Are you perplexed as to why visitors aren’t increasing to your website? Are you considering a link-building strategy to boost up your website’s backlink profile?
Doing anything other than a backlink audit as a first step is a mistake.
Many low-quality, irrelevant, or harmful links can make a backlink profile poor. They can hurt your site’s SEO and can lead to search engine penalties.
Spending time and energy building fresh backlinks only to have their effectiveness eroded by malicious backlinks you had no knowledge about is a painful experience.
Enter the realm of backlink auditing.
In this post, you’ll discover how to detect and disavow dangerous links, how we undertake a backlink audit when we start working with a new client, and walk you through each stage of completing a full audit of your backlink profile.
Yes, we should go now.
Key Takeaways
- Find your links with the help of tools like Ahrefs and Google Search Console.
- Gather all of your connections
- Find the malicious and spammy connections
- Make sure there are no abnormal or wrong patterns.
- Analyze the anchor text profile and link quality
- Work out a strategy
What Is a Backlink Audit?
The term “backlink audit” refers to a comprehensive analysis of all the external connections that lead to your website.
Backlinks, also known as inbound links, are very important for the visibility and search engine rankings of your website.
Evaluating each link is what a backlink audit is all about. Evaluate its usefulness, usefulness to your site’s SEO, and quality.
Purpose of Backlink Audits
Backlink audits provide several primary functions, including the following:
Verifying the accuracy and usefulness of current inbound connections
Finding spammy or poisonous backlinks that might hurt search engine optimization
Examining and improving the distribution of anchor text
Finding links that have been rerouted or have broken
Checking the website’s backlink profile for overall health
Finding ways to remove bad backlinks
Finding malicious SEO assaults and fixing them
If you check your backlink profile on a regular basis, you can fix any problems you notice and prevent others.
We’ll dive deeper into how to find and address these issues later on in the article.
Importance of Maintaining a Healthy Backlink Profile
In our experience, websites with extremely low-quality backlink profiles are a common issue. Web 2.0 links that look spammy or articles that are duplicates from low-quality PBN sites usually take up most of the space.
Such profiles can cause search engines to penalize your site or even completely de-rank you.
Because Google does not appreciate it when people try to manipulate search engine rankings, they may send a signal to Google that you are doing just that.
That is why, in addition to constructing high-quality relationships, we consistently stress the significance of link variety.
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The Role of Backlinks in SEO Strategy
An integral part of any successful search engine optimization plan are backlinks.
Even while Google maintains they are no longer a top three ranking element, most SEO specialists feel this is a falsehood. Among the many ranking variables, backlinks are among the most crucial.
People would try to game Google’s algorithm even more if the search engine were honest about this.
Other websites’ trust in your content is demonstrated by backlinks, which are like a vote of confidence.
These votes are taken into account by search engines like Google when they decide how to rank your site in search results.
Making linkages in an artificial way, though, gets a lot of people in trouble. Competitors might potentially undertake negative SEO campaigns to ruin your domain’s reputation.
Identifying Bad and Toxic Links
Bad backlinks, or toxic backlinks, are links that can harm your website’s SEO.
Their spammy nature, low quality, or lack of relevance are common characteristics.
Links from low-quality directories, irrelevant websites, link farms, or websites with malicious software, questionable business practices, or offensive content are all examples of bad links.
They weaken the authority of your backlink profile and might offer possible dangers to your website’s users.
The uninitiated might mistake toxic links for harmless backlinks. This makes identifying them slightly more challenging than it initially appears.
Learn How to Remove Toxic Backlinks from your website
It’s important to find these types of links, but you should also note that Google seems to ignore them in many cases these days.
We haven’t seen many unnatural link building penalties in the last years. However, these linkages may continue to hinder your progress or perhaps lose all usefulness over time.
The Tools You Need for Backlink Audits
Having the correct tools to collect, analyze, and understand data is crucial for carrying out a backlink audit effectively.
Here we’ve outlined the most important resources you’ll require.
Google Search Console for Backlink Audit
If you work as a webmaster or SEO, you should definitely check out Google Search Console.
It shows the inbound links pointing to your website. In addition, it gives you accurate data on your organic traffic, which is the traffic that comes from pages that rank well on Google.
Information about inbound and outbound connections as well as the domains that connect to your site may be found in the “Links” section.
Although this information is useful for determining the origins of your backlinks, we advise against using Search Console for this task. Information regarding the health of your site (traffic, clicks, impressions, etc.) is its primary use.
Third-Party SEO Tools for Backlink Audit
Backlink analysis is one of many features offered by third-party SEO tools.
The amount, quality, and relevancy of your backlinks may be determined with the use of these tools. When doing backlink audits, they are the primary tool we employ.
Among the most well-known alternatives, you may find Ahrefs, Moz, Semrush, and Majestic. However, we recommend Ahrefs due to its extensive backlink data.
With these tools, you can:
- Find fresh links pointing back to your website.
- Analyse the authority and trustworthiness of connecting domains.
- Check anchor text variety and keyword use in backlinks.
