For companies with little digital knowledge, maintaining an optimized website may seem like a complex task. However, understanding and managing toxic links and broken links are fundamental steps to ensuring that your SEO strategy keeps your website performing well in search engines.
This post will cover best practices for dealing with these issues, offering a clear and educational overview of how to keep your website healthy and competitive in the digital environment.
What are toxic links?
Toxic links are hyperlinks that can harm your website’s performance in Google search results. They often come from low-quality websites or are part of paid link schemes that violate Google’s guidelines. But how do you identify and deal with these harmful links?
The term gained prominence after Google's Penguin bank data algorithm update in 2012, which aimed to penalize websites with bad backlinks. These links can be intentionally created by competitors to sabotage your website's ranking.
How does Google deal with toxic links?
Google's Gary Illyes recommends ignoring these links , as Google has sophisticated mechanisms to disregard irrelevant links to your site. However, if you suspect that toxic links are harming your site, you can use Google Search Console's disavow links tool .
It allows you to tell Google which links you want to disregard, especially if there is a risk of manual action against your site.
What are broken links?
Broken links are URLs that don't lead to an existing page, resulting in 404 errors. Not only do these links hurt the user experience, but they can also negatively impact your site's SEO.
How to identify broken links
To identify these links, you can use backlink analysis and 404 error monitoring tools in Google Search Console . These tools help you locate URLs that aren't working properly, whether due to changes in the site structure or typos.