A robust link profile is a cornerstone of SEO success. Not only does it signal trust and authority to Google, but it also drives referral traffic from other reputable websites. However, just as beneficial links can boost your website’s visibility, harmful links can have the opposite effect. Moreover, acquiring high-quality backlinks is no easy feat.

This is where a backlink audit proves invaluable. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll delve into the intricacies of conducting a backlink audit, empowering you to:

• Safeguard your online reputation
• Enhance your Google rankings
• Maintain optimal website health

Let’s embark on this journey!

Table of contents

• What is a backlink audit?
• Why backlink audits are important
• How to do a backlink audit
• How to do a backlink audit for free with Google Search Console
• How to do a backlink audit with an SEO tool

What is a backlink audit?

A backlink audit provides a comprehensive report and in-depth analysis of all the links pointing to your website from external sources. This encompasses the domains and specific pages linking to your site, the pages receiving these links, and crucial details like IP addresses, categories, anchor text, link types (follow vs. no-follow), and authority scores of these referring links to help you gauge their quality.

Most backlink audit tools offer these insights and provide actionable steps directly within the report, such as whitelisting or disavowing specific links.

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Why do a backlink audit?

Backlinks are a primary ranking factor for Google, so conducting a backlink audit is non-negotiable for anyone striving for optimal search engine rankings. But the advantages of this practice extend far beyond rankings:

• Uncover linking opportunities: Building high-quality links is as crucial as removing harmful ones. A backlink audit can help you pinpoint potential websites worth reaching out to for collaboration. You can even audit competitor backlink profiles to find broken or toxic links and offer your link as a replacement.
• Diagnose traffic fluctuations: Unforeseen increases or decreases in website traffic can stem from various factors, including backlinks. It’s surprising how a small group of backlinks—like those from a specific geographical region or website—can significantly influence traffic. Algorithmic updates, policy changes, and privacy updates can all impact these backlink sources, leading to noticeable shifts in website traffic.
• Evade Google penalties: Google has sophisticated mechanisms for detecting unnatural backlinks acquired through unethical SEO tactics. Even if you’re not intentionally engaging in such practices, website and comment spam can occur. Regular backlink audits act as a safeguard, ensuring your website steers clear of Google penalties.
• Capitalize on missed traffic opportunities: Backlink audits expose broken links pointing to your site, revealing potential traffic you’re missing out on.
• Eradicate detrimental links: When a website links to yours, Google establishes an association between the two. A backlink audit sheds light on all toxic backlinks—those originating from spammy, suspicious, or low-credibility sites—that require removal or disavowal to protect your website’s reputation.

How to do a backlink audit in 5 steps

Follow this straightforward five-step process to evaluate your website’s backlink profile:

1. Select your tool

Two primary methods exist for conducting a backlink audit: using Google Search Console or dedicated SEO tools.

Google Search Console offers a free but basic overview, lacking granular details. It’s best suited for smaller sites or specific tasks. On the other hand, paid SEO tools like Ahrefs or Semrush provide comprehensive insights crucial for resolving issues, leveraging opportunities, investigating anomalies, and achieving desired outcomes. We’ll explore both methods later in this post. Speaking of SEO tools, have you explored our Free Keyword Tool?

2. Familiarize yourself with key metrics

Navigating even a rudimentary backlink audit report necessitates a firm grasp of backlink terminology. Here are some essential data points to focus on:

• Number of backlinks: While quality trumps quantity, it’s helpful to understand your backlink count relative to your competitors.
• Number of referring domains: This metric will always be lower than the number of backlinks because a single domain can link to your site multiple times.
• Authority Score: Also referred to as Domain Authority, this metric quantifies a website’s credibility based on various factors, including backlinks. You can assess both the Authority Score of sites linking to yours and your own website’s Authority Score.

• Top linked pages: These are the pages on your website attracting the most backlinks.
• Top linking domains: This list identifies the websites linking to yours most frequently.
• Link velocity: This metric indicates how many new backlinks your website gains weekly.
• Link toxicity: This measures the proportion of harmful links pointing to your site, typically originating from low-authority, suspicious, or spammy websites.

3. Analyze and Evaluate

A healthy backlink profile exhibits diversity in anchor text (including branded, non-branded, keyword-based, and non-keyword-based anchors) and Authority Scores of referring domains. This diversity signifies organically and ethically earned links over time. However, given the unpredictable nature of the internet, manually assessing link quality is essential to ensure they reflect your website’s credibility and efforts.

