What are the most important link building metrics for identifying and removing toxic links?

Similar to the point below on Majestic TrustFlow, this information is absolutely incorrect: "avoid linking to or receiving links from sites with low DA, as they can negatively affect your own DA and rankings." is absolutely false. Google does not use DA.

Domain authority is a metric used by the SEO police. The SEO police give each domain an authority score that is used to calculate how much the SEO police like a website. A DA under 10 is usually reserved for websites that have been caught using blackhat techniques by the SEO police.

The information mentioned is absolutely misleading. For Example, Links from similar niches, irrespective of low DA, to your website will be useful links. Google's system is intelligent enough to identify and avoid toxic links, and they do not use DA.

You shouldn't use DA to evaluate the quality of anything. It is not Google's metric, and it has nothing to do with real signals

Do not worry so much removing 'toxic' links. It is a complex, tedious and risky task that won't get you any relevant good results. Worry about building relationships with other organizations so you can gain online credibility (backlinks from them). Get reviews from clients. Grow your social media. Build a strong PR strategy. In short, build a brand. That is almost inmune to any hacks.

First I would like to write a short explanation on CF and TF. Trust flow is how trustworthy the website is, CF is indicating its popularity. BBC would have a great TF and CF, when a 'adult' site would have a low TF yet a high CF. So when considering either of these, think about the niche you are working with as many time CF might be a good metric. In the iGaming niche, Eports tent to have higher CF. As well, CF is passed on through nofollow links (as well), TF only via follow links.

Trust Flow is like the saying "Trust me bro" but it can only be used by SEO Experts, Wizards, Specialists and people who's name begins with L. Source: Trust me bro.

TF is not a google metric. TF combined with many other independent factors.. can give you an idea of good backlinks. "Link from low TF sites can damage your credibility" this statement should be corrected. As I said earlier.. Google is intelligent enough to ignore low quality sites, so anyone should not worry about it.

When it comes to analyzing the quality of a website or a particular link, Google reigns supreme. Google's extensive database of links allows it to thoroughly assess various factors, including author background and link credibility. In my opinion, other machines can't quite match the analysis capabilities of this search engine. However, it's important to note that Google doesn't exactly check TF, though it does consider other important factors. Essentially, while Google does assess TF, it's not as straightforward as checking a website like Majestic to determine whether or not to include certain links.

Think of Trust Flow as the website, designed by the wizards at Majestic. It's like an online popularity contest but with integrity as the judge. Picture a scale from 0 to 100, where each website gets a score based on the quality of its online friendships. The higher the score, the more trustworthy and influential the website. Now, here's the secret sauce: Trust Flow has its own VIP club of trusted websites. When your website hangs out with these cool cats by linking to or getting linked from them, your Trust Flow score skyrockets. It's like getting a digital high-five from the web's most reliable sources.

Citation Flow measures the number of links pointing to a website or URL. It assesses how influential or "citable" a page is based on the number of links it receives.

High DA with no organic traffic. When a website has a high domain authority ( anything from 40) and gets low organic traffic, it is usually a sign of a link farm

Spam score is just on of many ways to identify if the website is toxic. You can run a links audit on LRT, that gives you a good toxicity score as well. However, I ask you to take all the metrics and results with a grain of salt as many times LRT gives a high toxic score to link based on 'over optimised' anchor. I think the best way to identify a quality of any link is to run your own tests, look through the site that you want to link to you and use your common sense to make a critical judgment of its quality.

Your website isn't going to be penalized by Google unless you're blatantly buying backlinks. Even then, Google might just prioritize other sites rather than removing you from search results completely, like they used to. Spam score is a scare tactic used by a lot of SEO tools to try and get you to subscribe to their software. It doesn't tell you a lot, especially since the metrics determining "spam" are unclear or can be misidentified by whatever bot is evaluating the content.

Spam score is a numeric rating used in SEO to assess the potential risk of a backlink. It quantifies the likelihood of a link or website being associated with spammy or low-quality practices, with higher scores indicating a higher risk. Monitoring and addressing high spam score links is crucial to maintaining a healthy backlink profile and avoiding SEO penalties.

I disagree. Why? Because I can put up 50 sites using 150 keywordz that are generally on topic with just 2 pages of a site that is doing well. I can use ChatGPT to write the blogs and post, include the proper anchor text as well. This all can be done in 30 Minutes using Python. Since these links are coming from the same C-Block addresses and are linked together themselves, these would be considered extremely toxic! Google will penalize the 2 pages I linked to and penalize the site. I honestly cannot believe no one has mentioned this? This is a typical blog network that can do serious damage to comps???!!

