Backlinks are the essence of any good SEO campaign. Not only do they help you improve your website’s authority, but they also bring in traffic and make your site visible to search engines. However, what about the situation when all your precious backlinks get into the hands of other people? Your competitors will then try to copy your efforts, putting your online business at risk. Backlink analysis software, such as Ahrefs, Moz, and Majestic, may tell everyone about them. Therefore, how can you keep your precious backlinks secret? Find out more below.
It’s worth noting that this is not the same as cloaking – cloaking involves showing different content to search engines versus users, whereas this technique simply denies access to specific third-party bots, which does not affect how Google crawls or indexes the page.
Ahrefs, Moz, and Majestic are powerful resources for understanding link profiles, but can also expose sensitive data you may want to keep under wraps.
In today’s world of the Internet, where information equals money, ensuring that your assets remain safe is of utmost importance. In case you have spent some time working on getting good backlinks, it may be necessary for you to find ways of keeping them safe from anyone who would try to snoop around. This article will shed light on why you should hide your valuable backlinks and the ways to do so, discussing both pros and cons of this approach.
The Importance of Backlinks in SEO
Backlinks are necessary for increasing the rank of your website within search engines. They provide a signal of trust and authority from one website to another.
If credible websites create links pointing towards your content, it will increase your trustworthiness according to search engines such as Google, and you will get better rankings and attract more organic traffic from there.
Another advantage of backlinks is that you will be able to reach out to new audiences through these links. Whenever a user clicks on one of these backlinks, he will land on your website.
It’s not only about the number of backlinks that you have, but their quality is equally important as well. A couple of quality backlinks can do more good than several poor backlinks.
So, creating a good backlink portfolio is important for success in this competitive environment.
Common Tools Used to Analyze Backlinks
Backlinks play an important role in the field of SEO, and there are various SEO tools which assist in the analysis of the same. Ahrefs emerges out to be one of the most preferred SEO tools. It offers detailed information regarding link quality and domain authority.
Another SEO tool that is popular is Moz, which comes up with the Link Explorer. Through this, users get the chance to perform a backlink analysis and find out about their site’s condition.
In contrast to Moz, Majestic SEO offers the chance to explore its own set of metrics like the Trust Flow and Citation Flow.
SEMrush is also considered to be a tool which is useful for backlink analysis. Through this tool, users will get the chance to analyze their competitors’ backlinks and get ideas for their own website.
Different SEO tools come with varied features, which makes it imperative for webmasters to choose one depending on their requirements.
Reasons to Hide Your Valuable Backlinks
Backlinks of value represent essential elements for every site. They increase your authority and help raise your rankings. However, revealing such links is dangerous.
Firstly, competitors use different instruments such as Ahrefs, Moz and Majestic to examine backlink portfolios. In this case, they can understand your tactics and duplicate them. Secrecy of links is needed to protect your own special tactics.
Moreover, there is a danger of spammy sites entering your link portfolio. In case you do not hide the links, you risk unwanted connections which might ruin your image.
Additionally, search engine algorithms change continuously. In this case, protecting important backlinks will help to make sure that only trustworthy sources will have the benefits of association with your content and avoid algorithm-related penalties.
In the world of high competitiveness on the Internet, secrecy of the best links can provide you with some advantages in relation to your rivals.
Techniques for Hiding Backlinks from Ahrefs, Moz, and Majestic
Hiding a backlink from third-party commercial indexes such as Ahrefs, Moz, and Majestic is the usual protective method, especially when ensuring the protection of an outreach campaign, a private network, or a proprietary link-building infrastructure.
In order for a backlink to be concealed, the restriction should be placed on the referring site (site that links out), not the destination site. When a third-party spider is restricted from accessing the page with the outgoing link, the latter will not be logged by the spider in its backlink index.
