What is bad linking?
Within this entry to the SEO Manual (Search Engine Optimisation) we will discuss what constitutes as bad linking. There are a number of areas that need to be covered as there are no 100% official definition of ‘bad links’.
What is a Bad Link?
A bad link can include a number of things such as; links from a website with a number of spammy links, links from a website that contains spam and black hat techniques and links from irrelevant websites. All of these factors can make a link ‘bad’ for your website.
How does it affect a website?
There are a number of ways that it affects websites. Firstly, search engines look at the links to and from a website; this is one of the main ways in which they gauge how popular and how relevant the website is. If there are many ‘bad links’ then the website could get penalised. There is a Google penalty of different positions within the SERP’s, which if was to happen to a website could take a very long time to recover from depending on the popularity of the keyword.
If the links are so bad that the penalty is not sufficient then the website may be banned and a re inclusion request will have to be sent to the search engines once all bad links have been rectified.
How do you avoid bad linking?
The first step to avoid bad linking is to be selective about the links you request and accept. If the links are related to your website and are of good quality then great; if they are not and you’re just accepting them just to have another link then that’s not so good. 10 good quality links are better than 20 bad quality links.
There are also other ways of getting links including sponsoring blog templates and website templates. You must be very careful when doing this as you may not necessarily know who’s going to be using your templates and for what purpose. A real-life example was a website that sponsored a template and that template was used a number of times for a spammy pornography website; the website got issued a major penalty as the links were irrelevant to the website.
Take care of your links and the links will take care of you.
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