Perform a Backlink Audit in 10 Steps: How-To Guide & Top Tools

Every successful SEO strategy includes a solid backlink profile. Backlinks are votes of confidence from other websites that help Google understand your site's authority. However, keeping those backlinks working for you—and not against you—can be challenging.

A poorly constructed backlink profile can do more harm than good, so if it's been a while since you conducted a backlink audit, this post will help strengthen your efforts. It offers a comprehensive guide on how to perform a backlink audit and breaks down each step in simple terms to provide practical insights and make the process easy. 

It also discusses how, with the right link-building software, your backlink audit process can quickly become your secret tool for dominating search results. 

Main Takeaways From This Article:

• Understanding and conducting a backlink audit is essential for maintaining a healthy backlink profile.
• Benefits of a backlink audit include removing harmful links, improving search rankings and dofollow backlinks, enhancing your link-building strategy, and monitoring competitor strategies.
• Our 10-step guide helps you efficiently gather and evaluate backlink data, identify toxic and nofollow links, and sustain long-term SEO health.
• Tools such as LinkScout, Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Google Search Console provide crucial support in performing effective backlink audits.

What Is a Backlink Audit?

A backlink audit is the process of analyzing the quality, quantity, and relevance of external links used on your website. By evaluating these backlinks, you can identify any toxic or low-quality links that may harm your SEO profile and find opportunities to strengthen your link-building strategy, ultimately boosting your site's rankings.

Benefits of Conducting a Backlink Audit

Let's now explore how regularly conducting backlink audits can enhance your website's performance and optimize your every link-building campaign.

Identify and Remove Harmful Links

Harmful links often come from spammy or low-authority sites. These links pointing to your website can negatively impact your search engine rankings. Regularly conducting backlink audits helps ensure your backlink profile remains clean and effective, promoting a more robust SEO strategy.

Improve Search Engine Rankings

Conducting a backlink audit directly impacts your search engine rankings by ensuring the quality of your inbound links. By removing toxic links and strengthening high-quality links, you signal to search engines that your site is trustworthy and authoritative. This results in higher SERP positions, increasing your visibility. 

Enhance Link-Building Strategy

A well-executed backlink audit reveals opportunities to enhance your link-building strategy by identifying high-potential sites for acquiring valuable, relevant links. Using insights from the audit to refine your outreach efforts and focus on securing quality backlinks can elevate your site's authority.

Monitor Competitor Strategies

By understanding which sites are linking to competitors, you identify potential link-building opportunities and content gaps. This enables you to benchmark your own website’s performance and implement strategies to improve. Regularly monitoring competitors' links helps you stay ahead in your industry and equips you with the knowledge to counteract their moves effectively.

How to Conduct a Backlink Audit Step-by-Step

Let's discover how to effectively conduct a backlink audit! This concise guide will take you through the process one step at a time.

1. Collect Backlink Data

The first step involves collecting comprehensive data on all the backlinks pointing to your site. Here's how you can do this:

• Choose a Backlink Audit Tool: To gather backlink data, select a reliable tool like LinkScout, Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Google Search Console.
• Export Backlink Reports: Generate and download extensive reports on your backlinks. These reports will usually include details such as the referring domain, anchor text, and the backlink URL.
• Consolidate Data: Compile data from various sources to ensure no backlinks are overlooked. Different tools often provide slightly varied link profiles, so consolidating data paints a complete picture. Document how many backlinks are identified. This serves as a benchmark and helps in setting realistic goals for improvement.

2. Check for Toxic or Spammy Backlinks

Once you've gathered your backlink data, the next critical step is scrutinizing your links for any toxic or spammy links. Here's how to do this:

• Look for Unnatural Links: Identify links that seem unnatural, for instance, those acquired through link schemes or that appear irrelevant to your content.
• Examine Spam Score: Use tools to check the spam score of your backlinks. High spam scores often indicate low-quality or toxic links.
• Analyze Anchor Text and Review Link Source: Investigate the anchor text used in your backlinks. Over-optimized or irrelevant anchor texts can be a red flag. Evaluate the quality of websites linking to you. Low-authority or irrelevant sites often contribute to a toxic link profile.

3. Identify and Analyze Lost or Broken Links

Catching these problematic links embedded in your content is crucial for maintaining a robust backlink profile. Make sure to: 

• Identify 404 Errors: Look for links that lead to pages returning a 404 error. This is usually due to deletion or linking errors from referring domains. 
• Evaluate Link Impact and Contact Webmasters: Assess the importance and impact of the lost or broken links. Determine if these links contributed to your site's SEO performance and prioritize fixing them. Reach out to the webmasters of the referring domains to request corrections or updates. 
• Redirect When Necessary: Implement 301 redirects for pages that have been permanently moved or deleted. This ensures that link equity is preserved and search engines can correctly index them.

4. Evaluate Link Quality

High-quality links can boost your website's authority and rankings, while low-quality links can harm your SEO profile. Here are key factors to consider when evaluating link quality: 

• Authority Metrics: Use metrics like Domain Authority (DA), Page Authority (PA), Trust Flow, and Citation Flow to assess the strength and trustworthiness of the linking domain.
• Traffic: Check if the linking domain has good traffic. High-traffic sites typically indicate higher trust and engagement.
• Trust Ratio: Evaluate the ratio between Trust Flow and Citation Flow. A balanced ratio generally signals a quality link. Consider the linking site’s own backlink profile. Sites with a healthy mix of quality backlinks themselves are more trustworthy.

