What Are Unnatural Links?

Unnatural links are any backlinks that are unnatural or irrelevant hurting your SEO or may be hurting your ranking in SERP. This happens with most of the people from beginners to experts.

If you are also struggling because of all the unnatural links, then keep on reading. We will discuss “What are unnatural links?”, “How it affects your SEO and ranking on SERP?”.

So first thing first, what are unnatural links to your website? 

Unnatural links are also backlinks to your website like all the backlinks you have created, but the problem is unnatural inbound links are backlinks which are created to rank a page as quickly as possible in an unethical way. It’s like a back hat practice, from which you should have to stay away. Most of the time these types of backlinks are purchased or created by any spammers.

So, in short, any backlink which is not following Google webmaster guidelines for backlinks that eventually comes under unnatural links. 

Types Of Unnatural links

There are many types of backlinks that come under unnatural links which are buying links, excessive link exchange, guest posting with keyword-rich anchor text, automated links generated by any tools. 

Let’s dive in details about all kinds of unnatural links.

For instance, you have created a good website with lots of effort. Then you do all the On-Page SEO, Technical SEO properly and if you are still struggling to drive good traffic to your website or to rank higher in SERP. Then you think of creating backlinks which will boost your website and rank higher.

Buying Links

In this case if you go to any freelancing websites to buy backlinks, then they will create backlinks for your website from many websites in a very less period of time. But the problem s they will create mainly backlinks from an irrelevant website. As nowadays Google is more focused on relevancy of content. So, you have to create backlinks that are relevant to your content. 

Reciprocal Linking

Then comes reciprocal linking, in this case, people take the path of linking each other. What this means is you link to me I will link back to you. If you are creating like these backlinks in moderation then there is a possibility that Google will not penalize your website. But if you are doing it in excess then there is a 100% chance that Google will penalize your website.

Keyword-Rich Backlinks

Most of the time what we used to do is, to rank a blog post quickly we think that if we will create backlinks with our main keyword as the anchor text then it will rank easily. Before a long time, this technique was really working well. But nowadays if you do any guest posting and take a backlink with keyword-rich anchor text, then Google takes it as spamming.

For example if you have a brand new website and you want to increase its DA. So, the best way to increase the DA in less time is to create as many backlinks to the website as possible. But this method is very wrong. If you want to create backlinks with only the exact match keyword as your URL name, then it will definitely not work. Instead, what can you do, you can create 20% of backlinks with the exact match keyword, 20% with broad match keyword, 20% with LSI keywords, 20% with related keywords, 20% with any secondary keyword. Then it will be very helpful

Automated Links

Some people take the help of bots, or any plugins to create automated backlinks, which is very harmful to your website. You should never use any automated method for creating backlinks. As nowadays the frequency of backlinking is also very important. Google takes linking frequency very seriously. If you are creating backlinks at a very rapid speed then there is a chance Google will not give the same importance to all your backlinks. 

People use backlink generator to create backlinks for their blog post. Backlink generator will create lots of backlinks to your website but these are of no use.

Low-quality directory or bookmark site links

When we have a new website the easy way to create a backlink for us is directory submission and bookmarking. There are many directory submission sites some are paid and some are free. Paid directory submission approves your submission easily. But incase of free submission it takes 3-6 months for approval. The backlinks we get from directory submissions are usually not relevant to our website.

If you go and search in Google you will get lots of bookmarking sites. Some bookmarking sites are really good for creating backlinks and getting good quality traffic. But some bookmarking sites are not that good. If you create backlinks from any low  quality bookmarking site then definitely it will hurt your ranking.

Hidden Anchor Text

Sometimes people take backlinks from a website and hide the anchor text to hide it from the users. But cant hide anything from Google. Usually people change the text color of the anchor text to the same as the background color. So that a user can’t see the backlinks. This is also a bad practise to create backlinks. 

Many Times people use some widgets or footer section to give backlinks to there other website, which is also bad practise. Many times people try to give backlinks which are completely irrelevant to their website.

PBN Backlinks

PBN stands for Private Blog Network, where people just create a network of many websites, and give backlinks to each other. This technique used to work previously, but now Google sees these types of backlinks as black hat practise. Nowadays also some people are still doing the same by creating some Web 2.0 websites and they keep on giving backlinks to their main website. 

If by any means Google will find any foot print about PBN then there is a chance Google will take down the entire network. Then ranking them again is a very difficult task. 

In the past there are few examples where because of any old backlinks Google penalized some websites. Once Google will penalize your website will not rank for any keywords. But the main issue is it will not rank for the domain name also. Google will deindex your website and you have to face many difficulties to bring it back.

How can you check if there is any issue with your website?

If you have any issues related to your website. Then maybe you can’t find them directly. But you can easily find all the warnings in Google Search Console Manual Action section.

What you should do for unnatural links?

For any unnatural inbound link you should have to check your website backlinks manually with some interval. You have to do backlink analysis. Backlink analysis will let you know about all the backlinks you are having to your website. You can also use many free backlink checkers. This free backlink checker also works very well for analyzing your backlinks. And if you find any backlinks from any low DA websites or irrelevant backlinks then you should have to disavow all those types of backlinks.

For disavowing you can use the disavow tool which is present. You can use Ahref it is a good disavow tool, you have to add your website in the dashboard and you can disavow links. 

Conclusion

If you ask me then I will advise not to create any unnatural backlinks to your website. Instead while creating backlinks you should have to check the relevancy of the content and DA of the website from which you are taking backlinks.

If by mistake you have any unnatural backlinks then it’s better you remove and disavow link all those links ASAP. Disavow link will remove all your unnatural inbound links. Feel free to leave us with your valuable feedback. Thank You…