1. Server-Level Blocking (Recommended)
However, user-agent blocking alone can be bypassed if a crawler spoofs its identity. For stronger protection, pair user-agent rules with IP-range blocking, since Ahrefs, Majestic, and Moz publish the official IP ranges their crawlers operate from.
2. Nginx Configuration
Add the following rule inside your Nginx server block (usually within the server context or location block):
if ($http_user_agent ~* (ahrefsbot|mj12bot|rogerbot|dotbot|semrushbot|exabot|gigabot|seokicks|blexbot|petalbot|dataforseobot|serpstatbot)) {
return 403; }
3. Apache (.htaccess)
If your server runs on Apache, place this code at the top of your root .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (ahrefsbot|mj12bot|rogerbot|dotbot|semrushbot|exabot|gigabot|seokicks) [NC]
RewriteRule .* – [F,L]
4. Edge-Network Blocking (Cloudflare WAF)
In case the referring websites are using cloud-based firewalls such as Cloudflare, the blocking of crawlers at the edge stops the crawlers from reaching the origin server in the first place. This method is very effective for multi-site footprints.
- Navigate to Security > WAF > Custom Rules.
- Create a new rule named Block Commercial SEO Bots.
- Set the Field to User Agent, the Operator to contains, and add the bot names.
- Set the action to Block.
Target User-Agent Handles:
- Ahrefs: AhrefsBot
- Majestic: MJ12bot
- Moz: Rogerbot or DotBot
5. Application-Level Blocking (PHP)
For dynamic platforms or CMS systems such as WordPress, you may obtain the user agent directly using PHP before serving the page payload. You can do this right at the top of the header.php file of your theme or even place it inside a plugin of your system.
<?php $userAgent = $_SERVER[‘HTTP_USER_AGENT’] ?? ”;
$seoBots = [‘ahrefsbot’, ‘mj12bot’, ‘rogerbot’, ‘dotbot’, ‘semrushbot’, ‘exabot’];
foreach ($seoBots as $bot) {
if (stripos($userAgent, $bot) !== false) {
header(“HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden”);
exit(“Access Denied”);
}
}
?>
6. The robots.txt Approach (With Caution)
User-agent: AhrefsBot
Disallow: /
User-agent: MJ12bot
Disallow: /
User-agent: Rogerbot
Disallow: /
The Footprint Risk
A public robots.txt file that clearly lists out and bans commercial SEO bots provides an instant footprint. Competitors or reviewers who know how to check the robots.txt file will instantly realize that the site is hiding their backlink profile information and raise the alarm for further manual review. Blocking at the server level or the edge level is preferred in all cases.
Benefits of Hiding Your Backlinks
Here are some benefits you can derive from concealing backlinks. Firstly, such concealment protects your backlink network from competitors that may want to use it as a template for their strategies.
In addition, the concealment of backlinks prevents spammy websites from abusing your backlink network. Consequently, you get to ensure that only appropriate traffic uses your links.
A good thing with hiding backlinks is that it allows you to have more control over them. You will be able to focus on the factors that are important to you without being concerned by other people, including the analysis done by Ahrefs and Moz.
Also, you will have more leverage to negotiate partnerships and affiliate programs since you can use this information to your advantage.
Potential Risks and Considerations
While concealing your backlinks may sound like a great idea, it comes with some dangers. First of all, concealing your links is going to damage your SEO efforts because search engines need transparency when determining website credibility.
Secondly, this technique is commonly associated with concealing Private Blog Networks (PBNs) or other manipulative link schemes, which directly violate Google’s webmaster guidelines. If Google identifies patterns consistent with a PBN – even without visibility into third-party tools, it can issue a manual action, resulting in penalties, lower rankings, or de-indexation.
Thirdly, it is going to be hard for you to monitor the performance of your backlinks if you use such tools as Ahrefs, Moz, and Majestic, where these links will not be visible anymore.
It would be wise to find a compromise and use both methods equally.
Read more about Why Permanent Backlinks Are Important for Your Brand