A strong backlink profile is an important part of SEO success because it tells search engines a lot about your website’s authority and relevance. But not all links are the same. Some links can help your rankings a lot, while others, like bad or toxic links, might make it harder for people to find your site. At this time, a rigorous backlink audit is quite necessary. The first step to taking control of your website’s off-page SEO health is to learn what a backlink audit and a backlink analysis are. This complete article will teach you how to run a backlink audit step by step, from gathering your data and discovering poor links to producing a disavow file and coming up with new approaches to expand. You need to understand how to undertake backlink profile research if you want your SEO to last.

What is a backlink audit, and why is it important? Let’s get started with the basics.

Before you start a backlink audit, you should know the main ideas and how this process will affect your website’s SEO.

What is a backlink?

A backlink is when one website links to another. These are also known as inbound or incoming links.[1] Search engines like Google consider backlinks as “votes of confidence” or “trust signals”.[2] This implies that if a well-known website links to your material, it tells search engines that your site is trustworthy and offers relevant information.[2] This perceived authority can have a major impact on how well your site ranks in search engines. You need to know where backlinks originated and what they are before you can learn how to examine them.

What are audits and analyses of backlinks?

When you do a backlink analysis, you look at how many and how good the links from other websites are that point to yours.[3, 4] It checks a lot of things about your backlinks, like how many there are, how good they are, what anchor text they have, and how recent they are. Then it tries to uncover strategies to improve your backlink profile and see how they affect your search ranks.[3, 4, 5] Learning about backlink analysis will help you a lot with your content and SEO plans.[5]

A backlink audit is a specific SEO practice that focuses on systematically reviewing all the links coming to a website and their quality.[1, 6] The primary goal of what is a backlink audit is to identify future steps to optimize a website, which includes categorizing existing links as good, harmful, or irrelevant, and identifying opportunities to improve the link profile by removing toxic backlinks or gaining new ones.[1, 6] A thorough how-to-do-backlink-profile audit evaluates both the quality and quantity of backlinks, as well as their distribution across pages.[6]

Why You Should Regularly Do Backlink Audits for SEO Health

Search engines constantly mention that backlinks are one of the most essential things that affect how well a site ranks.[1, 4] This means that the three most critical aspects of a good backlink strategy are the quality, relevancy, and number of your backlinks.[1] Regularly performing a how to do seo backlink audit is vital for several reasons:

• Maintaining a Positive Online Reputation and Site Health: Audits help you locate and get rid of faulty or dangerous connections that could ruin your site’s reputation with search engines and get you in trouble.[7, 8, 9, 10]
• Improving Search Engine Rankings: By detecting and getting rid of bad links and focusing on getting good ones, you can dramatically increase your website’s ranking potential.[7, 8, 11]
• Identifying Link Building Opportunities: A backlink audit isn’t only for cleaning up; it’s also a terrific method to find fresh link-building chances, like figuring out what content gets connections or finding sites that link to your competitors but not to you.[6, 8, 11, 12]
• Troubleshooting Traffic Problems: Changes to your backlink profile can sometimes make your website’s traffic go up or down very quickly. You can uncover these flaws via an audit.[8]
• Understanding Competitor Strategies: You can learn a lot about your competitors’ plans by looking at their backlink profiles. This can help you figure out how to beat them.[7, 13, 14]
• Adapting to Algorithm Changes: Search engine algorithms are continually changing, so you need to be able to adapt. Regular audits make sure that your backlink plan still follows the most recent rules and best practices.[10]

As SEO expert Helen Pollitt, Lead SEO at Arrows Up, states, “The best source of a link is a website that is both authoritative and relevant to your website.”.[15] This indicates how crucial it is to have high-quality links in your profile. Aaron Thomas from Hive19 also talks about an essential management tenet that applies to SEO: “If you can measure it, you can improve it.”.[16] A backlink audit is a way to measure your link profile. You may improve things by measuring them and then analyzing backlinks on a website.

Backlinks are vital, but they are only one aspect of a bigger plan for SEO. As stated in a Search Engine Journal article that looked at more than 500 pages said, “You should never blindly chase backlinks to fix your SEO.” You should only develop backlinks after you know the basics of SEO and do it in a planned way.”.[17] This means that before you spend a lot of time and money on link building, you should know how to do technical SEO, keyword research, and on-page optimization.[17]

When to undertake an audit of backlinks

There are a few aspects that will affect how often you should undertake a backlink audit. These include the size of your website, how competitive your business is, and how often you add new material and links.[18, 19, 20] These are some general rules:

• For tiny blogs and webpages: every 1 to 2 months.[18]
• For most medium-sized organizations: once a quarter or every two to four weeks.[18, 19]
• For big websites, e-commerce sites, and fields that are particularly competitive: once a week, every two weeks, or once a month.[18, 19]
• Most firms should check their backlinks every three to six months.[19] It is normally suggested that you do in-depth audits of your backlink profile every three to six months.[20]

You should also undertake an audit after large changes, such as moving your website, making big changes to your content, executing a marketing campaign that might bring in new backlinks, or if you experience a dramatic reduction in traffic or get a manual action notification from Google Search Console.[18, 20] Regular checks help you detect bad links, recover backlinks you’ve lost, and see how your competitors are doing things.[18]

Setting goals and choosing tools to get ready for your backlink audit

You need to get ready before you start the technical steps of a backlink audit. This includes making sure you have clear goals for your audit and picking the correct tools to gather and look at the data you need. This initial stage makes sure that your effort is focused and efficient, which will help you receive better results from your how-to-perform-backlink-profile study.

