We Can Generate Your 1000s of Quality Backlinks (Ahem)
Many of you will no doubt have received spam emails that promise to increase your website ranking (with search engines such as Google) through ‘link building’ or similar activity. It is one of the most of common forms of spam that still creeps through our own website net, the reason being that these enquiry form submissions are actually done manually.
Since this topic is so popular with spammers, we thought we’d try and give our readers a bit of an overview of what can be a bit of a confusing subject – Backlinks, Domain Authority and Toxic Backlinks.
What are Backlinks?
This is the simple bit – they are links to your website from a different website (i.e. a website with a different domain to yours). They may link to your website for a variety of reasons, which we will come onto, however, if someone else has legitimately linked to a page on your website, perhaps to signpost a particular news article, product or service, then it’s a positive!
Does Google Like Backlinks?
In a word, yes. Like much about the Google ranking algorithm, there is nowhere that states exactly how it affects results (or how much) but it does. Ultimately, Google is in the business of giving people the best results for their search based on various factors, the most obvious being relevance, location (if applicable) and ‘quality’ of the website. What is meant by ‘quality’ exactly could fill a book but things like speed, usability etc. would be part of this.
The right backlinks suggest relevance and, one could argue, quality. What is the right backlink? Probably best explained with an example…
Let’s say that you sell high end sports shoes (trainers to you or I). Imagine that a sports club website has a news article listing the ten best running shoes for sprinters and not only do they mention your company but also include a link to your Running Shoes category page. This is a ringing endorsement of your product, your company and because of that link, your website.
OK. A very simplistic example but you get the idea.
So Where Does Domain Authority Fit In?
A common term in our industry is ‘Domain Authority’ which is NOT a Google metric but is a third-party score created by Moz to estimate how likely a domain is to rank well in search results, compared to others. This uses backlinks as a key factor (but not the only one) to determine the strength of a website (domain).
Other SEO tools besides Moz have their own similar metrics:
- Ahrefs → Domain Rating (DR)
- Semrush → Authority Score
- Majestic → Trust Flow and Citation Flow
Each of these models uses its own index of backlinks and algorithms to estimate a domain’s ranking potential.
While Domain Authority itself isn’t used by Google, the underlying factor – backlinks -absolutely is. Therefore, Domain Authority can be used as an indicator.
Google’s real ranking signals evaluate:
- Relevance: Is the linking site topically related?
- Authority: Is it trusted and high-quality?
- Anchor context: Does the link text make sense?
- Diversity: Are links earned naturally from many types of sources?
These are baked into Google’s PageRank system (still a foundational part of its algorithm).
So, you can think of all this as:
Backlinks → affect Google’s trust → indirectly reflected in Domain Authority
Toxic Backlinks
Toxic backlinks are inbound links from low-quality, manipulative, or spammy websites that can potentially harm your site’s reputation or violate Google’s link guidelines.
They usually come from domains that:
- Exist only to manipulate rankings (link farms, PBNs).
- Are unrelated to your industry or content.
- Contain malicious, adult, gambling, or hacked content.
- Are part of link schemes – like paid links, link exchanges, or automated link-building networks.
In short, toxic backlinks are links that look unnatural to Google’s algorithm – they don’t reflect genuine endorsement or relevance.
Can Toxic Backlinks Harm My Website Ranking?
Possibly. Google’s algorithm is very clever and can typically ignore toxic backlinks where they appear to not ‘break the rules’ since ultimately, anyone can add a link to your website on their website, and you have no control over that.
Toxic backlinks rarely ‘hurt’ you directly anymore. The bigger danger is when your site is actively participating in low-quality link schemes. In the past, we have helped new clients who have participated in or been assessed as building backlinks ‘unnaturally’ by disavowing the backlinks using Google Search Console. However, in recent years, this has become less and less of an issue and if you are not seeing any manual action notifications in Google Search Console, you’re probably OK.
Key Takeaways
Don’t use unscrupulous link-building companies and keep an eye on Google Search Console for any warnings or unusual spikes in backlink generation.
Do reach out to legitimate, relevant partners or clients to see how you could build links that provide value to visitors.