Bad backlinks: how to identify and remove toxic links

Think SEO is all about volume? Think again.

In the world of SEO, backlinks are the currency of exchange. They act as votes of confidence from other sites to yours.

But not all votes are created equal.

Some “votes” can even cost you dearly. Can you imagine investing thousands of CHF in a growth strategy only to see all your organic traffic disappear overnight because of a Google penalty?

This is exactly what happens when your link profile is contaminated by so-called “bad backlinks”.

Here's how to understand, identify and eliminate these toxic links to protect your digital investment.

Backlinks: a pillar of your digital authority

To understand why bad links are dangerous, it's important to remember why links exist in the first place.

Google considers every link to your site as a recommendation. If an authority site in your sector (such as a major Swiss media outlet or a government institution) links to you, your credibility soars.

This is a strong signal to search engines. It indicates that your content is relevant, reliable and worth promoting.

A good netlinking strategy translates directly into :

• Greater visibility on your strategic keywords.
• Increased qualified traffic.
• Measurable sales growth.

However, the reverse is also true. If recommendations come from dubious sources, your digital reputation plummets.

What is a “bad backlink”?

A bad backlink is an artificial, irrelevant or low-quality link designed solely to manipulate search algorithms.

Thanks to its updates (such as Penguin or SpamBrain), Google has become extremely effective at spotting these attempts at manipulation.

If you've bought cheap link packages or worked with unscrupulous providers in the past, your site may be at risk.

Here's a checklist for spotting wrong types of links :

• Blog comments: These automatically generated links in the comments sections are pure spam.
• Forum profiles : Creating fake profiles on hundreds of forums just to insert a link as a signature is an obsolete and dangerous technique.
• Footer links : Having your link repeated on all the pages of a third-party site via the footer is a red flag for Google.
• Blogrolls : These lists of links, often located in the sidebar of blogs, no longer have any SEO value and can be considered artificial.

But that's not all. You also need to evaluate the source.

Here are the characteristics of bad sites you don't want to receive links from:

• Non-unique IP addresses : If hundreds of sites come from the same IP address (on the first two bytes), this is often a sign of a poor-quality private site network (PBN).
• Spun content: These are texts generated automatically or poorly rewritten by software, often unreadable by humans.
• Dubious sectors : If the site has inbound or outbound links to topics such as gambling, online pharmacy (pharma) or adult content.
• Geographical inconsistency : A Geneva-based corporate site receiving 70 % of its links from China? This makes no logical sense and will be flagged by Google.
• Linguistic inconsistency : Similarly, a site written in French that receives a majority of backlinks from sites in Russian or Chinese is suspect.

Conversely, a good site is a site that does none of these things. It has a real audience, its own editorial content and a theme close to yours.

How do you identify these toxic links?

You can't correct what you can't measure.

For decision-makers and marketers, it's crucial to have a clear view of the health of your company's link profile.

Here's how to proceed for a quick audit:

1. Use Google Search Console

This is Google's official free tool. In the “Links” section, you can see the “Main originating sites”. Browse this list. Do you see any strange domain names, irrelevant country extensions (.ru, .cn, .tk) or sites with dubious content?

2. Use third-party analysis tools

Platforms such as Semrush, Ahrefs or Majestic offer more advanced metrics. They often assign a “Toxicity Score” or “Spam Score” to each link.
If a link has a high toxicity score (e.g. over 60 %), it deserves your immediate attention.

3. Manual analysis (the justice of the peace)

Tools aren't everything. Sometimes, a link can look algorithmically toxic but be legitimate.
Ask yourself this simple question: “If Google didn't exist, would this link be relevant to my business?”
If the answer is no, it's probably a bad backlink.

The impact of these links is not insignificant. They can lead to algorithmic devaluation (your site slowly drops in the results) or manual action (a Google employee decides to penalize your site).
In the case of manual action, it's often the total disappearance of your site from the search results. The cost to your company could quickly amount to tens of thousands of CHF in lost sales.

How do you get rid of bad backlinks?

Once the culprits have been identified, it's time to act. Link cleaning is a delicate process, requiring a methodical approach.

Here are the two main steps to clean up your profile:

Step 1: Removal at source

This is the method most recommended by Google, but also the most time-consuming.
It involves contacting the webmasters of the sites hosting these toxic links and politely asking them to remove them.

Let's face it: response rates are often low. Many of these sites are abandoned or managed by robots. However, documenting these attempts is important if you ever need to submit a reconsideration request to Google following a manual penalty.

Step 2: The Disavow Tool

If you can't get the links removed, you need to ask Google to ignore them. This is called disavow.

Please note: This is an advanced feature. Incorrect use can impair your performance. Only disavow links that you are certain are toxic.

The procedure is as follows:

1. Create a text file (.txt) encoded in UTF-8.
2. List the domains to be blocked using the format domain:le-site-toxique.com.
3. Log in to the Google Search Console link disavow tool.
4. Select your property and send the file.

By doing this, you're technically telling Google: “I don't have control over these links, so please don't include them in my authority calculation”.

This protects your site from the damaging effects of these links, without the need to physically remove them from the web.

Protect your growth over the long term

SEO isn't a sprint, it's a long-distance race that requires rigor and strategic vision.

Shortcuts, such as creating low-quality links, always end up costing more than they earn. Google penalties are severe and can take months to recover from.

For a company aiming for growth, quality must always take precedence over quantity.

Your goal should be to build a healthy digital ecosystem, based on strategic partnerships and high-value-added content that naturally attracts quality links.

Mehdi B.

Co-founder of Smart Impact.Passionate about the web from the outset, he launched his first project in 2006: an online music magazine that is still running today. With almost 20 years' experience in SEO, a federal diploma in marketing and a solid geek culture, he and his team transform customers' (sometimes vague) ideas into concrete digital projects.