Setting your audit goals: growth or cleanup

You need to have defined goals for your audit of backlinks. Are you generally trying to fix a link profile that could cause problems to prevent or get back from penalties? Or is your main goal to find new ways to expand by looking at what your competitors are doing and figuring out what you’re excellent at and what you’re not so good at?.[9]

• Cleanup Focus: Your major goal will be to detect and fix problematic or unnatural connections if your site has a history of improper link-building methods, has unexpectedly plummeted in ranks, or has had a manual action from Google.[9, 21, 22] This entails undertaking a careful backlink analysis to find bad trends.
• Focus on Growth: If your site’s profile is basically clean, your audit can look for fresh link-building chances, high-performing content, and strategies to obtain backlinks. It can also look at what your competitors do well.[6, 9]

An audit usually has both cleanup and growth elements. But it’s normally advisable to clean up any bad links that are already there before you start aggressively seeking new ones. This will help you build a strong base.[9] Knowing what a backlink audit is in regard to your needs can guide you through the whole process.

Essential Instruments for Collecting and Evaluating Backlink Information

To execute a full backlink audit, you need powerful tools that can crawl the web and offer you complete information about the profiles of your backlinks. Free tools like Google Search Console can help you, but you normally need to pay for thorough audits.[1, 6, 8, 13]

Here is a list of well-known tools that people typically recommend for checking backlinks for SEO:

Feature/Tool	Google Search Console (GSC)	Ahrefs	Semrush	Moz Link Explorer	Majestic
Primary Use	Basic backlink overview, manual action checks, disavow submission	Comprehensive backlink analysis, competitor research, content explorer	All-in-one SEO, backlink audit, competitor analysis, toxicity score	Backlink analysis, Domain Authority, Spam Score, link intersect	Specialized backlink intelligence, Trust Flow, Citation Flow, historical data
Backlink Data	Sample of links Google has found; may not be exhaustive [23, 24]	Massive, frequently updated database (claims 2nd most active crawler after Google) [25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30]	Large database (claims over 43 trillion backlinks) [11, 27, 31]	Significant link index (claims 45.5 trillion links) [27, 32, 33, 34]	Extensive historical and fresh link indexes [25, 27, 35, 36]
Key Metrics	Top Linking Sites, Top Linked Pages, Top Linking Text [8, 23, 24]	Domain Rating (DR), URL Rating (UR), Referring Domains, Ahrefs Rank (AR), Anchor Text Analysis [26, 27, 29, 30, 37, 38, 39, 40]	Authority Score, Toxicity Score, Referring Domains, Anchor Types, Link Attributes [11, 27, 31, 41, 42, 43]	Domain Authority (DA), Page Authority (PA), Spam Score, Linking Domains, Anchor Text Analysis [13, 27, 32, 33, 34, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49]	Trust Flow (TF), Citation Flow (CF), Topical Trust Flow, Link Density Chart [25, 27, 35, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54]
Toxic Link ID	Manual review needed; GSC doesn’t provide a toxicity score [24]	Can filter by DR, UR; manual review often needed for toxicity [27, 29, 55]	Backlink Audit tool provides Toxicity Score and toxic markers [11, 27, 31, 41, 42, 43]	Spam Score helps identify potentially harmful links [13, 27, 32, 48, 49]	High CF vs. low TF can indicate toxic links; manual review needed [35, 51, 52]
Disavow Support	Disavow tool for submitting.txt file [6, 56, 57]	Export links for disavow; Disavow tool integration [29, 30, 58, 59]	Export links to.txt for Google Disavow tool; direct submission option [11, 43, 60, 61]	Export links for disavow [13, 62, 63]	Lacks built-in disavow tool; export links [27]
Cost	Free [1, 8, 13]	Paid (starts ~$99-$129/mo) [6, 27, 28]	Paid (starts ~$130-$140/mo) [6, 27]	Paid (starts ~$49-$69/mo); free community access with limits [6, 27, 33]	Paid (starts ~$40-$50/mo) [25, 27, 35]
Best For	Initial overview, small sites, checking manual actions [6, 8, 13]	In-depth backlink data, competitor analysis, SEO professionals [6, 27]	Comprehensive SEO suite, automated audit features, marketers managing multiple channels [6, 27]	User-friendly interface, DA/PA metrics, beginners to intermediate users [6, 27]	Deep link intelligence, historical data, link quality assessment [25, 27, 35]

The table’s information was obtained from sources:.[1, 6, 8, 11, 13, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63]

Each instrument has its own good and bad points. People know Ahrefs for its enormous and quickly updated index of backlinks.[26, 29, 30] The Backlink Audit tool from Semrush is really good. It offers a “Toxicity Score” that lets you rapidly uncover links that could be damaging.[11, 27, 41, 43] Moz is known for its Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) scores, which are now the standard way to measure the strength of a website. It also has a Spam Score that lets you know when a link is hazardous.[13, 34, 44, 48] Majestic is an expert in link intelligence and has unique measures like Trust Flow (quality) and Citation Flow (quantity).[25, 35, 51, 53]

You can use Google Search Console for free to see a sample of your backlinks, although the data may not be complete and may not show up straight away after verification.[6, 23, 24] You normally have to pay for solutions that give you more data, better filtering, and more specific metrics to undertake a thorough website backlink analysis.[6, 8, 13] The tools you use will depend on how much money you have, how hard your website is to use, and what you want to learn from the audit. To get the greatest image, many SEO experts employ more than one tool.

The Core Process: A Step-by-Step Guide to Checking Your Backlinks

Now that you’ve set your goals and chosen your tools, it’s time to start the systematic process of completing the backlink audit. From obtaining data to cleaning it up in a way that works, this step-by-step procedure makes sure that your link profile is looked at in depth. This is where you need to know how to execute a real-life backlink audit.

Step 1: Write down every single one of your backlinks on a master list.

The most crucial aspect of any effective how-to-do-a-backlink-profile audit is a full list of all the links to your site. You might not get the complete picture if you simply utilize one source.

