Search for broken links on Before pointing fingers at directories, press release sites, or blog comments, it’s especially important to define your criteria for link toxicity.
From my point of view, a toxic link is:
- A link placed on an unindexed domain
Comment: Use the “site:” command to check this.
- A link placed on a page that is not referenced on its “title” tag
What tools should be Search for broken links on used to unmask risky links?
Comment: Do a simple Google search to be sure or use a tool like SEMRush, Monitorank or Positeo.
- A link placed on a site whose Trust Flow job function email database is significantly lower than Majestic SEO’s Citation Flow
Comment: Sites with a large gap between CF and TF are often considered spammy by Google. Be careful, as this rule does not apply to all sites.
- A link placed on a blocked, malicious or virus-infected site
- A link placed on a network of sites with similar footprints
Comment: Check several criteria and avoid placing links on networks of sites that are too easily detectable: sites with the same IP, the same registrant, the same class C, the same Google Analytics or Adsense identifier, etc.
A link placed on a sleeping domain
- A link hidden from the Internet user but not from Google (via cloaking or CSS)
- A link placed on an over-optimized and unnatural link anchor (Ex: “cheap trip to Ibiza”)
Comment: In certain themes and in the face of competition, it is sometimes essential to place links on exact anchors. Make sure that this type the system cannot contact the domain of link does not represent too large a part of your link profile and place these over-optimized links on your best sources (popular sites with a good trust index with Google).
A link placed on a non-topic blog comment with an over-optimized anchor
Comment: Avoid spamming at all costs on blogs that do not moderate comments and where all comments are spammy (promotional comments, too short, unrelated to the article, etc.).
The anchor of a link comment should. Always be on the brand or on the name. Of a profile attached to the brand.
Again, not all consultants have. The same methodology and use different tools. But they all like them to flush out toxic links. Pointing to a website.
For small to medium-sized sites
it is possible to use classic tools that are well known to the general public and which can be coupled with an Excel file to process the data: SEMrush, Majestic SEO, Ahref, SEObserver.
The Backlink Audit tool offered by SEMrush text services allows you to import all the links in your Search Console account and obtain a list of toxic links pointing to your website. The closer the score is to 100, the more suspicious the offending link appears.
Then it’s up to you, the human, to check that this list is accurate and remove the links that seem good to you.