.

The reason is simple: if you don’t, the competitors might actually claim your business listing instead.

Although it’s not there’s to claim, if they do claim the listing, they can then makes unauthorised edits to the business listing.

For example, from our experience, some people will “suggest an edit” on the Google Business listing, and then change the opening hours or even mark as “permanently closed” when this is not the case.

Therefore, this could cost the business a significant number of customers if many potential customers falsely believe businesses is closed when it is actually not.

Therefore, do claim your Google business listing, it only takes a minute to do. You don’t want other competitors or people making edits to the listing, such as changing your opening hours, address, or phone number.

 

How do you go about setting up a Google Business Profile?

The best part is that it’s an absolute piece of cake to set up a new Google Business account; it doesnt take up a considerable amount of time at all.

Therefore, all you have to do is log in to your Google account, and then you will be done in a matter of minutes.
Simply search for “Google Business” and start the process of setting up your account.

 

Do make sure that you choose the right business category

Setting up a your business category is vitally important, and you should be pretty surprised with the amount of businesses actually set their

Google Business account up in a rush, using the wrong business category. For example, you could be running a landscaping business, simply by clicking on hedge cutting services, or offering lawn cutting services, may not describe the services your business offers.

Take the time to work through the list and choose a business category that accurately describes the services or products you sell, so that you choose the right category for your business.

 

Accurately filling the NAP formation.

When you complete your business profile, please fill in the NAP information accurately. Various marketing agencies’ websites which you might have visited before will have most likely mentioned that, nap, the stands for the “name, the address, and the phone number” of the business is an important part of SEO. The NAP information on-page and also off-page needs to be consistent.

You therefore need to make sure that on your company website, make sure that the NAP information is written in plain text on the website, and might also add the NAP information to the footer and the contact page as well. Do make sure that Googlebot can “crawl and index” this information.

This NAP information should match exactly the information you add to your Google My Business page.

 

A word on opening hours

When you’re running your business, you might actually change the opening hours from time to time- for example, you might want to extend your opening hours during holiday season sales.

When you talk to any good marketing agency, what they will actually tell you is that it’s a good idea to log in from time to time to your business’s Google My Business account(s) and update the various details.

What this actually does is tell Google that you are updating your account regularly, which will tell Google your doing a good job of keeping the information up-to-date and accurate.

It also helps customers, as they will often use the Google business profile as a way of checking say your businesses opening hours, making sure that the store is open before they start their commute to your shop.

By actually logging into your Google business profile from time to time, you are therefore showing Google that your business cares about keeping your business information up-to-date, and a lot of marketing agencies believe that this can help improve your local SEO, when your keeping your profile up to date.

 

Write a good business description.

It might seem more straightforward to copy a brief business description directly from your own website, but this is actually not recommended, thats because the text needs be unique

Therefore, take the time to write a unique business description in a text editor, such as Microsoft Word, and try to cram as much information as possible about your business into the available word count.

It’s essential to take the time to do this, because they say the capital city, like Cardiff, that business description could actually be read, potentially thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of times.

For example, let’s say that you run a really nice coffee shop, some shoppers might be wondering, do you have any side rooms that you can rent out as meeting space within your coffee shop? For those businesses who make this clear in business description, that they do have metting space in their business description, this could help them to gain more customers.

Therefore, take the time to write a clear business description.
How to verify Google Business Profile

 

There are several ways to verify your Google listing. For example, you can choose to ask for a postcard sent to your business address; however, it is our understanding that this method is becoming less commonly used.

Instead, there are many other methods, such as requesting an automated phone call instead.

You can also send an email to verify the account.
As we earlier alluded to, an excellent idea is to verify your listing as soon as you can; the reason is that sometimes competitors instead verify the listing, they will then have control over the business listing.

 

Google Business Profile Optimisation

The important part is how you can better optimise your Google Business Profile.

As we mentioned earlier, businesses in the city of Cardiff are fiercely competing for the top three positions. Think about it for a second, in most business sectors, lets say you are a heating engineer in this capital city. How many direct competitors does it have?

