Unnatural links are backlinks created to manipulate search engine rankings, often violating Google’s guidelines and risking penalties or ranking drops.
What Are Unnatural Links?
Unnatural links are any inbound or outbound links that don’t occur organically and are obtained through manipulative tactics, such as buying links, excessive link exchanges, or participating in link schemes.
Examples of Unnatural Links:
- Paid links without a
rel="nofollow"orrel="sponsored"attribute. - Links from irrelevant or low-quality websites.
- Large-scale guest posting with keyword-rich anchors purely for SEO.
- Links from link farms, private blog networks (PBNs), or spam directories.
Why Are Unnatural Links a Problem?
- Violate Google Search Essentials (formerly Webmaster Guidelines).
- Risk manual actions and ranking penalties.
- Damage trustworthiness and credibility.
How to Identify and Fix Unnatural Links:
- Conduct a backlink audit using tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Google Search Console.
- Identify suspicious or low-quality links.
- Request removal from the linking site’s webmaster.
- Use Google’s Disavow Tool if removal isn’t possible.
Example:
A website buying hundreds of backlinks from irrelevant blogs to rank faster risks a Google penalty for unnatural link practices.
