Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.
Sandra Sinclair: Hi team! What is considered a "bad link"? #seo ;
Devin Peterson: If you can remove it from the web and no one would ever care other than the linker and linkee.
Could you be more specific about whether you're referring to inbound or outbound links?
Sandra Sinclair: hi +Devin Peterson ;! Tahnks for your quick response. I should have been more precise. Im referring to inbound links...
Devin Peterson: In general, I would say a bad link is from a site that is clearly spam or serves no value to anyone. Most of them are obvious like "buyfreelinksherenow dotcom" The standard for what constitutes this is very low though (IMO). So a real website that is just 'not very good' like "joeschmo-blog dotcom" would not be considered a "bad link" but merely a "weak link" which is better than "no link".
Consider some of these factors when trying to determine if the site that's linking is bad:
Do you get any referrals from it? Can you personally find any value from that site if you were to go on it? Is it obvious that it's only meant to redirect people to other places through tons of links or ads? Is it's PR really low? (0,1)
Citation Gurus: I usually also check trust flow and citation flow through majestic and if they have any authority links linking to the page that is linking to me. I also use seo profiler to check the link disinfect tool and see if they have any bad links.
Any links with low trust and low citation flow could be bad depending on what types of links are linking to those pages. PR is important as well to make sure you are not getting a ton of low quality links. Also if it's a new site so it's just low because it's new I make sure it has good content and not a ton of spammy posts just to try and get a ton of articles up on the site.
Hi team!