It could potentially have over a hundred direct competitors.

Therefore, it is essential not only to have a Google Business Profile, but also to ensure that it’s well-optimised and kept up to date.

Optimising your business profile gives you the edge, simply making your profile better, more relevant, and much more helpful to the customer. Because of this, Google is much more likely to show your business listing more readily and on a more regular basis.

Therefore, you have the edge over the competition, making you more likely to be shown more often by Google results, in those top three positions on Google. This can actually draw more visitors to your business.

Again, we must emphasise this point: it’s fiercely competitive to have your business regularly shown in Google’s business results; however, this can bring a lot of free visitors to your website.

It is therefore very different from Google Adwords, which will have to pay for every single click on your Adwords account. Instead, Google

Business actually helps draws in free traffic to your business.

So, without further ado, here’s exactly how to optimise your Google Business account.

Add photographs

Imagine your business has a unique selling point.
let’s say, for example, you have a nice restaurant with floor-to-ceiling glass with panoramic views across the Atlantic Ocean, which will naturally be a fantastic place to have a nice meal in the evening with your partner.

Therefore, you could add pictures of the restaurants interior onto the Google business account, then you actually show why shoppers should choose your business and visit your restaurant.

Perhaps it’s the food you sell, they might want to add some pictures of the signature dishes which you retail?

It might be a picture of your friendly and highly experienced team, you might want to add a picture of them as well?

 

Business reviews

If someone within your shop, or let’s say your restaurant, really likes your business and the products you serve, then in a friendly manner, direct them to your Google Business account and politely ask them to leave a positive review.

It’s widely thought, by most search engine optimisation agencies, ours included, that by accumulating a lot of honest reviews, that’s positive five-star reviews left by genuine customers, this is the strongest and best way to improve your business’s Google ranking.

Therefore, this is an excellent idea, as it can massively help improve your business’s local search engine optimisation (SEO).

How we can help improve your businesses search engine optimisation?

Ryan Christopher Walsh is one of the longest-serving SEO experts in the whole of Cardiff, South Wales. During his time, he has worked with large e-commerce online retailers, right down to small local businesses.

We are one of the most highly experienced SEO agencies, with over 10 years experience. Ryan is dedicated to helping businesses improve their SEO.

Ryan Christopher Walsh is, therefore, the best SEO consultant in the entire Cardiff area. We will most definitely will not offer the cheapest quote, yet what we can guarantee is that the work is of a consistent high quality, and the best SEO is likely to be found in any city in the

 

United Kingdom.

Contact us today for a no-obligation quote.

 

 

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2025/09/16 2025/09/16

How to find and fix toxic backlinks

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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.
 

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2025/09/02 2025/09/02

How to rank on ChatGPT: We provide seven tips to boost AI visibility.

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In this article, we are going to explain methods that you can use to improve your website’s visibility to help get your business mentioned as a citation on ChatGPT.

The number of shoppers using ChatGPT is growing; we have read that the website is getting a phenomenal amount of monthly site visits. In fact, one article mentioned 1.7 billion monthly visitors! This means that businesses, as well as marketing companies, can no longer ignore these AI platforms and instead need to get their business mentioned more often on platforms such as ChatGPT.
In this article, we are going to discuss how ChatGPT organises, and also how it prioritises which content marketing is worth citing from

 

How exactly does ChatGPT rank various websites?

Are you able to create a diagram, perhaps a flow diagram, to explain how ChatGPT ranks various websites? An example of how a business can increase the chances of getting cited is by Chat GPT.

First of all, it’s essential to understand how Google algorithms operate, which differ significantly from how ChatGPT works. However, there are some commonalities, which include that both platforms want to supply high-quality content marketing as an answer to a shopper’s question.

 

How can we get our business to rank on ChatGPT?

Your content marketing needs to be of excellent quality.

This is where optimising for ChatGPT has powerful crossovers with how a marketing consultant would optimise a website, traditional search engine optimisation.