4. Implement Actionable Steps

Your backlink assessment may lead to various action items. Here are some common examples:

• Whitelist high-quality backlinks: Mark these links as trustworthy, safe, or originating from websites worth exploring for further opportunities.
• Remove harmful backlinks: When feasible, reach out to website owners to request the removal of harmful backlinks.
• Disavow harmful backlinks: For a high volume of harmful backlinks or situations where removal isn’t possible, submit a disavow list to Google Search Console. Disavowing a link essentially requests Google to disregard it and its association with your website. Refer to Google’s help page on disavowing links for more details on this process.
• Repair broken backlinks: If you discover broken backlinks, contact the referring domain to rectify the link or implement redirects.

• Identify your best and worst-performing pages: Analyzing your top-linked pages can inform your internal linking strategy and highlight successful approaches to replicate on other pages. Conversely, identify pages that need more backlinks to improve their performance.

5. Monitor and Maintain

After addressing your action items, rerun your audit tool to observe any score changes. Schedule regular backlink crawls and set up alerts for new, broken, or lost backlinks to stay ahead. Eager for more insights and tips? Download our guide with over 130 actionable ideas! Get the guide » 130+ of the Best Online Marketing Tips for Generating More Traffic, Leads, & Sales

How to do a backlink audit with Google Search Console

To perform a backlink audit using Google Search Console, follow these steps:

1. Access Search Console (search.google.com/search-console)
2. Select “Links” from the left-hand panel
3. You’ll find four distinct lists:
   • Top linked pages (external)
   • Top linked pages (internal)
   • Top linked text (external)
   • Top linking sites (external)
4. Click your desired list (see below for more details on each).
5. Click “Export” (optional, but recommended for spreadsheet viewing and adding columns for statuses and action items).

Let’s examine each of these lists in more detail:

Top linked pages (external)

This list presents your website pages ranked by their backlink count (incoming links) and the number of referring websites. These figures differ because a single site can link to a page multiple times.

In the example below, the Hatch homepage receives the most backlinks (17,040) from a total of 328 referring domains.

Clicking a specific page reveals the websites linking to it. Understanding your top referrers is beneficial for several reasons:

• It enables you to reach out to them with more targeted requests.
• It helps identify similar websites that could potentially benefit you by linking to your site.
• It allows you to identify and investigate spam bots or low-quality sites in case of a sudden traffic surge.

Top linking sites (external)

While the “Top Linked Pages” list ranks pages by backlink count, this list highlights the websites linking to yours most frequently. In this analysis, the top three sites are Woodfordbros.com, Pellabranch.com, and sunshinecontractingcorp.com. Depending on your familiarity with these websites and your relationships with these businesses, you may want to investigate what they’re linking to and from where.

Top linking text (external)

This list displays the anchor text used to link to your website, ranked in order of frequency. The top three linked texts include “powered by Hatch” (which is expected as Hatch provides a chat widget for customer websites), “Hatch,” and “www.usehatchapp.com.”

Top linked pages (internal)

This list ranks your web pages by the number of internal links they receive from other pages on your site. Internal linking is crucial for both SEO and user experience.

Similar to the external link analysis, you can click a target link to view the pages linking to it.

How to do a backlink audit with an SEO tool

As mentioned earlier, using dedicated SEO tools is another effective way to conduct a backlink audit. While Ahrefs, originating as a backlink tool, is renowned for its robust backlink analysis capabilities, other tools are equally adept at handling standard backlink analysis. We’ll use Semrush for this example.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to performing a backlink audit with Semrush (find more comprehensive instructions on Semrush’s page):

1. Input your domain name.
2. Customize your settings, including:
   • Campaign scope: Specify whether to analyze the entire root domain, the “www” version, the non-“www” version, or a subdomain.
   • Brand settings: Define terms that constitute your brand name (e.g., “Hatch,” “useHatchApp,” “the Hatch App”).
   • Domain categories: Selecting relevant categories helps assess the relevance of linking websites to your industry or niche.
   • Target countries: This filter identifies links originating from countries relevant (or irrelevant) to your target audience.
3. Follow the prompts to connect Semrush to your Google Search Console account.
4. Analyze the generated report. You’ll see an overview page with key insights and top metrics (discussed earlier), along with tabs for deeper exploration. Filter and export data as needed, and refer to Semrush’s report interpretation guidelines (available on Semrush’s backlink audit overview).

Make Backlink Audits a Regular Practice

Backlinks are integral to Google’s ranking algorithm. However, simply creating content deserving of backlinks is insufficient. A proactive and well-informed strategy prioritizing quality is crucial, and regular backlink audits are indispensable for achieving this.

Utilize the steps, suggestions, and tools outlined in this guide to maintain your website’s health, reputation, and search engine rankings.

To recap, here’s a five-step framework for conducting a backlink audit:

1. Choose your preferred tool.
2. Familiarize yourself with essential backlink metrics.
3. Analyze your backlink profile thoroughly.
4. Take necessary actions based on your findings.
5. Regularly monitor and maintain your backlink profile.