Why Buying or Building Backlinks Hardly Ever Works

Maybe you were told that backlinks are the best way to improve ranking.

Or maybe they were sold to you as a revolutionary strategy to get your site mentioned by AI.

All for a fraction of the cost of hiring an actual SEO.

Look, we get it. Times are tough, and sometimes, you don't have the luxury of waiting 6-12 months to see SEO results.

The problem with most backlink buying or building schemes is that they either don’t improve rankings and traffic whatsoever, or they bring a temporary boost that comes crashing down to levels even lower than before you spent money.

 

 

So whenever a client says they’ve worked with SEO agencies before without seeing results, one of the first things we do is take a look at their backlink profile.

And sure enough, it usually looks rough.

 

 

While we hesitate to use the term ‘toxic backlinks’ since Google officially refers to them as link spam instead,poor backlink profiles from dubious websites can have a zero-to-negative impact on your other SEO work.

So before you throw money down the drain, it may be worth checking whether your website is currently being associated with bad actors.

What are backlinks, and why do they matter?

To be clear, backlinks are one of the most effective ways to rank for keywords. You’ll find people disagreeing about whether they are the most important factor, but it's definitely up there.

The problem comes when clients don’t understand how they work and start chasing backlinks for the sake of backlinks.

You’ll hear most SEOs describing backlinks as a vote of confidence for a website’s content. And Google does confirm this in their own words:

“…one of the factors used to determine quality is understanding if other prominent websites link or refer to the content. This is generally a good sign that the information is trustworthy.” - Google, How Search Works.

Naturally, Google pushes a site up the rankings when it sees multiple domains ‘voting’ for it.

But there’s a difference between getting a link from a major local news network and a website titled ‘Backlinks for Sale’ complete with AI-generated emojis.

With decades of experience filtering spam, Google is more than capable of identifying websites that are set up for the sole purpose of farming backlinks, and attributes a lower amount of link equity (more commonly known as ‘link juice’) to them.

 

The Penguin algorithm, in brief

Introduced in 2012, the Penguin algorithm ‘devalues spam by adjusting ranking based on spam signals’. So while individual bad links may not hurt your website, an abnormally large number of links gained within a short timeframe or a high percentage of backlinks from low quality websites gives Google very good reason to hit you with penalties.

And if you think about it logically, why would you pay for backlinks from irrelevant websites in the first place? Let’s say you’re a tuition center. Are your potential customers more likely to come from family blogs or link farms? 

But if this is something that you’ve done before (or are planning to do), don’t panic. There is a way to fix this, although the recovery timeline may vary depending on how bad the damage is.

 

How to recover from toxic backlinks or link spam

The good news is that Google is more than capable of identifying link spam and ignoring them on their own. So there’s no need to panic if you see a couple of stray links in your profile—unless you’ve received a manual action or have reason to believe that you are at risk of receiving one.

What is a manual action

A manual action is issued when a human reviewer has determined that your website is not in compliance with Google’s search policies and has thus issued a penalty that hides some or all of your site in Google’s search results.

When to use the disavow tool

If you’ve received a manual action, or have engaged in artificial link building practices, then you might want to take out the disavow links tool.

But be careful how you use it. Most SEO tools categorise links according to toxicity based on their authority score, but those metrics are estimates at best.

By downloading bad links in bulk and uploading them directly to the disavow tool, you risk losing link equity from reputable websites that are keeping your ranking afloat, too.

It’s better to take the time to evaluate which links you want to dissociate your website from than rebuild your backlink profile from scratch.

Should I disavow before receiving manual action?

If you have yet to receive manual action but have bought poor quality links before OR have a disproportionate number of poor quality links (because someone might be trying to sabotage your site), we do recommend taking action quickly.

This is because Google officially states that reconsideration requests against manual actions take several days or weeks to be processed. And they specifically singled out link-related requests as ones that might take longer.

By the time you realise the problem, clean up your website, and have your request processed (if at all), you would have easily lost months worth of traffic, even more if you consider how long it might take to build your website back up.

And whatever you do, do not go trigger-happy with the reconsideration button. Allegedly, that sends your request right to the back of the queue.

 

Build backlinks and reputation the legitimate way

With some effort and a proper strategy, building backlinks legitimately on a budget is entirely possible.

Feel free to drop us a message on our contact form or at eugene.gzh@proton.me for personalised help on your backlink and SEO strategy.