More than 95% of Google penalties are directly related to your website’s backlink profile. That means if you’re going to get hit with a Google penalty, it’s probably going to be because of shady backlinks like unnatural links. And those penalties are no joke.
The scary part? You might not even know you have unnatural links. Whether you’ve unknowingly worked with a black hat SEO service, been targeted by negative SEO attacks, or just haven’t kept an eye on your backlink profile, these harmful links can sneak in without warning.
Let’s learn more about them.
Key Takeaways
- Unnatural links are backlinks that sit in unnatural spaces on shady or low-quality websites for the express purpose of boosting your website’s ranking on Google.
- You might have hundreds of unnatural links from a black hat link-building service and not even realize it.
- It’s important to perform a link audit, get rid of truly shady, unnatural links, and get natural, organic backlinks to boost your ranking authentically.
What Are Unnatural Links?
Unnatural links are bad backlinks, in short. They are the links to your website that sit in bad places, which connect your website directly to those places. If links to your website are coming from pages for male enhancement pills, spam, and thin websites used for spam, you have a problem.
Unnatural links are backlinks that get into place through inorganic means.
Here are several examples of unnatural links that could be connected to your website.
Blog comments or forum posts
This one is super common. A black hat backlinking service will often go into comment sections of blogs, social media posts, or forum posts and drop a link to your website there. No context, no explanation. This is a prime example of a spammy, unnatural link.
Listings and directories
In a similar fashion, URLs are often arbitrarily dropped into listings and directories. Now, if the listing or directory is legit, that’s another thing. If you provide landscaping services and your website is linked in a local directory or as a business to trust, by all means, keep it.
But if your landscaping website is linked in a listing for software providers, you know it just got plopped in there, and it can lower your credibility.
And your Google ranking.
Link exchanges
Again, link exchanges are not all bad. If you partner with another web owner who operates in your industry, and you two provide guest posts for each other and collaborate, by all means, include each other’s links.
However, these links should be “no follow,” not explicitly used to celebrate yourself. Ideally, you’re writing a guest post or working with a collaborator to add value to their readers’ lives.
In all cases, Google frowns on direct link exchanges because they feel spammy and they usually don’t include helpful content.
Paid links
Never ever ever do this. Paid links are always going to be considered unnatural links. If you’re creating great content and you can add value to the website, you should not have to pay for it. You should be building relationships and proving your worth. At least, that’s what Google says.
Link wheels
Link wheels are a kind of tiered link building that sets up a cycle of sites that point to each other, and each points to a primary site, in this case, yours. They are spammy and, rather than supporting each other, typically involve multiple thin or fake blogs that don’t provide value. Instead, they exist solely to increase rankings for the primary site. That is, by definition, unnatural.
Automatic links
Automatic links are backlinks that are set up by a paid, black hat link building service or a PBN, private blog network. The service sets up automatic backlinks that arbitrarily sprinkle your links throughout websites across the internet. In many, you’ll find your site linked to multiple times from the same website, which is weird.
Or… unnatural.
Spammy widget links
Finally, spammy widgets, or embedded code plugged into an irrelevant spot in a blog, article, or comment section, are unnatural links. These are perhaps the most obvious types of spammy, unnatural links.
Why Should I Worry About Unnatural Links?
Now, in many cases, Google will simply ignore unnatural links rather than penalizing your site for them. But in others, and these are the ones to be concerned with, you will face harsh penalties.
Google’s Link Spam Update
Imagine it from Google’s perspective. The goal of Google is to connect users to strong, credible, valuable information. If they’re looking for tips on how to get through the cold and flu season, they want to hear from health experts, not a spammy website that has stuffed keywords and built unnatural backlinks.
Allowing web owners to get away with black hat SEO strategies like this would flood the first pages of Google results with spam and unhelpful content and leave users with no answers. Which would render Google useless.
The link spam update in 2022 addressed these exact issues and aimed at preventing the negative consequences of unnatural backlinks.
Agata Gruszka-Kierczak, SEO manager at WhitePress says:
“Search engine algorithms are in a constant state of evolution, getting better at detecting manipulative link-building schemes. Backlinks are a site-wide signal. So, even if you only have a few spammy links pointing to one page, it can affect your entire domain.