Spam Score: This metric, provided by various SEO tools, highlights the likelihood of a website being spammy. A high spam score signals potential toxic links and should be investigated further.

I do not have any magical formula for this. But it must be relevant to the target for sure. I like a nice and healthy mixture of branded anchors, naked URLs, money KWs and miscellaneous such as 'here'. Main approach, keep it relevant and natural.

What I would like to add here is that you don't always have to create anchor texts exactly like your keywords. For example if you want to create a backlink for this page, instead of going with this anchor text: "toxic links" you can go with the: "link building metrics for identifying and removing toxic links". Long tail and super detailed anchor text of what your landing page is about will also break down to give juice to the more direct ones.

In my opinion, anchor text is the most crucial element in links for an SEO specialist. It can be utilized in various specific and unique ways. However, the key point is to use anchor text solely for directing users to the correct page. By doing so, search engines automatically understand the links and objectives and we can optimize link building in the best possible manner.

In my opinion, many spammy and incorrect links may not necessarily require disavowing, as Google has gained enough understanding and awareness to render such instances ineffective. Nevertheless, it is still essential to consistently assess the link profile of a site and be prepared for any unexpected events. For instance, I always give importance to anchor text in both good and bad links. I believe that these anchor texts are crucial and should not be irrelevant to the business, as they can impact Google's focus and consistency on our site.

A lot of sites still don’t use correct anchor text. Or sometimes call it “visit us” or “learn more”! This can also be witnessed from internal linking between different pages to sub sites! Always think of what’s the value provided on the click thru page. Name the link accordingly with a Call to action.

Many people look at link relevance completely the wrong way around. The only reason search engines look at things like "content, title, and URL of the pages, the anchor text and surrounding text of the link" is because they are trying to work out what is very obvious for humans - "does this link make sense here? Is it useful for users? Are they going to find what they expect when they click the link?" These are the only questions you need to answer, let the algorithm then do its job, don't chase it.

This is where we say that you don't want only to get backlinks but you need to get even backlinks with lower DR and UR but 100% relevance to the topic you want to rank for. For example let's say you want to get backlinks to show authority on a sports article. It will be better to get a backlink from a sports website than going to the route of a "better rating" big website for cooking. You don't want to confuse search engines, you want to tell them that your page is relevant to your content and what people are searching for.

Link relevancy is one of the most important factors while acquiring links or performing backlink audits. Getting links from relevant websites, and pages in a natural way helps to improve SEO results. But getting a link from a relevant page but forcefully could be wastage of time, efforts, and money.

I have been doing link building in many forms for more than a decade now. I can honestly say, that in the igaming niche, relevancy is a very important metrics. I would rather have a link from a niche relevant website over a high SEO value form a non-relevant niche. Especially after the December 2022 update, relevancy is the key!

Link Relevance: Assessing the relevance of the linking domain to your website's niche is essential. Irrelevant or unrelated links can be considered toxic and should be removed.

This article is misleading. It's good that it has been given out to the community to review and contribute. SEO tools are great help but you need to understand how they work and what you should focus on. Rather than chasing metrics that are not ranking signals. Instead look at Google documentation like Quality Raters Guidelines, Google Patents and developers pages. Then write helpful content for users that takes these things into consideration. Not the other way around!

I cannot stress this enough, but good link goes beyond high metrics and relevancy. Is the website a real website of just a link farm? Is it part of PBN? Is the article that links to your product website a good match with the website writing about you, if it is not niche relevant (for iGaming maybe a news site)? Would you actually read this article on such and such website and would you click on the link in the content to visit the linked site? Aske these questions before asking for a link.

In my opinion, when it comes to link building, we shouldn't be fixated on a specific formula. Understanding the structure, parameters, and types of links is beneficial, but relying on a particular formula as a one-size-fits-all solution is not accurate. Therefore, it's better to prioritize user experience and easy accessibility to content and pages in all link-building structures. I believe this is the best approach to take when dealing with link building.

To identify and remove toxic backlinks, check for backlinks from low-quality websites using domain authority (DA) and relevance, backlinks with unnatural anchor text, and backlinks that are placed in a spammy way. You can remove toxic backlinks by contacting the website owner or by disavowing them using Google's Disavow Tool.

i think we should also check: Relevance: Evaluate the relevance of the linking page to your websites content. Links from irrelevant or unrelated sources are more likely to be toxic. Link Location: Links placed within the main content of a page (body content) tend to be more valuable than those in sidebars, footers or author bios. Toxic links are often found in less prominent locations.