Its time to quit the SEMRush Toxic Links Report in SEO — Transcript

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1. 0:00Everyone, welcome back to the David Gray
2. 0:02SEO TV studio.
3. 0:04And today we're going to talk about
4. 0:06toxic links. So, toxic links are a
5. 0:08report that SEMrush has run for way too
6. 0:10long. It's
7. 0:12probably been there for 14 years. And I
8. 0:14think it's a very
9. 0:16dangerous report that is there for a
10. 0:18fud, fear, uncertainty, and doubt as a
11. 0:21marketing campaign. They probably think
12. 0:23that a lot of users use this report a
13. 0:25lot. I think it's time to put an end to
14. 0:27the report. If SEMrush thinks that
15. 0:30they're generating a lot of revenue from
16. 0:32this
17. 0:33and users are paying for it, then I
18. 0:34think we've got a malinvestment
19. 0:36situation in the market. So, I think
20. 0:38toxic links are being conflated with
21. 0:41link spam and spammy-looking links. And
22. 0:44those are three three concepts that
23. 0:45people think are the same thing. And I
24. 0:47think we get that because we have this
25. 0:49model understanding of SEO that we very
26. 0:51are very slow to update. For example, I
27. 0:53made a video about web crawling and I
28. 0:56made a video about schema and how tech
29. 0:59SEOs still think that schema is
30. 1:00important in SEO, no matter how much
31. 1:02Google debunks it, no matter how many
32. 1:03people say, "Look, we don't use schema
33. 1:06and yet we're ranking in Google." It
34. 1:07violates Google's doctrine of don't
35. 1:09trust the publisher,
36. 1:10but it comes down to people wanting
37. 1:12control or they've repeated it so much
38. 1:14or they believe in it so much that they
39. 1:16don't feel they need to update that. And
40. 1:18I think toxic links is well past its
41. 1:21sell-by date.
42. 1:22So,
43. 1:23toxic links was in a developed the same
44. 1:25time as link research tools by Christoph
45. 1:27Cemper. It was at when Google was
46. 1:30clamping down back in 2011-12 on people
47. 1:32buying backlinks. They're not doing it
48. 1:35with the same level of aggression. It's
49. 1:37very rare for Google to actually
50. 1:38penalize sites anymore, which I think
51. 1:40might be wrong. I think that might be
52. 1:41giving rise to
53. 1:43a much much bigger link industry, but I
54. 1:46think Google is also doing a lot of work
55. 1:48to devalue link farms. That unless link
56. 1:50farms are getting traffic, they don't
57. 1:52actually work. And I think that's why so
58. 1:54many people are seeing
59. 1:55one, it's getting harder to get
60. 1:56backlinks. Two, people who do buy
61. 1:58backlinks are being forced to keep
62. 2:00buying backlinks. It's like a hamster
63. 2:02wheel effect where they're losing
64. 2:04authority and they're constantly buying
65. 2:05to replace it. And this is because I
66. 2:08think Google will always work at the
67. 2:09fundamental level. So, when you see SEOs
68. 2:12talking about Google removing different
69. 2:14types of content like listicles, that's
70. 2:16just not how Google works. Google will
71. 2:18tweak the fundamentals of the engine.
72. 2:20Just like the Reserve Bank will tweak
73. 2:22interest interest rates in order to
74. 2:24control things like inflation and
75. 2:25lending and economic growth. So,
76. 2:29toxic links are
77. 2:32perhaps in a a good idea by Semrush in
78. 2:34the early days to try to assess what
79. 2:36back bad backlinks are, but there are so
80. 2:39many problems with this as a concept.
81. 2:40First of all,
82. 2:41there is no negative number in
83. 2:43backlinks. So, if you think you've
84. 2:45disavowed 10 backlinks and your site
85. 2:47authority went up, that's probably not
86. 2:49the root cause. You're jumping to the
87. 2:52sort of first point attribution. You
88. 2:54need to think deeper, apply critical
89. 2:56thinking.
90. 2:57Backlinks either carry no authority or
91. 2:59they carry authority or you get a
92. 3:01penalty. So, it's just one of those
93. 3:03three states. But I think people are so
94. 3:05used to reading on Reddit, especially
95. 3:07and on Ahrefs, that
96. 3:09people disavowed backlinks and their
97. 3:10site went up. There are definite cases
98. 3:13of negative SEO, but it's very hard to
99. 3:15do negative SEO well.
100. 3:17And because it's so easy to buy
101. 3:19backlinks from from somewhere like
102. 3:20Fiverr, and because there are so many
103. 3:22sites that don't look great, aka
104. 3:25spammy-looking links, that it would
105. 3:27doesn't really make sense for Google to
106. 3:29punish them. Google doesn't really look
107. 3:30at the aesthetics of a site. It's not
108. 3:33something it can really assess.
109. 3:34Site design is very subjective. I know
110. 3:37designers won't agree with me. I don't
111. 3:39really care. It's just not something
112. 3:40that Google looks at. Google has
113. 3:43made a lot of statements. This is from
114. 3:44just December just gone in 2024 where
115. 3:48John Mueller is saying buying toxic
116. 3:49links is a billable waste of time. Look,
117. 3:51let's just get down to the simple basics
118. 3:53of it. SEMrush doesn't know what a what
119. 3:55link spam is. Link spam, if you think
120. 3:57about it, is people buying high-quality
121. 4:00backlinks, not just people buying links
122. 4:02on Fiverr. That's the very, very small
123. 4:04minority.