• Getting Information from Many Places:

  • Google Search Console (GSC): The first step is to get your link data out of GSC. Go to the “Links” report and export the data for “Top linking sites” and “Top linked pages.”[8, 23, 24, 64, 65] GSC gets data straight from Google, but it’s usually only a sample and may have constraints, including a 1,000-row limit for tables and delays in reporting new links.[23, 24, 66] You can export up to 100,000 rows of “Latest links” or “More sample links”.[24]
  • Paid SEO Tools (Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz, Majestic, etc.): Use the outputs from your favorite paid tool(s) to add to the GSC data. These tools usually have bigger databases that are updated more often and give you more detailed information.[8, 9, 11, 13, 25, 29, 33, 36, 67, 68, 69] For example, Ahrefs Site Explorer lets you export a full list of backlinks, including metrics like DR, UR, anchor text, and link type.[9, 29, 55] Semrush’s Backlink Analytics or Backlink Audit tool lets you export similar information.[11, 43, 70] Moz Link Explorer lets you export link data along with DA, PA, and Spam Score.[33, 69]
  • The first step in gathering data is to build the most thorough list of backlinks. Every tool scans the web in its own way, so it might find links that other programs don’t. You get a better overall view when you understand how to examine backlinks from more than one source.[68, 71, 72]

• How to Merge and Get Rid of Duplicate Data in a Spreadsheet (Excel/Google Sheets):

  • The next step is to integrate all of the data you exported from different sources into one master spreadsheet.[71, 72]
  • Make sure that all of your exports are formatted the same way, notably the one with the linked URLs (source URLs). This column should be your main tool for getting rid of duplicates.[71]
  • Use the “Remove Duplicates” tool in Excel or Google Sheets to get rid of duplicate entries depending on the source URL column.[71, 73] This makes sure that each unique connecting page is only shown once.
  • In Google Sheets, you can mark the data range, then go to Data > Data cleanup > Remove duplicates and pick the column containing the source URLs.[73]
  • You may find unique values in Google Sheets without losing the original data by using the UNIQUE function (for example, =UNIQUE(A2:B15)).[73]
  • Spreadsheet Organization: Your master list should include at least these columns: Source URL (Linking Page), Target URL (Your Page), Anchor Text, Link Type (Dofollow/Nofollow), and metrics from your tools (DR, UR, DA, PA, Spam Score, Toxicity Score, etc.).

• Cleaning and checking the data for the first time:

  • You can use some tools, like SEO SpyGlass, to check in real time to see if links are still working.[68] This can assist you in getting rid of links that don’t operate right away.
  • You might need to get URLs from hyperlinked anchor texts if you use Excel. This is possible using VBA scripts.[71]
  • This first step in getting the data ready is very significant because the quality of this master list will affect how well your next phases in backlink research work. If a list is lacking information or is hard to comprehend, it can lead to erroneous assumptions and actions that don’t work.

The most critical component of a good backlink analysis study is putting together a full list. If the data isn’t right or full, the insights will be inaccurate, which could cause you to make bad choices about cleaning up links or finding new chances.

Step 2: For the first time, sort and filter your backlink data into groups.

The next stage in doing a backlink audit is to start sorting and separating the main list of backlinks. This helps organize the data so that it is easy to undertake a more in-depth study. There are a lot of methods to divide things up, but here are some of the more common:

• By Link Type:

  • Dofollow vs. Nofollow vs. Sponsored vs. UGC: Dofollow links are usually the most important for SEO because they give “link juice” to other sites.[74, 75, 76] Nofollow links don’t normally pass authority, but they can still bring in traffic and help you establish a natural link profile.[75, 77] There are certain rel properties (rel=”sponsored” and rel=”ugc”) that tell search engines what sponsored and UGC (user-generated content) links are. These links normally don’t pass ranking signals like dofollow links do.[75] To figure out the real SEO value of your backlinks, you need to know this difference.
  • Filter your list to see how many of each type there are. If you have a lot of nofollow links, it could suggest you missed chances to gain equity-passing links. A guide on how to do backlink analysis should keep this balance in mind.

• By linking domain metrics:

  • Domain Authority (DA – Moz) / Domain Rating (DR – Ahrefs) / Authority Score (Semrush): There are several approaches to finding out how strong and authoritative a linked domain is. These are Domain Authority (DA – Moz), Domain Rating (DR – Ahrefs), and Authority Score (Semrush).[11, 37, 38, 44, 45] You can sort links into groups based on these scores, like High DR > 70, Medium DR 30–69, and Low DR < 30. This helps you choose which links to click on. Links from sites with a very low DR/DA are often not as good.[78]
  • Trust Flow (TF – Majestic): This metric checks how trustworthy a linked site is by looking at the quality of its own backlinks. It does this by seeing how near it is to “seed sites,” which are sites that are very trusted.[35, 51, 52] In general, a higher TF is better.
  • Citation Flow (CF – Majestic): This measure counts the amount or strength of links pointing to a site, no matter how good they are.[35, 53, 54] A high CF and a low TF could mean that the link profiles are spammy.[35, 51]

• By linking page metrics:

  • Page Authority (PA – Moz) / URL Rating (UR – Ahrefs): These metrics only look at the strength of the page that connects to you, not the complete site.[39, 40, 46, 47] A link from a page on a site with a low DR/DA score can nevertheless be very helpful if it has a high UR/PA score.

