My website was hacked over a year ago, and while the hack has been resolved, we do have a very high volume of spammy backlinks. We have 5 high toxicity backlinks and 2700 medium toxicity. We never paid for backlinks, used manipulative backlinks or done anything that should penalize our site. We also have not received any manual actions from Google. However, our organic traffic is down despite us following best SEO practices. I understand that Google typically ignores spammy backlinks that are beyond our control, but is there a threshold of these spammy backlinks that would affect us in the algorithm? What's the best way to proceed?
It’s difficult to pinpoint an exact threshold for when spammy backlinks will significantly impact your site ranking. Google’s algorithm is complex and constantly evolving, meaning there’s no fixed number of spammy backlinks that will trigger a penalty. However, a large volume of low-quality backlinks can negatively affect your site’s reputation and potentially hurt your rankings.
Given the significant number of medium toxicity backlinks, it’s likely these are contributing to the decrease in organic traffic. While Google might be able to discern that these backlinks are not intentionally generated by you, they can still negatively influence your site’s overall ranking.
The best course of action is to focus on disavowing the spammy backlinks. This involves creating a disavow file that lists the URLs of the backlinks you want Google to ignore. This file can then be uploaded to Google Search Console. Disavowing backlinks can take time to show results, but it’s an important step in improving your site’s overall ranking.
Additionally, it’s crucial to continue focusing on building high-quality, natural backlinks from reputable sources. This will help offset the negative impact of the spammy backlinks and improve your site’s overall authority in Google’s eyes.