124. 4:06And that is a problem itself because
125. 4:08backlinks are the currency of Google.
126. 4:10They are the gold equities, the
127. 4:14precious minerals in the Google system.
128. 4:16If you think you can buy 400 backlinks
129. 4:18on Fiverr for $50,
130. 4:21it's if a friend of yours came to you
131. 4:23and said that they bought a Bugatti for
132. 4:25$50 or they bought blocks of gold for
133. 4:28$15 on eBay, you're going to think they
134. 4:30got scammed because that's exactly what
135. 4:31happened. If you have access to
136. 4:33backlinks that move the needle, you're
137. 4:34not going to sell them. However, if
138. 4:37you've bought a bunch of link farms that
139. 4:38have been devalued in Google, link farms
140. 4:41do get manual actions and algorithmic
141. 4:43penalties. But if you're
142. 4:45if you have a program of looking at
143. 4:47toxic backlinks or your agency is
144. 4:48reporting toxic backlinks, this isn't
145. 4:51true. What I'm going to do is I'm going
146. 4:52to jump to my own site, as I always do,
147. 4:55and just show you here. As I've
148. 4:57mentioned before, I've had 500% growth.
149. 4:59Charles Float just shared an Ahrefs
150. 5:00report showing that the
151. 5:02traffic to my site, if you had to buy it
152. 5:04in CPC, it would be be worth about
153. 5:05$142,000 a month in paid search. Here's
154. 5:09my overall toxicity score. It's medium.
155. 5:12Out of all of my domains, for some
156. 5:13reason, SEMrush thinks that they're all
157. 5:15toxic, like 19,
158. 5:18potentially 27. This link is from Dejan.
159. 5:21It's from a comment I left on his post.
160. 5:24I don't
161. 5:25see why there's anything wrong. I just
162. 5:26think it takes it to David Kwaid.
163. 5:28Here's a link from Hub O Web. It's not a
164. 5:30It's not a toxic site. This is stupid.
165. 5:32So, if you or your SEO team or your SEO
166. 5:36agency are disavowing backlinks all the
167. 5:39time,
168. 5:40I don't expect anything to happen from
169. 5:41it. I think, as John says, it is a
170. 5:44billable waste of time. So, I would love
171. 5:47if SEMrush remove it. I don't think they
172. 5:49will because I think they feel like they
173. 5:50might use 10 million a month in in
174. 5:53average revenue. And if that's what
175. 5:55companies are investing, you could be
176. 5:56investing that money in so much more.
177. 5:58You could be getting good content
178. 5:59writers. You could be expanding your
179. 6:02website. You could build another website
180. 6:05and put more content into that site.
181. 6:07Rank twice. That increases your chance
182. 6:09of being taking up space on page one and
183. 6:12also being recommended in LLMs. So,
184. 6:15if we could just stop with couple of
185. 6:17things. One is stop equating toxic links
186. 6:20and spammy-looking links with link spam.
187. 6:22They're not the same thing. Link spam
188. 6:24tends to be very high quality.
189. 6:26Google may punish them. I don't know
190. 6:28what the criteria are. It's been a very
191. 6:30long time since someone reported on
192. 6:33either the Google support forum,
193. 6:35X, or on Reddit, or any of the SEO
194. 6:37forums that they were penalized heavily
195. 6:39for link spam. It has been a very long
196. 6:41time. Even HCU
197. 6:43struck sites don't seem to
198. 6:46link with backlink penalties. Now,
199. 6:49the types of backlinks they have may
200. 6:51form part of the heuristics, but it's
201. 6:53not why they were penalized.
202. 6:55It also probably speaks to why a lot of
203. 6:57sites are getting devalued.
204. 6:59So, the other problem with toxic
205. 7:00backlinks is that it's not actually
206. 7:02reporting on actually bad backlinks,
207. 7:05right? So, I do have a couple of people
208. 7:08who have shared domains with me. They've
209. 7:09said they bought backlinks. Those
210. 7:11backlinks aren't showing in SEMrush. And
211. 7:13that's perhaps the biggest problem with
212. 7:15the SEMrush toxic backlinks. So, I doubt
213. 7:18SEMrush would get rid of it, but this is
214. 7:20an appeal to people on Reddit, X. If
215. 7:22you're doing SEO and you want to disavow
216. 7:25backlinks because you don't like the
217. 7:26sites that they come from,
218. 7:28this is maybe your own subjective fear
219. 7:31{slash} paranoia. Sorry, I know that
220. 7:33doesn't sound great. But, I don't think
221. 7:35that's how it Google works. You
222. 7:37we have to get over that we don't
223. 7:39dictate how Google works. Google doesn't
224. 7:41align itself with our values. There are
225. 7:43so many different points of view in SEO.
226. 7:45There are so many different people who
227. 7:47think that like casino links are bad or
228. 7:49adult links are bad, but they're in
229. 7:51Google. Google's sending traffic to
230. 7:52them.
231. 7:53If you actually look at a domain that's
232. 7:55buying backlinks, their backlinks don't
233. 7:57show up in the toxic report. You can
234. 7:58create a toxicity report for any domain
235. 8:00out there. You don't have to own it or
236. 8:01validate it. So, again, if you're a CMO
237. 8:05or a VP of operations or you're hiring
238. 8:08SEO consultants or freelancers and
239. 8:10they're putting a lot of time into this,
240. 8:12I think they're doing it either they may
241. 8:14also know that it's toxic and I think
242. 8:17it's just time to put this one to bed.
243. 8:19Thanks so much. Salam alaykum.