• By Spam Signals:

  • Spam Score (Moz): This tells you what proportion of sites that have features like the linking site that Google has judged to be bad or blacklisted.[12, 48, 49] There are three levels of scores: low (1-30%), medium (31-60%), and high (61-100%). Google doesn’t directly punish you for having a high spam score, but it’s something to look into.[49]
  • Toxicity Score (Semrush): Semrush’s Backlink Audit tool offers your domain an overall toxicity score and individual toxicity ratings for each backlink. These scores are based on multiple “toxic markers.”[11, 41, 42, 43] A high toxicity score (for example, 60-100) suggests that a link is definitely bad for your site.[42, 60]

• By the kind of anchor text:

  • Group links by the sort of anchor text they use. There are branded links (like “YourBrand”), naked URL links (like “www.yoursite.com”), generic links (like “click here”), exact-match keyword links, partial-match keyword links, and image links (alt text).[70, 78, 79, 80] A strange distribution, especially too many exact-match keyword anchors, could mean spam.[12, 70, 80, 81]

• By ccTLD (Country Code Top-Level Domain):

  • Find links from ccTLDs (like .ru or .cn) that don’t have anything to do with your business or audience.[12] Many of these links might not be safe.

The first stage in your SEO backlink audit is to break up a massive dataset into smaller, easier-to-work-with chunks. This will allow you to undertake a more thorough manual analysis in the future steps. It enables you to rapidly indicate areas that could be a concern or find the best portions of your profile.

Step 3: Deep Dive Analysis—Checking the Quality of Each Link

After the initial round of filtering, it’s time to check each backlink by hand, which is the most critical phase. This is where you put your knowledge to use to find out how valuable and beneficial each link is. You need to look at the complete picture, not just one figure, to undertake a good backlink profile study.

When judging the quality of a backlink, you should think about these crucial things:

• The link’s domain and page’s relevance:

  • Topical Relevance: This is really significant. A link from a website and page that are very relevant to your specialty or the content of the page you linked to is considerably more useful.[2, 77, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86] If you have a travel blog, for example, a link from “Lonely Planet” would be much more important than one from a finance site that has nothing to do with travel.[77]
  • Assessing Relevance: Check the major content, blog entries, and overall topic of the connected site to see if it’s relevant. Does it fit with what you do?.[83] Check out what’s on the page where your link resides. Does it help you understand?.[83, 85]
  • “The best place to get a link is from a website that is both relevant and authoritative.” – Helen Pollitt, Lead SEO at Arrows Up.[15]

• The Link’s Page and Domain Authority:

  • Use indicators like DR (Ahrefs), DA (Moz), and Authority Score (Semrush) to find the domain, and UR (Ahrefs) and PA (Moz) to find the exact connecting page.[2, 11, 13, 30, 37, 39, 44, 46, 84, 85] In general, higher scores signify a more valuable link and more authority.
  • Brian Dean adds, “from years of testing, I’ve learned that the authority of the page that links to you is more important than any other factor.”.[87]
  • But the circumstance is critical. A link from a site with a low DA/DR that is really relevant and has an engaged readership can still be valuable.

• Looking at the anchor text:

  • Descriptive and Related: The anchor text should give you a fair notion of what the linked website is about.[2, 77, 79, 80, 86]
  • Natural Distribution: A healthy profile has a variety of anchor text kinds, like branded, naked URL, generic, partial-match, and some exact-match keywords.[78, 79, 80, 84]
  • Don’t Over-Optimize: If you use too many exact-match keyword anchors, it looks like you’re trying to trick people and could get you in trouble.[10, 12, 70, 79, 80, 81, 88] Rand Fishkin observed, “Links with rich anchor text are very important, but they are also a big sign of spam”.[89]
  • Spammy Anchors: If your site isn’t about gambling, pornographic content, or drugs, look for anchor sentences that don’t make sense or seem suspicious.[12, 13, 70]

• Where and how to put links:

  • Editorial Links: Links that editors include in the main body of pertinent information are usually the most helpful.[2, 14, 84, 87] Google gives these more importance.[87]
  • Don’t put too many links in your blogrolls, sidebars, or footers. These links aren’t always terrible, but they aren’t as helpful as contextual links and shouldn’t make up most of your profile.[14, 84]
  • Text Around Your Link: The text that comes before and after your link also helps search engines figure out what it’s about.[79, 87]

• The quality of the site that links to you:

  • Content Quality: Does the site that links to you have original, helpful, and high-quality content, or is it rubbish that was scraped, thin, or made by AI?.[77, 84, 85]
  • User Experience: Is the site straightforward to use and well-designed, or is it full of adverts and hard to find your way around?.[84]
  • Website History: Check for sudden declines in traffic or penalties associated with the linking domain. Linking from a site that has been penalized can affect your SEO.[9, 77]

• Link Attributes (Dofollow, Nofollow, Sponsored, UGC):

  • Dofollow links are more crucial because they help with SEO.[74, 75]
  • Nofollow links don’t immediately convey PageRank, but they can bring in visitors and help you create a natural profile.[75, 77]
  • Google employs sponsored or user-generated content links to acquire information, although they don’t normally aid with ranking equity.[75] If you want to meet Google’s standards, be sure that any paid links are clearly labeled as sponsored or nofollow.[90]

This detailed look at your backlink audit process helps you sort each link into the correct group.

Step 4: Look for dangerous and poisonous link patterns.

A big component of any how-to-do SEO backlink audit is finding bad links and detrimental trends that could get your site penalized by Google or otherwise affect its performance.

