We all hate those unwanted creepy links crawling into our blogs without our consent. Is there any way by which we can avoid them?
Do you know that spammers often create unnatural links to bring your traffic down and this can be extremely harmful to your webpage’s health? These are the links created on other pages pointing to your blog or on your blog pointing to spammy sites put up without your consent. This may sound harmless but is not. We are here to tell you about unnatural links or bad links and how they can harm your webpage. You’ll also find some helpful tips on how to avoid such links from crawling into your webpage.
Image Source: Drive Digital
What are Unnatural Links?
These are the links that are used to manipulate the search results of a particular page. They are bought and built up by spammers either to promote their site or to demote other sites. Whatever their intention might be, having an unnatural link on your website either with or without your consent is very harmful to your website as well as your social image. These unnatural links are put up in various ways and all of these are seen as an offense by Google’s guidelines. To identify an unnatural link in your blog/webpage, consider these points:
- Link generated by payment of money or by the exchange of goods and services
This is what we call unnatural links in the first place. Any link generated by the exchange of money or goods is unnatural. Remove it before google penalizes you for violating its guidelines.
- Link in exchange of link
If you don’t genuinely want to point to someone’s webpage but have put up their link as they’re also gonna put up your’s in their blog, that should be stopped right away. This kind of link is also seen as unnatural links and google penalizes the blog owners for this offense.
- Links with altered anchor text
In several blogs, you might have noticed links stuffed into the text. These are put there just to confuse the audience and, in that way, direct them to some other page that they don’t intend to visit. As this writing style is unnatural, the links used here are unnatural too.
- Links in Blog Comments
The easiest way to put an unnatural link is by putting it on someone’s blog’s comments. Spammers are always looking for a chance to put a link directly on your comment section with some misleading description around it. This can be dangerous for the audience as such links often point to malware and ultimately can bring your social image down.
- Link Farms
These are the links put up on various websites pointing towards your site. These might be paid or spam, but it is harmful in both cases. Keep monitoring your backlinks and remove any such links as soon as you discover them.
Image Source: Ahrefs
Why Avoid Unnatural Links?
Image Source: Digital Marketing Limited
Now that you know what unnatural links are all about, you must know about the consequences of having a bad link.
Google states clearly in its guidelines that:
“creating links that weren’t editorially placed or vouched for by the site’s owner on a page, otherwise known as unnatural links, can be considered a violation of our guidelines.”
And
“Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.”
Violating Google’s guidelines will be quite expensive to your pockets as you may get penalized for that.
It’s not that a single unnatural link would lead to a penalty, but if you have noticed any, it would be rather better if you remove it right away.
Tips to Avoid Unnatural Links on your Blog:
Image Source: Seven Boats
#1. Stop using Link Schemes if you are using any.
#2. Monitor your Backlinks regularly.
#3. Remove or nofollow injected links
#4. Stop using automated software for backlinking.
#5. Write content for the readers, not for the search engines.
Conclusion
Unnatural links are not always created by spammers. We also create these sometimes unknowingly. We must understand that this practice is wrong and harmful. A single action taken without a full understanding of its consequences may lead us to serious troubles. So we should stay on the safer side and avoid all such shortcuts. Happy Blogging!