5. Review Referring Domains

This step ensures you attract high-value links and are not harmed by low-quality ones. Here are key aspects to consider when assessing your referring domains: 

• Backlink Diversity: Ensure that your backlinks come from a variety of sources. Too many links from a single domain can look suspicious to search engines.
• Organic Traffic: Look at the organic search traffic of referring domains. Links from sites with higher organic traffic are generally more valuable. 
• Domain Authority and Relevance: Evaluate each referring domain's authority and niche relevance. High-authority sites within your industry can positively impact your SEO.

6. Assess Anchor Text Distribution

This is a critical step in understanding how your website's backlinks contribute to your SEO performance. Here's how to analyze your anchor text distribution: 

• Analyze Most Used Anchor Texts: Review the most frequently used anchor texts to ensure they are relevant and not overly optimized.
• Compare Against Top Competitors: Benchmark your anchor text profile against top-ranking competitors to spot gaps and opportunities.
• Monitor for Variation: Incorporate a mix of brand names, keywords, and generic terms to ensure diversity in your anchor texts.

7. Investigate the Source Page's Relevance and Authority

This step ensures that the links to your site come from credible sources, enhancing your site's SEO efforts. Here are key factors to consider when evaluating the source page's relevance and authority: 

• Topical Relevance: Ensure the linking page is topically relevant to your content at the domain or page level. 
• Domain Authority: Check the authority of the linking website using domain authority metrics. High authority sites lend more credibility and value to the backlink.
• Recognizable Names: Look for recognizable names or brands as sources of backlinks. These are typically more trustworthy. 

8. Remove or Disavow Toxic Links

Toxic backlinks can negatively impact your search engine rankings and may even lead to penalties from Google. You can handle these harmful links effectively by taking a systematic approach: 

• Verify Toxicity: Double-check each identified link to ensure its toxicity and irrelevance. Sometimes, tools may flag a link incorrectly.
• Request Link Removal: Contact the webmasters of the sites hosting the harmful links. Politely request the removal of the links, explaining why they are detrimental to your site.
• Use the Google Disavow Tool: If link removal is impossible, compile a list of harmful links and submit them through Google's Disavow Tool. 

9. Document Findings

After you've meticulously gathered and analyzed your backlink data, it’s crucial to document your findings. Here's what your document should entail:

• Audit Date and Frequency: Note the audit date and plan regular future audits to maintain a robust backlink profile.
• A Summary of Issues: Provide a concise overview of major issues discovered, including toxic links, broken links, and links from low-authority domains.
• Actionable Insights: Summarize key takeaways and recommended actions to address identified issues, improve link quality, and optimize future link-building strategies.

10. Schedule Regular Audits

Finally, to maintain a healthy and effective SEO strategy, it’s essential to schedule regular audits. Here's how you can make consistent auditing a part of your ongoing SEO strategy: 

• Monitor Link Profile Changes: Frequent checks allow you to observe shifts in your backlink profile, ensuring timely responses to any irregularities.
• Stay Updated With Algorithm Changes: Regular audits ensure your backlink strategy adapts to changes, thus helping with dofollow links, which allows search engines to pass on SEO value to sites. 
• Benchmark Against Competitors: Regularly auditing backlinks helps you monitor your competitors' strategies and link profiles.

Top Backlink Audit Tools

Choosing the right tools can transform a challenging backlink audit into a streamlined process. Let’s discuss the top four tools to help you manage and optimize your backlink profile.

LinkScout

LinkScout is a user-friendly AI-powered linking tool designed to enhance SEO efforts with just one line of code. It automates internal linking, simplifying site navigation and boosting SEO performance. 

This industry-leading tool provides comprehensive reporting and uses AI-driven link management that can support your backlinking strategy. It can help you manage backlinks, identify harmful links, and improve search engine rankings. Its intuitive interface ensures ease of use for all experience levels.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a favored tool among SEO professionals for its thorough backlink analysis and user-friendly interface. It provides an in-depth view of your backlink profile, including domain and URL ratings, enabling you to determine backlink quality. 

With Ahrefs, you can identify toxic backlinks that may harm your SEO and gain competitor insights to improve your own link-building strategy. The tool also lets you assess referring domains' authority and analyze anchor text distribution.

SEMrush

Known for its extensive SEO features, SEMrush is specifically designed for backlink analysis. It offers a clear, easy-to-understand dashboard, making data presentation accessible to beginners and experts alike. 

With its Backlink Audit tool, SEMrush analyzes 30 toxic factors to help identify and eliminate harmful links. SEMrush features a comprehensive suite of link-building tools and allows you to monitor competitor backlinks and strategies. 

Google Search Console

Google Search Console (GSC) is a free tool from Google that monitors your site's presence in search results and provides essential backlink data. 

By navigating to the "Links" report, you can see sites linking to yours and analyze anchor texts used. Under "Security & Manual Actions," you can check for manual penalties affecting your site. GSC allows the submission of a disavow file to ignore spammy or irrelevant backlinks and sends alerts regarding issues like indexing problems or penalties. 

Maximize SEO With LinkScout's Backlink Audit Tool

Maintaining a healthy backlink profile is crucial for SEO success. We outlined the 10 essential steps to perform your own backlink audit, covering everything from collecting backlink data to scheduling regular reviews. While the manual approach can be time-consuming and error-prone, LinkScout offers a streamlined solution.

With LinkScout’s intuitive interface and CMS integration, you can quickly gather, analyze, and optimize your backlinks. One of the standout features is its ability to automatically suggest internal linking opportunities. By connecting your content strategically, you can improve user experience and boost your search rankings. 

Don't let subpar backlinks hold you back. Get started with a FREE trial of LinkScout today and see the difference it can make in your SEO efforts!