- Identify poisonous or dangerous connections using proprietary algorithms.
- When doing research, it is helpful to use third-party data such as DR, toxicity score, organic traffic, etc.
Disavow Tool by Google for Backlink Audit
In rare circumstances, you may need to disavow damaging links to safeguard your website’s SEO.
If you want Google to disregard certain connections while evaluating your site’s backlink profile, you may do so with the use of Google’s Disavow Tool.
For harmful links that are impossible to delete by hand, we see it as a last choice.
I want to repeat that final point: we utilize the disavow function as an absolute last option.
The fact that Google is adept at ignoring many spammy links has already been discussed. After disavowing numerous high-quality backlinks on the assumption that they were toxic, many people have ended up hurting themselves.
To avoid inadvertently causing more harm than good, use this tool with caution.
Conducting a Backlink Audit: Step-by-Step Guide
Here we will give you the lowdown on how to conduct a backlink audit. Bad, poisonous, and detrimental links will be our main emphasis, and we will also go over how to evaluate your backlink profile as a whole.
Collecting a List of Inbound Links
The first step in doing a backlink audit is to obtain a detailed list of all the inbound links.
You may receive this data from several sources, including:
- In the ‘Links’ area of Google Search Console, you can see all the other websites that are directing traffic to yours.
- Get a list of backlinks using third-party SEO tools such as Ahrefs, Moz, Semrush, or Majestic.
Because of its enormous backlink database and user-friendliness, Ahrefs is, as previously said, an excellent choice.
Once you’ve collected the data, assemble it into a spreadsheet for orderly analysis.
Google Sheets is the one that we want to use.
Identifying Spammy and Harmful Links
The following thing to do is search through your data for malicious or spammy links.
Use your selected SEO tools to analyze the quality of each backlink.
Keep an eye out for these signs to determine if a link is harmful, spammy, or otherwise problematic; nevertheless, keep in mind that the “bigger picture” is essential:
- Irrelevant Content
- Unnatural Anchor Text
- Low-Quality Design
- Excessive Advertisements
- Duplicate Content
- Irrelevant/Spammed-Out Comments or Links from Forums
- Automated Linking
- Link Farms
- Excessive Web 2.0 links
- Overuse of Keywords
- Unusual TLDs
- No Contact Information
- Rapid Link Growth
- Irrelevant Traffic or Little/No Traffic
- Traffic Coming From Strange Keywords
- Foreign Language Sites
- Hidden/Invisible Links
- Non-Contextual Links
- Excessive Nofollow Links
Just because a link meets some of these criteria doesn’t mean it’s bad.
Check for Unnatural Patterns
Look for suspicious trends in your backlink profile. These are activities that you often conduct on your own that can indicate an unnatural profile of backlinks.
Keep an eye out for these:
- Sudden and unnatural spikes in the number of backlinks
- Lack of link diversity
- Excessive use of exact-match anchor text
- Reciprocal link exchanges in large quantities
- Repeating the same anchor text many times
- Footer and sidebar links on many websites
- Lack of homepage link building
- Excessive link building to inner pages
Sometimes, these connections originate from reputable sources. However, Google may find problems if you developed them in an unnatural way and made patterns.
Evaluating Link Quality
You may assess the quality of the remaining backlinks once you’ve identified connections that could be damaging.
When assessing the quality of a connection, keep the following in mind:
- Relevance of website/article
- Anchor text
- Domain/Page Authority
- Traffic
- Do follow Links
You may use this to estimate which links are probably the most important for your traffic.
Analysing Anchor Text
Anchor text plays a critical part in how search engines comprehend the content of the website being linked to.
A strong backlink profile requires an anchor text profile that is both varied and organic.
We’ve mentioned anchor text before, but here are some pointers to ensure your anchor text aligns with best practices:
- Diversify Anchor Text: Avoid over-optimized anchor text and instead utilize a range of anchor text formats, including branded, naked URLs, and generic words.
- Check for Exact-Match Keywords: Excessive usage of exact-match keywords (and even partial-match keywords) in anchor text might raise red flags with search engines.
- Anchor text should be written in a way that is natural and appropriate for the situation. It shouldn’t look like an SEO strategy, but rather like an effort to improve the user experience.
Create a Strategy
It is time to formulate a strategy after you have audited your complete backlink profile.
Some SEOs want to disavow links periodically. However, with the exception of really extreme and obvious instances of bad link building, which is probably impacting the website’s SEO performance, we seldom ever do this.
Some examples:
- Too many exact match anchors? Additional branded, URL, and random anchors should be built.
- A plethora of internal links? Improve the number of links pointing to the homepage.
- An abundance of spammy links from low-authority sites? Prioritize the development of links from websites with high authority.
Restoring your website’s excellent standing with Google is as simple as performing the exact opposite of what was done previously.
The Consequences of Neglecting Backlink Audits
Here are a few issues that crop up when you neglect to analyze and manage your backlink profile on a regular basis.
Decreased Organic Traffic
Your website’s organic traffic will drop dramatically if you ignore backlink audits, which is one of the most obvious and immediate effects.
