A Backlink audit is one of the most essential metrics for your SEO strategy, so you must know what a backlink audit is and how to conduct it. With the help of our guide, you can conduct a website backlink audit, which can significantly impact your SEO and allow you to beat and outrank your competition in the SERP. So, let us get going as we help you master how to conduct a backlink audit.
Table of Contents
What Is A Backlink Audit?
Backlinks are links to your website on other sites, often called domains, which point other users to your website. A Backlink audit is the process of analyzing the quality of the links that are directed to your site. So, in an audit, your SEO strategy will include checking the following:
- The relevance of the link
- Identify bad and spammy backlinks
- Build a strategy to minimize the spammy links on other websites
- Check the types of links
- Watch out for competition and tweak your SEO strategy
- Find opportunities for link-building with credible sites and sources
Why Is Backlink Audit Crucial?
Maintaining a healthy backlink profile is essential, as spammy backlinks can destroy your site’s credibility and authority. So, focusing on the health of backlinks will improve rankings and visibility on SERPs.
This means that off-page SEO efforts must be monitored and tracked to preserve the time and effort invested. When you’re behind the curve and inadvertently miss a poor backlink, it may ruin your SEO and even put your on-page SEO at risk.
What Are the Steps To Conduct A Website Backlink Audit?
This guide is beginner-friendly, so novice SEO professionals and link builders will be able to follow through.
Select A Backlink Audit Tool
Starting with a backlink audit tool checker is necessary if you want to become an expert at auditing website backlinks; it will streamline the process and make combining data a breeze. You may find an array of time- and effort-saving choices online. However, you must choose an audit tool that will give you valuable insights with minimal effort. Pick a tool that can provide a comprehensive overview and reports, such as AhRefs or Moz SEO.
Assess Your Link Profile Against Your Rivals
Once you choose an online audit tool, the next step is to perform a competitor analysis of your website’s backlinks compared to the competitors. In this case, you must check for the following: firstly, the authority score, referring domains, backlink profile toxicity score, ratio and rate of backlinks by type(image, text), follow-to-no-follow ratio, etc.
All these features and metrics will be provided in an easy-to-understand report and analysis. This data will be helpful to assess further and build a link campaign for your website.
Study The Data And Identify Negative SEO Attacks
Now, it is time to study each backlink to identify its quality. Look at each website’s URLs to check the site’s legitimacy. Another thing to study here is the anchor text. The anchor text of high-quality backlinks is usually related to the linked page’s content. In contrast, the anchor text of low-quality backlinks is often spammy or otherwise artificial.
At this point, it is crucial to analyze the toxic and quality backlinks as this will help you gauge the authority score of your backlinks, which will, in turn, affect your link domain and impact your search rankings.
Remove Or Disavow Bad Links
Once you have identified the spammy links, it is time to remove them permanently. It is essential because a low-quality number of backlinks and authority score can lead to Google penalizing your website. If Google finds that the content on your website is deceptive, spammy, or otherwise unsuitable, they have the right to penalize you. It could take a long time and a lot of damage to your website to recover from a Google penalty.
To avoid getting a Google penalty, either manual or Algorithmic, it is better to disavow them in the following ways: You can request the owner to delete and take down the link or report the link to the Google Disavow tool. Here, sending the link to Google is better so that it does not penalize you.
Enhance Your Profile & Build Valuable Links
It is crucial to optimize the SEO strategy and find new opportunities to build valuable and high-quality links. Generate content your customers and viewers love, study your competitor’s backlink-building strategies, and monitor the backlink profile regularly. To remain competitive in the market, it is essential to have high-quality links, which should be a priority for SEO professionals.
Conclusion
We hope you have understood how to conduct a backlink audit analysis for your website. It is an ongoing process for SEO professionals as it is important to maintain a healthy backlink position for an authoritative website and improve search visibility, credibility, and SEO ranking.
