How To Identify Spammy Links And What To Do About Them
How To Identify Spammy Links And What To Do About Them

Table of Contents
- Introduction
- The April Of The Penguin (Pun Intended)
- What Are Spammy Backlinks?
- Types Of Google Penalties
- Common Sources Of Spammy Links
- Residual Spammy Backlinks
- Guest Posts On Low Quality Websites
- Paid Links And Link Exchanges
- Low Quality Press Release Websites
- Link Farms
- Directories
- Forum Spam
- Comment Spam
- Excessive Links From Non-Niche Related Websites
- Backlinks From Websites In Foreign Languages
- Guest Posting At A Scale
- Links From Generally Spammy Websites
- A Note About Outgoing Links
- Step-By-Step Process Of Identifying Spammy Links
- What To Do Once You Have Identified A Spammy Link?
- Conclusion
Introduction
The April Of The Penguin (Pun Intended)
What Are Spammy Backlinks?
Let’s understand their possible sources:
Types Of Google Penalties
Link Penalty 1: Manual Link Penalty
- The Google algorithm may have detected a red flag in your backlink profile and as a result of that, marked your backlink profile for a manual review.
- You may be operating in a competitive niche where a lot of players have been known to use black hat technique to improve their rankings. Such niches are constantly and closely monitored by Google’s webspam team.
- A spam report by a user or a competitor can also trigger a manual review of your backlink profile.
Link Penalty 2: Algorithmic Link Spam Penalty
Common Sources Of Spammy Links
1. Residual Spammy Backlinks
2. Guest Posts On Low Quality Websites
- Blog Networks: Blog networks are websites that give out backlinks to paying members. Google hates these websites and for good reason. The easiest way to spot a blog network is to look at their guest posting guidelines. If they include rigid word count rules and similarly rigid rules about words to link ratios, it is best for you to avoid such a website. Most good blogs don’t care whether you are writing only 400-600 words or have included links in the introduction of your article.
- Article Websites: Article websites are quite similar to blog networks with the major difference being that you can pay for every article that you publish. Most articles on these websites are written with backlinking as an objective and thus, usually lack quality. While links from these websites don’t usually hurt your website’s SERP performance, they will also not add any positive value, Google has made sure of that.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: Also known as single post blogs, these are one or two page websites that are usually created on WordPress subdomains. Just like links from article websites, links from single post blogs don’t add any value towards improving the SERP visibility of your website.
3. Paid Links And Link Exchanges
4. Low Quality Press Release Websites
5. Link Farms
6. Directories
Google’s Matt Cutts has outlined a few considerations that you can ask in order to determine if a link from a certain business directory will be beneficial for your website. These are:
- Check how many submissions does the directory reject. If just about anyone can get a listing on the directory, there’s a good chance that the links will not give you any benefit.
- Check the quality of websites whose submissions are accepted by the directory. If most of the websites look spammy, it is best to move on to finding better business directories.
- In many cases, even genuine directory websites will charge a fee and it’s not wrong. However, in the case of genuine business directories, this fee is usually used to compensate the directory’s team for the time and effort it takes to verify submissions from businesses.
7. Forum Spam
8. Comment Spam
9. Excessive Links From Non-Niche Related Websites
10. Backlinks From Websites In Foreign Languages
11. Guest Posting At A Scale
This often happens when businesses enlist the help of low quality guest posting services.
12. Links From Generally Spammy Websites
A Note About Outgoing Links
How?
- Avoid adding outgoing links to websites from which you would not want incoming backlinks. This includes ‘spammy’ websites, non niche websites, and foreign language websites. Besides these, make sure you are using your own judgement to gauge the quality of a website that you may be considering linking to.
- If you are placing outgoing affiliate links on your website, make sure that you associate them with a ‘no-follow- attribute.
- Don’t go out of your way to hide outbound links.
- If your website hosts user generated content, make sure you are taking out the time to give no-follow attributes to all links in user generated content.
- Periodically go through your outbound links profile and make sure that there are no broken links. Broken outbound links are associated with poor user experience and may result in poor search engine performance.
Step-By-Step Process Of Identifying Spammy Links
Identifying spammy backlinks on your website is actually a surprisingly straightforward process:
- Step 1: The first step is to run your website through an SEO tool’s backlink checker. I personally use Ahrefs for this purpose as the tool offers all the information I need to root out the bad backlinks from virtually any backlink profile.