Why is that?

What we mean is that the content marketing must be of high quality.

We fully appreciate the facts now. Describing something as high quality is extremely vague.

So let us start to explain what can make content marketing high quality.

Satisfying search intent.

If somebody is looking to buy a yellow pair of Wellington boots, then that’s precisely what they want to purchase. They will want content marketing; it’s helpful and valuable to them, helping them to be informed about the best Wellington boots that suit their needs. For example, they might want a nice designe pair like Hunter Wellington boots.

Explaining the brand’s heritage through a well written page can help match a search query with the businesses content marketing to answer that question, highlighting the benefits of the product.

 

On-page SEO

You might think that additional ranking factors, such as page titles, internal links and page titles, are just reserved for organic search engine optimisation.

However, good on-page SEO is also important when optimising for ChatGPT.

For example, use Schema, use good page titles, alt text and also use internal links. These not only support traditional SEO but also send a clear message to ChatGPT and large language models, instructing them to describe precisely what that page is about.

Therefore, to cut to the chase, content marketing needs to be of excellent quality.

 

Semantic web

If you were a thought leader in your industry, for example, you may publish really high-quality written work off-site and on-site, this can establish your business as a brand and a thought leader in your industry.

For example, let’s say your business is in the automotive sector. You contribute your thoughts to a newspaper article, citing that used cars are more in demand than ever before. By having the newspaper business cite your website, you have to link to your website, making your business more authoritative.

Improving what some SEO consultants refer to as semantic SEO.

The more often your business is mentioned online, and as you establish yourself as a thought leader, your brand will be considered worth listening to, making it much more likely to be cited by ChatGPT, also.

 

Helpful and up-to-date content marketing

This has been a topic that has been widely discussed for a very long period of time. In terms of traditional SEO, it’s been known for a long time that the pages kept up-to-date, in terms of the statistics, facts and content marketing, are more likely to rank higher on Google.

However, many marketing companies also mention ChatGPT, in particular, which appreciates if the websites information is up-to-date information.

This, therefore, means it’s essential that factual blog posts and pages are kept up to date,. This could include updating statistics, adding new case studies or simply rewriting paragraphs to bring them up to date with 2025.

 

Do add a last updated line of text

The date of publication needs to be read by Chat GPT. However, if you make it clear that the information was last updated recently, this work is much more likely to be cited by Chat GPT as both Google and Open AI prefer to cite more up to date and information.

 

Which pages are lagging, losing traffic?

You might have a paid SEO tool, or you might be using Google Analytics or Google Search Console. Use this tools to find out which pages are ranking low on Google and not receiving any visitor numbers.

Copywriters might want to revisit these pages, give them a bit of love, and improve them to rank higher on Google.

 

Microsoft Bing

This is a critical point, in that many marketing consultants widely believe that all the content marketing cited on Chat GPT is taken from the

Bing search engine, which is being indexed.

Chat GPT is thought to use the same ranking signals as Microsoft Bing; therefore, a lot of businesses believe that by optimising search engine Bing, they can improve their visibility or on Chat GPT and be cited as a citation.

How to optimise your content marketing

 

Well-written text,

This means that the text should have a logical flow, and should set headings as well as subheadings.
We would also recommend using short paragraphs, perhaps bullet points, to allow the user to skip the section they want to read, increasing the dwell time.

 

Incorporate visual elements

A lot of agencies incorporate visual elements to lower bounce rate.

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2025/08/24 2025/08/24

What are backlinks, and are they still important when improving organic SEO?

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Written by: Ryan Walsh

What are backlinks?

Backlinks, in short, are when another website directs a hyperlink towards your domain name. This could be featured on the homepage, a blog post, or a main page. The more quality links accumulated over time, the more links are added to your business’s backlink profile.

The businesses in the U.K. with the strongest backlinks are typically the ones that rank in the top three results on Google. Now, of course, the other search engine optimisation elements need to be good quality as well; for example, the content marketing will need to be very high quality.