A Google penalty is the most significant risk, and the biggest fear, for any SEO involved in link building. And rightly so – I've seen the impact firsthand. I once worked with a client who had acquired a number of backlinks from guest posts on high-quality, but completely irrelevant, websites. Their rankings had been slowly declining for months, but they hadn't connected it to their link profile.”
How to Check for Unnatural Links
But wait. What if you’re not doing it on purpose? How do you even know if you have unnatural links? It’s a good question. In most cases, you may have adopted many unnatural links through a paid service offering black hat link building strategies. This is a primary reason for only working with white-label link-building services like Reporter Outreach.
To find out if you’ve been carrying a bunch of unnatural links, the first step is to perform a link audit on your site. This can be as simple as entering your domain name into Google Search Console to find all the backlinks for your URL.
To find unnatural links, here’s what to look for during your link audit:
Look for How Many Links Come from a Single Source
There shouldn’t be a single website that links excessively to your website. That is a huge red flag and feels spammy at face value. You can check all the URLs that link to your website, and next to each one, you’ll see how many times that URL links to you. If it’s more than a few, you’ve likely been the victim of automatic linking.
Monitor the Domain Rating for each backlink
As you work through each URL that links to your pages, look at the domain rating, or DR, for each URL. The domain rating of a website tells you whether it’s weak or strong, and you don’t want your website linked to too many weak URLs.
Check the Anchor Text
If the anchor text that links back to your website is repeated over and over, across dozens or hundreds of websites, that’s a red flag. It’s unnatural, and it will likely catch the attention of Google.
Review Site and Page Quality
Finally, review the site and page quality of each location where you have a backlink. Your goal with gaining organic, natural links, is to be showcased on websites with high authority and credibility. This is what actually provides you with tons of link juice. If you’re a landscaper, and your website is linked to in Better Homes and Gardens, you’re winning.
Make sure the sites linking to you are relevant, of high quality, and reputable.
What to Do About Unnatural Links
Not to worry. You can solve this problem, no matter how many unnatural links you have. Here are the best tips for handling unnatural links.
In Many Cases, Ignore Them
Honestly, in many cases, you can ignore unnatural links. As long as they’re not coming from obviously shady sites, Google will likely just ignore them, meaning you won’t get any link juice from them. Don’t stress too much about a few unnatural links here and there.
If They’re Bad or Shady, Take Action
If they are truly bad backlinks, you’ll need to take action. For example, if a single, fake, or shady website has your website linked dozens or more times, you’ll need to do something about it.
The first step you should take is to contact the web owner and request your links be removed. Keep a paper trail of this request, and wait a few weeks for removal.
If that doesn’t work, you’ll have to disavow the shady website through Google. We explain how to do that here. The disavowal process won’t totally absolve you from bad backlinks, which is why you need to regularly reach out to web owners to take your links down. Google wants to see you taking action.
Continue to Audit Links
Next, keep up regular audit links of your site. Once you start this process, it will become easier to check back in every month or quarter, depending on how often your site is getting hit with unnatural links.
Only Work with Reputable Link Building Services
Finally, moving forward, only work with reputable link building services that have actual connections with high-authority websites. Far too many black hat link building services take advantage of business owners struggling to gain traffic and increase their rankings.
They might give you a temporary boost, but the traffic is not organic, so many visitors may never return. They might not even be real visitors but bots. You don’t want that.
If you need help, get real help and hire businesses that do manual link building.
Reporter Outreach Is Your White Hat Link Building Service
That’s where Reporter Outreach comes in. We specialize in digital PR and white label link building services to help you organically grow your followership and get real eyes on your content.
We have established relationships with legitimate publications, writers, and journalists who are always looking for the next expert or authority on topics of interest.
We’re here to facilitate those relationships between you and the best of the best.
Let us help.
Book a meeting today and start building natural backlinks.
FAQs
Is it ever okay to have unnatural links?
We’re not here to judge, of course. Uxnnatural links are not worth investing time, money, and energy in only to run the risk of getting penalized or de-indexed by Google.
How do I get rid of unnatural links?
You’ll need to identify them through Google Search Console and then take the steps to have them removed. Reach out to the web owner, and then disavow the website through Google.
How can I get natural backlinks?
You can build relationships with high authority naturally on your own or with the help of a white label link building service like Reporter Outreach.
