I made a huge SEO mistake đŸ˜±

When I corrected it my ranking shot up over 50%

Find out what the mistake was in this đŸ§”
When I started learning about SEO I learned about the value of backlinks pretty early on

I started acquiring backlinks any way that I could

This led me to acquire some "toxic backlinks" that were hurting my rankings
What are toxic backlinks?

Toxic links are backlinks to your site from less than reputable websites

They can happen organically or they can happen if you add your website link to bad websites

More info: https://crmswitch.com/inbound-marketing/toxic-backlinks-marketers-care/
Toxic Backlinks: What Are They And Why Should Marketers Care? | CRM Switch

Toxic backlinks can weaken your website's SEO. Weaker SEO means fewer organic visitors. Fewer visitors means fewer leads for your sales team.

https://crmswitch.com/inbound-marketing/toxic-backlinks-marketers-care/
What was the mistake?

I added my website link to a directory that turned out to be a mirror directory website

The same content was duplicated many times to various websites which gave this directory a spammy status
How to find out if you have toxic backlinks?

I use semrush, so finding toxic backlinks is easy with their backlink audit tool

You can try this free backlink checker from ahrefs but it's a bit more work to identify which links are toxic https://ahrefs.com/backlink-checker
How did I correct it?

I quickly removed my website from this directory and lost out on thousands of backlinks.

But guess what? My ranking improved significantly

You can also use the Google disavow tool to remove toxic backlinks after you discover them
So what can you learn from this?

Backlinks are very important for SEO

But you should prioritize quality over quantity
You can follow @natmiletic.
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