However, good links usually are what drive any business up the ranks on Google.

 

Are backlinks still that important?

Backlinks are still an essential part of organic search engine optimisation. However, as we now move into this new era of AI and AI search, we are unsure at the time of writing how important backlinks will be in terms of how AI ranks businesses. However, for the time being, when talking about organic search engine optimisation, backlinks, and having a strong backlink profile are still very important.

 

Does the number of backlinks matter?

Yes, whether we are talking about backlink building in 2025 or whether we are talking about backlink building during the days when Google used Google PageRank as the algorithm to rank websites, backlinks were always important.

In a nutshell, if a business wins a business award and accumulates backlinks from reputable sources like the BBC, Wales Online, and The Guardian newspaper online, mentioning the product innovation award, linking to your business can significantly boost your organic search engine optimisation.

In terms of Google’s search ranking factors, how important are backlinks?

As most good SEO agencies know, there are now in excess of 200 ranking factors. Now, backlinks, or links for short, are the most critical ranking factor that Google’s algorithm uses to decipher how strong or weak a business’s SEO is.

In a nutshell, if a business has powerful backlinks and good on-page SEO, then it’s more than likely going to rank higher on Google.

Therefore, regardless of the business sector, whether you’re a plumber or a solicitor, usually the businesses ranked right at the top of Google’s organic results will be those companies which have the strongest and highest quality backlinks.

Are all backlinks worth the same?

Most definitely not; some backlinks, such as a good link from the BBC, can have a massive and dramatic uplift in terms of where the company ranks. For other links, such as spam links, this can actually move the business down a few places. In fact, accumulating too many spam links can result in a link penalty.

 

What’s the difference between a dofollow and a nofollow backlink?

The difference between a do-follow and a no-follow backlink is relatively simple: one passes SEO goodness known as link equity, and the other doesn’t. To supercharge your business’s organic search engine optimisation, you need good links that pass link equity.

No-follow links are not worthless; they are still worth accumulating. The reason is that they can enhance your business’s backlink profile and overall search engine optimisation. The reason is that having a lot of quality websites that link to you, whether do-follow or no-follow, is still a sign that the website has decided to link to you.

If several high-quality websites, such as the BBC, link to you, it’s a sign to Google’s algorithm that your content marketing is of high quality.

Google’s perspective is straightforward: if the BBC decides to link to you, it’s likely because you offer high-quality content marketing or are an innovative company that has achieved notable recognition, such as winning a business award.

 

How do you go about building good-quality links?

Regardless of which type of business you run, whether your best solicitor in a pin-stripe suit, or your best hairdresser sliced bread, to rank at the top of Google, your business is going to need a lot of links.

When you place your direct competitors’ websites into a good backlink checking tool, and try Moz Pro, it’s fantastic and one of the best on offer.

Then, using the backlink checking part of the website, you can see that your competitors who are currently ranking number one on Google will generally have good quality links. Typically, businesses that rank at the top of Google or Bing will have over one hundred quality links.

For competitive business sectors, let’s say your business sells legal services across the U.K.

Your business will be competing against thousands of other solicitor practices, so your business backlinks must be superior in every possible way. You will often need thousands of quality links. This is where a top-quality agency is usually required to improve the SEO substantially.

 

What does link-worthy content marketing even mean?

Regardless of the question the customer has, there are often thousands of businesses that have also answered that exact question. The reason is that they want the shopper to land on their piece of content marketing, which offers an answer to that question.

Then they can direct that shopper to a page where they can buy a product from them.
Content marketing is, therefore, a way of bringing shoppers to the company website.

However, for that piece of content marketing to even get close to page one of Google, you must have a lot of high-quality links.

 

And how do you get those good-quality links?

Well, your business must offer a superior, more detailed, and better answer than the competition.
If the competition has written 700 words which are boring to read, nobody is going to want to link to that work.

However, if you write 2000 words and have an expert in a YouTube video explaining the benefits of that product, the website is likely to have a low bounce rate.

