Do low quality backlinks harm your ranking?

I remember the days when quality of backlink aren't important. The more the better. But today's various updates on Google Algorithm. Does low quality backlinks matter? How about your competitors building low quality backlinks to pull your website down?

Let me know your thoughts.

 

There is the Google Penguin penalty. If you buy bad backlinks, eventually Google will find out that you have unnatural links. This will then result in you losing your rankings. I can see the short term gains with bad backlins, but to get a penalty and lose your ranking doesn't sound good.

 

Three ways to find bad backlinks.

1. Links from other countries than your target audience. It could be that you run an auto business in Germany. Suddenly you get links from unrelated gambling sites from US. It's very obvious that these links are bad.

2. Links from websites with duplicate content. Just the notion of "duplicate content" explains that the site is a low quality one.

3. Links from websites that are only set up for the purpose of linking. These websites have plenty of articles but there is no coherence.

 

Using techniques such as artificial and unnatural backlinks, will eventually result in decrease of the ranking of website in search engines. Your momentary success in ranking will turn into a disaster. SEO done well is a guaranteed return on investment.

 

The question you have asked is very much relevant considering the current SEO scenario. There is no doubt about the fact that low quality and automated backlinks will hurt your ranking specially in Google. Therefore you are concerned if your competitors build such low quality links to your website, what will be the consequence in that case.

Yes after the Google Penguin update, issues like the above is quite frequent specially in niches where competition is very high. It is found some competitors build low quality links to hurt other website's ranking. It is commonly known as negative SEO. However there is a way to counter this type of situations. If your website is hit by negative SEO, you can disavow those low quality links and safeguard your website from negative SEO.

 

I am agree with you please do your complete backlink analysis then find out all low quality links and disavow them through Google webmaster tool.

 

Low quality backlink comes from untrusted sources which leave negative impact, to avoid you have to perform quick site audit.. monitor backlinks & use Google disavow tool as well if required....

 

Yes, Nowadays Webmaster using guest posting for quality backlinks from authority sites.

 

The quantity of low quality backlinks should not exceed the quantity of high quality ones. Check your anchor list, it should be natural. There is Natural anchor text distribution formula, my advice is to stick to it.
If you have many low quality backlinks your website may get sanctions indeed and when this happens you'll have to remove those links anyway. Link building is a ranking factor, but be careful with the link building speed and check websites you choose for your backlinks.