The Silent Ranking Killer
You might have toxic backlinks right now and not even know it.
Old SEO campaigns. Negative SEO attacks. Spammy sites that linked to you without permission.
These links are actively working AGAINST your rankings.
What Makes a Link "Toxic"
PBN (Private Blog Network) links. Sites that exist solely to sell links. Thin content, random topics, no real audience.
Link farm links. Sites with thousands of outbound links to unrelated websites.
Paid link schemes. Links from sites that openly sell placements (and Google knows it). Google's spam policies lay out exactly what they consider link manipulation.
Foreign-language spam. Links from irrelevant foreign-language sites with no connection to your niche.
Hacked site links. Links injected into legitimate sites by hackers. Often in footers or sidebars.
Comment spam. Your URL blasted across thousands of blog comment sections.
How to Spot Them
Use Semrush's Toxic Score or Ahrefs' spam indicators as a starting point. But don't rely on them blindly. Moz's domain analysis is another useful tool for evaluating suspect domains.
Manually review flagged links. Look for:
The Scale of the Problem
In our experience across 500+ campaigns, roughly 5-15% of a typical site's backlinks are toxic. For sites that previously used shady SEO agencies, that number can be 30-50%.
What to Do About Them
Don't panic. Having some toxic links is normal — every site picks up spam.
But if you have a LOT, you need to take action: request removal where possible, and disavow the rest. Running a proper link audit first gives you the full picture before taking action.
Start your link audit at SEO Checkup. 113 tasks. Free.