Then you can cram the page with as much valuable and helpful advice as possible. This will decrease the bounce rate and also sometimes substantially increase the dwell time. Plus, because you’ve offered good advice, it’s clear as day that you have put a lot of effort into creating that page, and other businesses may link to you.

Now you may well be scratching your head, thinking, “Well, why would other businesses want to link to us?”

Well, because quite simply put, those other businesses may not be your competitors. For example, let’s say that you make and bake the wedding cakes. And you may have a partnership with a local hotel, where if you refer them, you get a commission. Therefore, on your wedding cake website, you may offer a link to an exclusive, luxury hotel where you know you send your customers to have a great day. Plus,

you have sent out a link, which also helps improve the hotel’s SEO.

 

What is link velocity?

Link velocity is simply a measure of how quickly your business is accumulating links. Is your business accumulating the links super fast?

Or are you accumulating the links very slowly?

When you have a chat with a leading SEO agency, they will always tell you that an ideal world is one where you accumulate links slowly and steadily.

If your business accumulates too many links too quickly over a month or two, it can appear as if you’re buying links. Google doesn’t want you to buy links; it wants your business to earn links slowly over a long period.

If businesses are buying links, they are ignoring Google’s rules.
It is then perfectly possible that the business will incur a link penalty. When you chat to any good SEO company that’s worth its salt, they will tell you that bad links, spam backlinks, can mean that your website disappears from Google. Getting back can be arduous work, slow, and expensive, especially if you’re paying an agency to do this work. So, don’t cut corners or buy spam links. Doing so can mean your website disappears from Google because it’s been hit by a Google Penguin Penalty.

Should I cheat and buy a load of links?

No, most definitely do not buy links. Google wants you to earn high-quality backlinks. If a business pays for links, such as spam links,

Google’s algorithm can often detect these low-quality links very quickly. If a company has too many spam links, it can soon obtain a Google penalty. When you sit down and have a chat with an SEO agency owner, they will tell you it can take a very long time for a business in the UK or globally to recover from a link penalty.

For example, a business, let’s say here in Wales, might be right at the top of Google’s organic results. However, because it has bought spammy links and built too many low-quality links, Googlebot can index these links. When Google detects excessive spam links being built, a link penalty can be applied to the entire domain name.

This can mean the website moves down substantially, or it could be totally removed from Google because of the link penalty.

To build quality links, we recommend choosing a top marketing agency to improve your business’s search engine optimisation. You should therefore ask if link building is part of the monthly process, as you want quality do-follow and no-follow backlinks built.

 

How can spam backlinks make my business’s SEO crash and burn?

Your goal is to have no spam links. Therefore, make sure that you take your time to hire the right marketing agency. You don’t want to hire a business that cuts corners or builds spam links, as this can massively damage your company’s SEO.

 

How do I get these top-quality links you’re talking about?

You need to write high-quality content marketing. Whether it’s a main page or a blog post, you should aim for that page to have a high

Google E-EAT score. Use Google Analytics to monitor the pages’ dwell time, make changes to improve the page over time, and lower the page’s bounce rate. You can use a good quality backlink checking tool, such as Ahrefs, or perhaps you would prefer to use Moz Pro to check for incoming backlinks.

 

How long should my content marketing be?

It depends on the question being answered; sometimes, someone prefers less text and more visual content. For example, if you were describing how to fix a dripping tap.

On the other hand, if your writing is an article for your family law practice, then often people want a more comprehensive and detailed answer. This means you should examine the amount of text your competition has written and aim for a similar word count, ensuring the work is high quality and has a high Google E-EAT score.

 

Why does content marketing require me to invest so much effort and time in the work?

Content marketing, such as the page you are reading, requires a significant amount of time to write; however, it’s essential work if your business aims to improve its Google ranking.

If you were to ask our agency, we would say that it’s practically impossible to get any business on page.

 

Why hire Ryan Christopher Walsh SEO?

We are a leading SEO agency based in Cardiff.

If you would like a free quote, then contact us today.

 

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