- Step 2: The tool will then display the details of the entire backlink profile of your website. Something like this:
Here, you have to locate websites and domains with a low Domain Rating (DR) score.
- Step 3: Low DR score is a good indicator of spammy websites but it isn’t foolproof. This is because websites with low DR scores may simply be new websites. This is why, once you have identified, you have to conduct further investigation. Usually, other signs of a spammy website include origins from a foreign website that you don’t target or websites that clearly don’t belong to your niche. Spammy sounding domains are also a clear giveaway. Another way to identify a spammy backlink is to check the anchor text. If the text is in a foreign language or simply not related to your niche, there is a strong chance that the backlink is not good for your website.
- If you have executed the above steps correctly, now you must have a list of spammy backlinks pointing to your website.
What To Do Once You Have Identified A Spammy Link?
- Request The Website Owner/Manager To Remove The Link In most cases, you will find the contact details of the website owner on the website itself. If this is available, send them a (polite) email asking them to remove the link to your website.With that said, this step rarely works but it is a requirement that Google needs you to fulfill before you ask them to disavow a link from a website.
- Request The Hosting Company To Remove The Link If you don’t hear back from the website’s owners, you can also reach out to their hosting providers with a request to remove the backlink to your website.To look up who is hosting the website in question, you can use this service that is literally called WhoIsHostingThis.The service will also provide you with the contact details of the hosting provider.
- Submit A Disavow Request To Google To submit a request to Google to disavow a link to your website is simply asking them to ignore it. Google offers a tool that will help you do this.It allows you to submit a text file containing all the spammy links that you want them to ignore.Once you have submitted a disavow request, all that is left to do is wait. Processing your request will take a few weeks.During this time, keep a close watch on your rankings to notice subtle improvements that will gradually become apparent as your disavow request is processed.
FAQs
How Do You Identify A Spammy Link?
Identifying spammy links is essential for maintaining the credibility of your website. You can spot a spammy link through:
- SEO tool: Run the link through an SEO backlink tool. A low DR score is a good indicator of spammy links.
- Unsolicited messages or emails: Spammy links often come in unsolicited emails and messages you didn't request.Some SEO services give their clients spammy backlinks for a sudden
- Low-quality guest postings: Low-quality guest postings are another sign of a spammy link. Many spelling or grammatical errors and irrelevant content indicate low-quality links.
Unsecured website: Legitimate websites use HTTPS for secure connections. It will most likely be spam if the link doesn't have it.
Why Do I Have Spammy Backlinks?
Spammy backlinks can stem from various reasons:
- Negative SEO: Some competitors may link to your website with spammy backlinks to reduce its ranking.
- Purchasing spammy backlinks: Some SEO services give their clients spammy backlinks for a sudden boost in ranking. You must check the DR of these websites.
- Content spam: If any of your content allows user comments, then spammers might try to post comments with links to their websites.
Outdated backlinks: Some websites you may have collaborated with in the past may have now become spammy.
How Can I Remove/Fix My Spam Backlinks?
To remove/fix spammy backlinks, you must first identify these backlinks. There are various tools available online that will help you with that. To determine a spammy backlink, you can also run a Google search.
If Google does not index the link, it is a good indicator that it is spammy. You need to contact the webmaster of the spammy website to remove your URL from their website. You can also use Google’s disavow tool to remove the remaining backlinks. Create a disavow file and send it through Google Console.
Conclusion
Spammy backlinks can originate from a number of sources and sometimes, having spammy backlinks pointing to your website is not even your fault. However, in the eyes of the search engine, spammy links are associated with a spammy website.
This is why, regularly checking your website’s backlink profile to identify spammy backlinks and removing them is a necessary task. Luckily, thanks to SEO tools like RankWatch, the task, when done regularly, will not demand a lot of time or effort. The little bit of time that you will have to spend on identifying and removing spammy backlinks is a small price to pay to ensure your website’s performance in search results doesn’t get affected.
Got more questions about spammy backlinks? Or did I forget to mention a source of spammy backlinks that you have discovered?
Whatever it is, feel free to share with me (and all the readers) in the comment section below.
JULY 19, 2021
RAGHAV TAYAL
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