Some common signals that links are bad or that link patterns are poisonous are:

• Links from Sites That Have Been Punished or De-indexed: Links from a site that has been punished or removed from Google’s index are particularly harmful.[9, 77]

• Private Blog Networks (PBNs): These are networks of websites that simply exist to connect to each other and change their rankings. They often contain lousy content, employ old domains that still have some authority, and have unusual patterns of links that go out.[10, 81, 90, 91, 92] To find PBNs, seek for:

  • There isn’t much organic traffic, even though the DR/DA is good.[91]
  • There are different hosting businesses for sites in the network.[91]
  • No “About” information or stuff that is overly broad.[91]
  • Anchor text that is too optimized.[91]
  • There are a lot of 301 redirects from different domains.[91]
• Links from directories that are spammy, don’t make sense, or are submitted by a lot of people are not helpful and can even be harmful.[10, 59, 70, 81, 90, 92, 93, 94] Check to determine whether a directory gives genuine users value or referral traffic to assess if it is good. If it doesn’t, it probably isn’t.[92]
• Paid Link Schemes: Google claims that purchasing or selling links that pass PageRank (i.e., dofollow links without rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow") is against the rules and can lead to penalties.[59, 75, 81, 90, 92, 95, 96, 97] This includes paying for links with money, products, or services.
• Link Exchanges that are Too Much: Manipulative linking is when you do too much of it or as part of a scheme (for example, “Link to me, and I’ll link to you”).[59, 90]
• Link farms and automated link building: Links produced by automatic programs or sites that simply host links are spam.[10, 12, 59, 70, 77, 81, 90]
• Spammy blog comments and forum links: It’s great to provide legitimate, helpful remarks, but adding a bunch of links that don’t have anything to do with the issue is spam.[59, 70, 90, 92, 93] A lot of sites now set this to nofollow or ugc by default.
• If the anchor text is likewise suspect, links from sites in languages or countries that aren’t relevant to your target audience could be spam, especially if the anchor text is also suspicious.[12, 92]
• Over-Optimized or Unnatural Anchor Text Profile: As we talked about before, a very high number of exact-match keyword anchors or anchors with spammy terms (such as “casino,” “payday loans,” or “adult content” if they don’t apply) is strong evidence of manipulation.[10, 12, 13, 21, 70, 78, 80, 81, 93, 98]
• Links from Sites with Little or No Content or Poor-Quality Content: Toxic links sometimes come from sites that don’t have much or any content that is valuable to users.[10, 95]
• Sitewide Links (Footer/Sidebar): Too many sitewide links, especially if they look false or paid for, can be negative.[10, 59, 70, 94]
• Sudden Spikes in Backlinks: If you suddenly get a lot of backlinks from low-quality domains, it could signify a negative SEO attack or the results of a spammy link-building campaign.[9, 10, 12, 14, 70, 78, 92]
• Links from hacked sites: Links from a site that has been hacked and is putting out malware or spam are harmful.[81, 94, 99]
• Links from Domains with the Same IP Address (C-Class Blocks): If a lot of links come from different domains that are on the same C-class IP block, it could mean that there is a PBN or link network.[10, 84] You can use tools to assist you in finding these patterns.

When you undertake backlink research, you can use SEO tools with toxicity scores (like Semrush’s Toxicity Score [41, 42] or Moz’s Spam Score [48, 49]) to uncover links that can be bad for your site. However, manual checking is very necessary because these scores are based on algorithms and don’t prove toxicity for sure.[10, 49] The method of how to check backlinks for toxicity comprises both tool-assisted flagging and human assessment.

Step 5: Group your backlinks into three groups: Keep, Review, and Remove/Disavow.

You need to group all the links on your master list after you’ve looked at them all. This classification will help you figure out what to do next. A typical technique to group links is to put them into three primary groupings [10]:

1. Important Links to Keep:

   • These are good links from reliable domains that will boost your SEO.
   • They usually have natural anchor text, are put there by an editor, and come from sites that are in your specialty and target demographic.
   • You should keep these links and maybe even take care of them.

2. Check (Links That Look Fishy):

   • These connections don’t look bad at first, but they do make me worried. The links could be from sites that have some authority but aren’t really relevant, or the anchor text could be a little weird, or the linking page might not be very excellent.
   • You need to look at these links again. If a link brings in relevant referral traffic or if the site that connects to it is becoming an authority in a niche, it can be appropriate even if it doesn’t seem like it would be good enough.
   • As part of the next steps in the study, you might want to look into the linking site’s traffic, engagement, and overall content strategy.[77]

3. Remove or Disavow (Toxic Links):

   • These links are clearly bad, low-quality, or manipulative, and they go against the regulations for search engines. They might lower your site’s ranks.[10, 77, 81]
   • Links from PBNs, link farms, sites that have been penalized, spammy directories that aren’t relevant, links with blatantly spammy anchor text, or links that were acquired through clear paid schemes and aren’t properly attributed all fall into this category.
   • You can either try to remove the item by hand or go directly to disavowing it.

This classification is a key aspect of your backlink profile audit and will help you clean up later. It makes sure that you don’t affect your SEO by getting rid of links that are beneficial and threats at the same time.

Step 6: Taking Action—Deleting links and writing a file to say you don’t want them

After you have sorted your backlinks, the next stage in your backlink audit is to act on the links that you have marked as “Remove/Disavow.” Google suggests that the easiest approach to get rid of problematic links is to try to do it manually first and then utilize the Disavow Tool.[59, 62, 63, 93, 100, 101]

• Getting in touch for manual link removal:

  • Identify Contact Information: For each domain that has a link you want to remove, try to identify the webmaster’s or site owner’s phone number or email address. You may normally discover this on a “Contact Us” page, at the bottom of the site, or by using WHOIS lookup services. You can also use Hunter.io and other tools.[10, 59, 100, 102]

  • Please send a short, courteous email to the site owner asking them to take down the content. Clearly say:

    • Your site.
    • The exact address of the page on their site that has the link to your site.
    • The exact URL (or anchor text) that you want.
    • A short, courteous justification for the request, like “We want this link removed because it may not follow search engine rules,” or “We want this link removed because it may not follow search engine rules.”[59, 100, 102, 103]
    • Sending the request from an email address that is related to your website will make it more believable.[59]
  • Keep track of your outreach by writing down who you talked to, when you talked to them, and what they said. Tools like BuzzStream or general outreach platforms can aid you with this.[104, 105, 106]
  • Be Prepared for Different Outcomes: Some webmasters will agree, some won’t answer, and some might even ask for money to take down the links.[59, 94, 100] John Mueller from Google has declared that it’s allowed to disavow links if it costs money to remove them.[59]
  • Some SEOs believe that trying to remove something by hand doesn’t work very effectively and takes a long time [94, 107], but it’s still a decent beginning step, especially if you got a manual action penalty.[59, 107]

