Could Backlinks Harm Your SEO Rankings?

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I heard somewhere that backlinks could harm your SEO and search result rankings. I could see how this is possible, but I never quite understood how backlinks worked. Also, I had another question if someone could help me out. I know the difference between do-follow and no-follow links, but could no-follow links harm your SEO performance as well, or does it simply tell search engines and web crawlers to ignore the link?

Sorry, I'm not so good with understanding some of the aspects of SEO.

 

[JLogan]

Yes, there are several ways that backlinks can hurt you:

1. Too many backlinks from one site can hurt you.
2. Too many backlinks with the same anchor text can hurt you. Example: All your links having the anchor text "Webmaster Blog".
3. Too many dofollow:nofollow links. So, if you 90% of your link portfolio is dofollow ... it could hurt you.
4. Links from russian sites usually aren't good.

Also, nofollow and dofollow links are both pretty safe. Generally, I would say that nofollow links are safest because that's usually teh default on most sites these days. There's also a few studies that show that nofollow links still pass on juice, so a nofollow link is still a good backlink.

Backlinks are good. Just make sure that you are getting backlinks from good websites and that you aren't over optimizing. Just don't focus too much on dofollow/nofollow and make sure to focus on a bunch of keywords and not just one. Also, it's good to have some "read more" and that type of stuff in your link portfolio ... because not every link is going to be a specific anchor text.

Hope this answers your question and helps you out.

 

[Collin]

Yes, there are several ways that backlinks can hurt you:

1. Too many backlinks from one site can hurt you.
2. Too many backlinks with the same anchor text can you. Example: All your links having the anchor text "Webmaster Blog".
3. Too many dofollow:nofollow links. So, if you 90% of your link portfolio is dofollow ... it could hurt you.
4. Links from russian sites usually aren't good.

Also, nofollow and dofollow links are both pretty safe. Generally, I would say that nofollows are safest because that's usually teh default on most sites these days. There's also a few studies that show that nofollow links still pass on juice, so a nofollow link is still a good backlink.

Backlinks are good. Just make sure that you are getting backlinks from good websites and that you aren't over optimizing. Just don't focus too much on dofollow/nofollow and make sure to focus on a bunch of keywords and not just one. Also, it's good to have some "read more" and that type of stuff in your link portfolio ... because not every link is going to be a specific anchor text.

Hope this answers your question and helps you out.

Wow, what a great post! You've just helped me out a LOT. At first, I had no clue exactly if backlinks could hurt you or not, but now I understand completely! Thanks @JLogan !

 

[JLogan]

Glad I could help. Do you have any other questions about backlinks?

 

[Collin]

Glad I could help. Do you have any other questions about backlinks?

Not at the moment, I think you answered them all!