Due to updated and more advanced algorithms, most websites were penalized for abusing the power of backlinks.

Link building is associated with black hat SEO, due to the fact that many link building strategies involved buying links and acquiring links based on quantity rather than quality. For some, link building seems dead, but is it?

People are now using better and more natural ways to earn links online just as explained in this great article on link earning. Read on for 5 things you should know about backlinks.

1. Nofollow Links

Link earning may take a lot of efforts and time, but it is worth it. In most cases, people avoid nofollow links simply because they do not have any influence in rankings. Although nofollow links won’t improve the rankings, they are still worth a trial because they can bring traffic to the site, and sometimes increase conversions as long as the links are from authoritative websites with dedicated and natural readership.

We all know how the story of link building ends, but we should never ignore the fact that there are still bad links. The question we should be asking ourselves is what are we doing to remove bad links?

All business owners with websites 2 years or older should be worried!

2. What Determines Bad Links?

• Links from foreign websites that you are not targeting.
• Links from irrelevant websites (for example a chiropractor linking to a music production website).
• Links from irrelevant directories
• Over optimized websites
• Low authority websites (DA less than 30)
• Website that offer links in exchange for money
• Websites that run excessive affiliate programs

3. Popular Tools to Find Backlinks

• Webmaster tools: This is a free and effective tool that will help you find most of your backlinks. All you have to do is to find the list of links to your site
• Ahrefs: This is a great tool that will provide you with detailed information on backlinks for your website. The report includes the backlink, anchor text, and the location (URL) that your site is linked from. The only downfall for this tool is that it is not free, you will have to become a member in order to see the whole list and use other helpful resources
• Open Site Explorer: MOZ is another great tool to use when looking for your existing backlinks. Good news is that they have a free version that will provide you with a list of backlinks, and the bad news is that you will not be able to see the whole list unless you pay for MOZ services

4. Looking For Links? How To Prepare

• There are different tools that will help you find all or most of the backlinks that are connected to your website. Find and analyze the list and distribute the list based on good, moderate or bad links.
• Once you have located your bad links, visit the corresponding websites to find contact information or any means of contact, contact the owners, and ask them to remove your URL or website from their sites. Give them at least a week to respond, and then you can move to the next step.
• Tell Google about the your link situation. Explain how the bad link became into place, why it’s bad, the efforts you made to get the link removed, and ask Google to disregard all the bad backlinks (link disavow).

5. Link Disavow

This is what you should do when all your efforts to delete or remove bad links for your website fail. Google has a great step-by-step tutorial on how to disavow backlinks, but this process should start as soon as possible, because it takes time for Google to consider your request.

A Worthy Investment

If done correctly, backlinks are still a great way to improve online authority and visibility for any website. Current Google algorithms are not based on backlinks, but there is no guarantee that Google has forgiven and forgotten backlink abusers.

By: Naima