• How to utilize the Google Disavow Tool:

  • When to Use the Disavow Tool: You should only use the Disavow Tool with a lot of care, and it’s usually only recommended in particular scenarios [22, 59, 96, 97, 98, 107, 108, 109, 110]:

    • There are a lot of links that are spammy, fraudulent, or of poor quality that point to your site.
    • You fear these links will trigger a manual action for unnatural links, or they already have (for example, because of past bought link schemes or known negative SEO campaigns).[21, 22, 59, 92, 93, 97, 98, 108, 109, 110]
    • You really attempted to get rid of the links by hand, but it didn’t work.[59, 93]
    • John Mueller from Google has remarked several times that most sites don’t need to utilize the disavow tool because Google’s algorithms are good at disregarding connections that seem like spam.[97, 102, 108, 110, 111] He suggests to only use it after you’ve bought links and acquired a manual action.[97, 109]
    • “You should only disavow backlinks if: 1. You have a lot of spammy, fake, or low-quality links pointing to your site, and 2. The links have caused a manual action on your site, or they probably will.” – Google Search Console Help [59, 98]

  • What Links You Should NOT Disavow (In General):

    • Links merely because they don’t follow.[94]
    • As long as they are natural and relevant, links from sites with low DA/DR are good (Google normally ignores these anyhow).[61, 101]
    • If there is no manual action and no obvious evidence of harm, every single “spammy-looking” link. If you over-disavow, you could impact your rankings by taking away links that Google might still regard as having some (even if modest) positive or neutral value or links that it was already ignoring.[9, 21, 22, 59, 96, 98, 108, 110]
    • “You don’t have to use the disavow tool all the time. It’s not something that needs to be done on a daily basis to keep the site going. John Mueller from Google said, ‘I would only use that if you have a manual spam action.'”.[97]

  • How to Create the Disavow File (.txt):

    • It is vital that the disavow file is a plain text file (.txt) that uses UTF-8 or 7-bit ASCII.[21, 57, 59, 61, 62, 63, 93, 98, 99, 101, 112]
    • On each line, write down one URL or domain.[21, 57, 62, 63, 93, 98, 101, 112]
    • To disavow an entire domain (this is best for sites that are all spammy or PBNs), use the format: domain:example.com (don’t include http://, https://, or www.).[21, 57, 61, 62, 63, 93, 98, 99, 101, 112]
    • To express you don’t want a certain page URL: http://spam.example.com/spammy-page.html.[21, 57, 63, 99, 112]
    • To add comments, start a line with a # symbol. Google won’t see these lines, but they can help you keep track of things (for example, # Negative SEO assault links from Oct 2024).[21, 57, 63, 94, 98, 99, 101, 113]
    • The maximum file size is 2MB, and it can include up to 100,000 lines, including comments and blank lines.[98] The maximum URL length is 2,048 characters.[98]
    • You can use Semrush’s Backlink Audit tool [60, 61], Ahrefs [58, 59], and Moz [62, 63] to export lists of links in the correct format or deal with the disavow process. There are other distinct programs that can make disavow files.[56]
    
    

    Example of a disavow file:

    # Links from known PBN
    domain:example-pbn-site1.com
    domain:another-spamdomain.net
    # Single spammy page from an otherwise okay-ish site
    http://okayishsite.com/really-bad-page.html
    # Negative SEO links identified on 2024-10-15
    domain:negativeseoattacker.com
    

  • How to Send Your Disavow File to Google Search Console:

    1. Visit the Google Disavow Links tool page at: https://search.google.com/search-console/disavow-links.[56, 57, 60, 61, 62, 63, 112, 113]
    2. From the drop-down list, choose the relevant website property. Make sure you choose the right version (http/https, www/non-www) or domain property that the links lead to. If you have different ones for HTTP and HTTPS, you might have to send the file for each one.[57, 62, 63, 112, 113]
    3. Click the button that says “Upload disavow list” or something like that.
    4. Choose your .txt disavow file and email it in.[56, 57, 62, 63, 112, 113]
    5. Google will review the file, but this doesn’t mean that the links will be disregarded right away. It can take Google several weeks or even months to recrawl the web and properly apply the disavow instructions to their indexing and ranking procedures.[21, 57, 98, 101]
    6. If you need to update the list, you can upload a new file that will replace the old one for that property.[63] You can also take back disavowals if you think you made a mistake.[63, 98]

When you remove or disavow links as part of your backlink audit strategy, you need to be very careful. This is important for lowering risks. If you use the disavow tool to get rid of links that aren’t actually harmful or that Google is already ignoring, it could hurt your site’s SEO.[22, 59, 96, 98, 108] This step in how to do website backlink analysis requires careful judgment.

Using Your Audit to Grow: How to Find Opportunities Through Backlinks Analysis

A full backlink audit isn’t just a way to get rid of bad links; it’s also a way to protect yourself. It’s also a proactive way to find valuable chances to improve your SEO performance and strengthen your backlink profile. You can turn audit data into useful link-building intelligence by learning how to do backlink analysis with a growth mindset.

Checking at your competitors’ backlinks to see what they’re up to

One of the best things about completing a backlink profile study is that you can learn a lot by looking at your competition. You can learn how to do the same things they do to be successful.

