An effective backlink audit is much more than just automated scans. To find every detail about your link profile, you need to go through a careful, multi-step process that includes finding risks, valuing assets, and making sure you don’t miss any important information. My advanced backlink analysis method is based on more than 15 years of hard work and is made for the highest level of accuracy. Here’s a step-by-step guide to how I do a full, useful audit:

The Main Parts of My Advanced Backlink Audit:

Step 1: Collecting all the data

Complete data is the basis for any accurate audit. I start by making a complete list of all the links from the five most important data sources in the industry that point to your website.

• Majestic.com
• Ahrefs.com
• Semrush.com
• Spyglass for SEO
• Google Search Console

After I have all the data, I carefully get rid of all the duplicates and put the information into one master file that shows all the known incoming links to the domain you are looking at.

Step 2: Setting up the first links and putting them in groups

Next, I do a quick scan of all the links in the master file to see how they work and what their parameters are. This means checking to see if each link is dofollow or nofollow, and most importantly, if the pages that link to them return a “200 OK” status, which means they are live and accessible. Links with a “200 OK” status (both dofollow and nofollow) are then given priority for the first deep-dive analysis, where important data points for further evaluation are gathered from a variety of sources.

Step 3: Choose Deep-Dive for Non-Functional Links

If a link doesn’t return a “200 OK” status (for example, if it redirects to a 3xx page, gives a 4xx error, a 5xx server error, or just doesn’t work at all), a targeted selection process follows. I pick up to ten subpages from each linking domain very carefully. I prioritize these subpages based on how close they are to the linking domain’s homepage (for example, links that are directly on the homepage, in main categories, or on subpages that are directly linked from the homepage). This way, I can focus on the most relevant and potentially useful sources.

Step 4: Global Proxies for Geo-Verification

Some linking subpages may show a status of 3xx, 4xx, or 5xx, or they may just not work at all. When this happens, I use a very important verification step: I use proxies with IP addresses from a number of countries, such as the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Australia. This lets me check again to see if the pages are really down or if the server is blocking access from certain countries (which is common for international e-commerce sites that don’t ship to certain areas). This makes sure that no important link is accidentally lost because of regional access restrictions.

Step 5: Getting all the data back and making it better

After the first scans and proxy verification, I do a second and then a third analysis. At this point, I focus on getting and updating all the information I need for the new subpages (which I found in Stage 3 and confirmed in Stage 4) that have or used to have links to your analyzed site. This makes sure that every linking page that is relevant, no matter what its original status was, is fully evaluated with the most recent information.

Step 6: Classifying Keywords in Detail

After gathering all the technical and contextual information (like IP addresses, the number of words on the linking subpage, outbound links from the page, etc.), I move on to a more in-depth keyword selection. This classification mostly sorts your anchor text profile into four main groups: money keywords, compound keywords, brand keywords, and other keywords. If a Google penalty has been applied or if a specific type of analysis is needed, extra custom categories may be added to give a more detailed picture.

Step 7: Choose the final disavow and check it again

The final analysis of linking subpages is based on all the information from the previous stages. I carefully choose certain subpages or whole domains to add to your disavow file based on the complete data and my knowledge. This important step in the selection process finds links that could be harmful and need to be removed from your domain. Before I finish, I do a thorough double-check to make sure my choice and data are correct and that no mistakes have slipped in.

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Stage 8: Giving useful information

The end result of this long process is the delivery of three important files that give you a full picture and clear steps to take:

1. Disavow File: A .txt file that is ready to be submitted and contains the list of subpages and/or domains that I recommend disavowing. It was carefully made based on my analysis.
2. Detailed Data File (XLSX): A full spreadsheet with all the raw and analyzed data that was used to do the backlink analysis. This file shows everything I found.
3. Full PDF Report: A simple document that explains your current link profile, complete with my comments, charts, and tables that give you useful information. This report tells you how healthy and valuable your backlinks are overall.

This whole process of careful analysis usually takes about a week. But for sites with tens of thousands of linking domains, the long process of checking each one by hand will naturally take longer to make sure everything is correct and complete.

Are you ready for a full backlink audit?

My multi-step, human-led method guarantees that I will understand your backlink profile with unmatched accuracy and depth. This careful process is meant to keep your site safe from bad links and make it possible for it to grow naturally and rank higher in search engines over time.

Start Your Comprehensive Backlink Audit Today