Your site’s search engine rankings can take a hit if your backlink profile is filled with a lot of spammy, irrelevant, or otherwise unsavoury links.
Consequently, fewer people will visit your website.
Penalization by Search Engines
The standards that search engines use to choose which websites to include in their results are very high.
Google and other search engines might penalize your site if you ignore your backlink profile. This is particularly the case in the event that search engine algorithms identify spammy links, manipulative link-building tactics, or other infractions of guidelines.
To get your site’s rating back up after these penalties, you may have to put in a lot of work.
Negative Impact on Domain Authority
One of the most important metrics that shows how trustworthy and credible your website is is its domain authority.
If you have a neglected backlink profile, your domain authority can take a hit because of all the low-quality or irrelevant links it contains.
The search engine rankings of your website can take a hit if its domain authority is low. Furthermore, it hinders your capacity to become an expert in your field.
Implications for Your Link Building Strategy
New, high-quality links won’t do as much good as they would on a blank slate if your current backlink profile is full of detrimental or low-quality connections.
Simply put, your efforts to establish a solid backlink profile might be affected by the existence of poor and harmful connections.
Loss of Online Credibility
Your website’s reputation and trustworthiness in the internet world might take a hit if you disregard your backlink profile.
Users may lose faith in your site and its content if they come upon it through spammy or damaging links.
All things considered, the credibility and quality of your website are mirrored in the backlinks.
Tips for Building a Healthy Backlink Profile
Building a solid online presence and performing well in search engine optimization (SEO) depend on having a balanced profile of backlinks.
Here you can find helpful hints and methods for creating and sustaining a strong backlink profile.
Prioritize Quality Over Quantity
When it comes to getting backlinks, quality should always be more important than number. We think it’s more important to get links from authoritative, relevant, and trustworthy sites in your area than from random ones, even if some experts say that every link may be valuable.
One high-quality, contextually relevant backlink frequently carries more SEO weight than multiple low-quality connections.
Develop High-Quality Content
The best way to naturally get high-quality backlinks is to create interesting and useful content. When your content gives value to your target audience, other websites are more inclined to connect to it.
That being said, put some effort into making material that is both distinctive and useful.
Guest Blogging and Contributor Opportunities
Consider guest blogging and contributing to respected websites within your business.
It is common practice to include a hyperlink to your website in guest posts, either in the author bio or the content itself.
The value of these backlinks depends on the respect and relevance of the hosting websites.
Reach Out to Influencers and Industry Leaders
Make connections with influential people and top executives in your field. Offer to help them out by giving them something of value. Building relationships with these figures may give you chances to co-author and collaborate. You may also join in joint ventures. These endeavours have the potential to bring about more exposure and high-quality backlinks.
Build a Resourceful Resource Page
Create a helpful and complete page on your website that gives essential information, resources, or guidelines connected to your sector.
Your backlink profile will improve if other websites link to your resource page organically as a reference for their viewers.
Broken Link Building
Identify broken links on other websites within your niche and offer your content or resources as a replacement.
By using this method, you may acquire a fresh backlink while also assisting other websites in maintaining their user experience.
Utilize Social Media Platforms
Make the most of your social media accounts to disseminate your content. Some social signals might not have an immediate effect on search engine optimization. But, sharing your content makes it more visible and likely to be linked to.
For that reason, as part of our Managed Link Building service, we add social signals to the websites of all of our clients.
Monitor Your Backlink Profile Continuously
Regularly analyze your backlink profile using tools like Google Search Console and third-party SEO tools.
In this way, you may monitor the health of your profile and be alerted to any modifications or new backlinks.
Focus on Diversity of Anchor Text
One of the main components of our off-page SEO audit checklist is the evaluation of anchor text profiles.
We believe every website should have a broad anchor text profile to seem natural to search engines. Stay away from highly optimized anchor text, since it could cause concerns.
Branded, naked URLs, and generic words are some of the anchor text kinds that we prefer to utilize.
Stay Compliant With Search Engine Guidelines
When constructing your backlink profile, be sure to follow search engine rules. Avoid participating in link schemes, excessive link swaps, or other manipulative methods.
Although we don’t think that relevant sites can be hurt by exchanging links, it’s still smart to not use this link building tactic too often.
Staying compliance with recommended practices might help shield your website from fines.
Perform Regular Backlink Audits
Regular audits will help you identify and address any new bad or toxic links that may have appeared over time. Your backlink profile will remain healthy as long as you do this.
Conclusion
Everything you need to know to conduct a thorough backlink audit is right here in this post. In this article, we have covered the significance of high-quality backlinks, how to detect and remove harmful links, and the use of tools such as Ahrefs and Google Search Console.
Serious repercussions might result from skipping backlink audits. Search engine penalties and a decline in organic traffic are two of these.
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Regularly examine your backlinks to maintain a healthy backlink profile. This will ensure your site’s SEO health and durability.
Make use of this information to maintain an organic and relevant backlink profile for your website. Your site’s visibility and ranking will both increase as a result of this.