• Find out who your real SEO competitors are. Look at other businesses that are also competing with you, not just those that are directly competing with you. The websites that consistently rank for your most important target keywords are your real SEO competitors.[55, 114, 115, 116] You can use SEO tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, or Moz to find these websites by entering primary keywords and generating lists of top-ranking domains.[114, 115] You can also do Google searches for these keywords and write down the top 10 domains to find these key players.[114] Aim to find 3-5 top competitors for a focused analysis.[55]

• Look at the Backlink Profiles of Your Competitors: After you discover them, utilize your SEO tools to look at their backlink profiles.[4, 7, 8, 13, 14, 30, 55, 70, 78, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118] Pay particular attention to:

  • How to Find Good Links: What high DR/DA domains are linking to them?.[55, 115, 117]
  • Content That Is Worth Linking To: What types of content on their sites generate the most valuable links? Are there in-depth guides, original research, case studies, tools, or infographics?.[7, 14, 55, 70, 117]
  • Anchor Text Patterns: What kind of anchor text do their greatest links use? Is it branded, packed with keywords, or something else?.[55, 115]
  • Common Link-Creating Tactics: Can you tell how they get links? Do they do a lot of guest blogging, digital PR, creating links on resource pages, or HARO (Help a Reporter Out)?.[14, 55, 70, 117]
• Check the quality of links: To check the quality of competitor backlinks, use metrics like referring site authority (DR/DA), how relevant the link is to your niche, and how natural the anchor text is.[55] Your top priority should be organic links from reputable, trusted websites that are directly related to your niche.[55]

This competitive information, which is a key aspect of how to look at backlinks, gives you a standard and a plan for your own link-building work.

How to Get Ahead: Do a Link Gap Analysis

A link gap study looks for websites that connect to your competitors but not to yours. These are “low-hanging fruit”—warm leads that are already interested in your field.[11, 14, 33, 55, 70, 114, 119, 120, 121]

• You can uncover these gap chances with SEO tools like Ahrefs’ Link Intersect (or its Competitive Analysis tool set to “referring domains” mode), Semrush’s Backlink Gap tool, and Moz’s Link Intersect. Just type in your domain and the domains of your competitors.[11, 14, 33, 119, 120, 121, 122]
• Put Opportunities First: Sort the list of sites by authority (DR/DA), relevance, and the number of competitors they link to.[119, 120, 121] A site that connects to all or most of your competitors is a high-priority target.[121]
• Qualify and Segment: Sort these prospects even more by category, such as resource websites, sites that welcome guest articles, or sites that have mentioned competitors without linking (which could lead to unlinked mention reclamation).[120]
• Make a plan for how to reach out to your most key contacts. This could entail presenting your superior material, asking to be added to resource lists, or offering to write guest pieces.[119, 120]

Ahrefs has a “Link Gap Analysis Template” (Google Sheets/Excel) and a standard operating procedure (SOP) to help you with this. They suggest that you look at domains that link to more than one competitor and then narrow the list down by DR or domain traffic to make it more useful.[121] This strategic way of doing backlink analysis can greatly improve your link acquisition efficiency.

Discovering New Link-Building Opportunities in Your Own Audit

You can also use the audit data for your own site to uncover link-building opportunities:

• Find out which of your pages get the most backlinks by looking at which ones have naturally gotten the most.[6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 70, 78, 118, 123] What topics do they cover? What kind of things are they (like full guides, original research, tools, or listicles)? Shopify says, “As a marketer, getting quality organic backlinks pointing to your site is a great chance to double down on a successful content type.”.[6] Use these tips to make more content that acts as a “link magnet”.[2, 7]
• Link Reclamation (Lost Links): Backlinks can be lost for many reasons, such as when the linking page is deleted, the site is updated, or the URL of your page changes (which can lead to a 404 error if not redirected).[6] SEO tools can show you “lost links”.[11, 13, 14] Find valuable lost links and contact the webmaster to ask for their reinstatement or to give them an updated URL. This is one of the easiest ways to get backlink equity.[6, 11]
• Unlinked Brand Mentions: People might talk about your brand, company, or products online without linking to your website. You can find these mentions using BuzzSumo, Google Alerts, or features in SEO platforms.[2, 14, 120, 124, 125] A polite request for a link can often turn these mentions into useful backlinks.

When you do a backlink analysis to find ways to grow, you often find that you already have the best link-building tools at your disposal. You can either copy what worked in the past or get back what you lost. This strategic change, based on a thorough backlink audit, can lead to more long-term and effective link building than just relying on cold outreach.

Stay Alert: Watch Your Backlink Profile

Finishing a full how-to-do-backlink audit is a big deal, but you can’t just do it once and forget about it. Your backlink profile changes all the time, just like the digital world. So, it’s important to make a plan for ongoing monitoring to keep your SEO healthy over the long term and take advantage of new developments. This constant watchfulness makes sure that the benefits you got from your first how-to backlink profile audit stay and grow.

Why you should keep an eye on things following an audit

After a big audit and cleanup, there are a lot of reasons why you should check your backlink profile often:

• Finding New Toxic Links: Bad backlinks can show up at any time. This could be because competitors are using negative SEO to build spammy links to your site on purpose, or it could just be web scrapers and spam bots automatically linking to content.[9, 10, 14, 42, 95, 100, 125, 126] Monitoring lets you find them early and take quick action, like disavowing the links, before they can do a lot of damage.[125]
• Finding Lost Valuable Links: You can lose high-quality backlinks that you gained if the page that links to you is deleted, the website is rebuilt, or the link is unintentionally erased.[6, 11, 13, 14, 118, 125] Monitoring helps you find these losses immediately so you can ask for link reclamation.
• Keeping an eye on what your competitors are doing: They are continually working on their SEO and link building. By looking at their backlink profiles, you may learn about their techniques and identify fresh link opportunities they are exploiting.[7, 125]
• How to Tell if Your Link Building is Working: If you’re actively working on link-building campaigns, keeping an eye on new backlinks gives you direct feedback on how well your strategies are working and how good the links you’re getting are.[14, 30, 125, 127] This lets you make quick changes if your current methods aren’t getting the results you want.
• Keeping a Healthy Link Velocity: Search engines may interpret a sudden, unnatural surge or decline in the number of backlinks as an indication of concern. Regular monitoring helps keep the natural link acquisition rate steady.[14]

This shift from a one-time, reactive cleanup to a proactive, ongoing process of quality control and opportunity spotting shows that SEO management has grown up. For example, getting alerts for new or lost links means that problems can be fixed as they happen, which reduces the damage and makes it more likely that what was lost will be found quickly.

Ways to keep track of things and get alerts

There are many SEO tools and ways that make it easier to keep track of backlinks over time:

• Automated SEO Platforms: Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz Pro, SE Ranking, Linkody, and Backlink Monitor are just a handful of the best automated SEO platforms that enable you to track backlinks and set up alerts.[14, 18, 30, 125, 128, 129, 130, 131] These tools can:

  • Let you know when you get new backlinks so you can check their quality right away.[10, 14, 125, 128, 129]
  • Let you know when you lose backlinks so you may check into it and try to get them back.[14, 18, 125, 128, 129]
  • Pay attention to link status changes, such as when a dofollow link turns into a nofollow link.[129, 130]
  • Watch how the anchor text changes over time.[125]
  • Watch the authority metrics and referring domains.[125]
  • Some programs, like Semrush’s Backlink Audit, can let you know how your Toxicity Score is doing on a regular basis.[129]
  • For example, SEOptimer’s Backlink Monitoring allows customers to observe new and lost connections every day and get email alerts on changes every week or month.[128]
• Google Search Console (GSC): Check the “Links” report in GSC often. Alerts aren’t as real-time or full of features as commercial tools, but they do provide you Google’s direct perspective of your links.[125]
• Set up Google Alerts for your brand name and the names of your most essential products and services. This will help you uncover mentions of your brand that aren’t linked to your site but might be turned into links.[10, 125]
• Scheduled Mini-Audits: In addition to getting automatic notifications, you should also look over new links or certain aspects of your backlink profile on a regular basis, like once a month or once every three months.[18, 20] This will give you a better idea of how well your links are doing than just the scores.
• Documentation and Reporting: Keep a record of changes to your backlink profile, outreach attempts, and revisions to your disavow file. This historical data is highly valuable for keeping track of your progress and proving how your SEO efforts have worked.[125]

A good monitoring plan will help you keep your backlink profile an advantage instead of a liability. This will aid your website’s SEO success long after the first how-to-conduct-backlink audit is done.

A Word of Caution About the DIY Backlink Audit

A full backlink audit is a difficult and time-consuming task.[7, 100] This guide is meant to be a complete guide to understanding how to do website backlink analysis, but it’s important to remember that link evaluation, interpreting data from different SEO tools, and making strategic decisions all require a lot of skill and experience.[1, 7, 100, 107]

Not knowing how to do a backlink profile audit can lead to a lot of problems. Incorrect assessments can happen when people misinterpret data, like when they rely too much on automated toxicity scores without checking them by hand. One of the biggest risks is incorrectly saying that valuable links don’t exist. Many experts and even Google employees have warned that using the disavow tool wrong can hurt your website’s SEO performance. For example, removing links that are actually helpful or that Google was already ignoring can hurt your website’s SEO performance.[22, 59, 96, 98, 108, 110] Gary Illyes from Google said, “There’s a risk with a disavow that you can tank your site’s rankings by disavowing the wrong links. It’s important to make sure that the links you’re adding to the disavow file are really bad for your site.” (via Ahrefs Blog [59]). On the other hand, not finding and fixing really important problems, like a complex negative SEO attack or a lot of links that are really manipulative and could lead to a manual penalty, can also have serious effects.

If you do a bad job on your own audit, you could lose rankings, traffic, and money, which would be a lot more than the cost of hiring a professional. If you’re not sure about any of the steps in this guide, feel like the data is too complicated, or don’t trust your ability to make important decisions, getting professional help with your backlink audit can be a smart way to protect and improve your online presence. If you need help from an expert, I can help you with this issue.

How to Make a Strong and Healthy Backlink Profile

To improve and keep your SEO performance, you need to know how to do a backlink audit. This complete guide has gone over the systematic process that needs to be followed, from learning the basics of what a backlink audit and backlink analysis are to the careful steps of collecting, evaluating, and cleaning up data, to using the audit to grow and setting up ongoing monitoring.

You can’t just do a healthy and strong backlink profile once and be done with it; it’s an ongoing process that is important for long-term SEO health and success.[9, 10, 14, 18, 19, 20, 42, 100, 125] The value of a how-to-do-SEO-backlink audit changes as a website gets older. If your site is new or has been penalized, you might want to focus on cleaning up the most important things and starting over. For sites that are already well-known and have good profiles, the focus shifts to more detailed competitive analysis, finding small link-building opportunities, and staying ahead of the game.

Having a clean, high-quality backlink profile based on relevance and authority is a big advantage over your competitors in the crowded digital world.[1, 2, 7, 11, 15, 16, 30, 75, 77, 84, 85, 86, 88, 132] This kind of profile often shows that you have good SEO practices, a well-known brand, interesting content, and good public relations, which means that the backlink audit is an indirect way to measure how well your marketing is working. The key to getting long-term search engine visibility and authority is to manage your backlinks in a proactive and strategic way, based on regular and thorough how-to-do backlink profile analysis.

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Krzysztof Furtak
As an SEO specialist, I’ve spent over 15 years helping businesses recover and dominate search rankings. My dedication and effectiveness are reflected in over 999 completed projects and more than 4700 hours of work as a Top 1% freelancer on Upwork, where I also hold Expert-Vetted status. I believe in delivering concrete, measurable results, providing comprehensive services like SEO audits, technical SEO audits, and strategic link building. I help clients not only navigate tricky Google algorithms but also build a lasting competitive advantage.