How to Conduct a Backlink Audit: Tips, Tools, & Examples

A backlink audit is crucial for evaluating your SEO performance and overall domain health.

It helps you track your link-building efforts and identify issues that could hurt your website.

A well-executed backlink audit also offers valuable data to shape your content strategy.

For instance, in a recent audit, Backlinko’s statistics roundup pages earned the second-highest number of backlinks from referring domains (RDs).

Based on this insight, we created 50+ new statistics pages to secure valuable links.

We also updated existing pages based on what’s working in high-performing pages.

The audit also highlighted that 17.4% of our backlinks include branded anchor texts like “Backlinko” and “Brian Dean.”

This helps build our brand authority and improves our SEO.

In this article, we’ll show you how to conduct a backlink audit with the right tools. We’ll also share best practices to optimize your backlink profile.

What Is a Backlink Audit?

A backlink audit is the process of analyzing all the links pointing to your website.

This audit analyzes your backlink profile—a collection of links and domains referring to your site.

The goal is to assess the quality, relevance, and impact of these links. It deep-dives into factors that negatively or positively influence your backlink profile.

A backlink audit can help you make data-driven decisions for your SEO strategy. And a lot more.

Why You Should Conduct Regular Backlink Audits

By regularly auditing your backlinks, you can:

• Identify authoritative and low-quality links
• Vary your sources to gain links from diverse domains
• Optimize anchor text distribution for different target keywords

Use these insights to strengthen your website’s credibility. You can also improve search rankings and gain targeted traffic.

Let’s understand this using the example of GoPure, a skincare company.

GoPure’s backlink analytics report highlights that almost 50% of its backlinks are image-based.

The brand should focus on diversifying its backlink sources. It can increase text-based links targeting relevant keywords.

Regular backlink audits also reveal issues that damage your search rankings.

You can detect unusual activity, like a sudden spike in low-quality links.

Then, take proactive action to avoid search engine penalties and negative consequences.

You can also identify and reclaim lost links.

Here’s how a backlink analytic tool tracks all the backlinks you gain and lose to signal potential issues:

A backlink audit is crucial during significant events like website migration.

For instance, SEO consultant Taylor Scher conducted a backlink audit after a client’s website migration project. The changed URL structure led to the loss of 50% of its backlinks overnight.

After the audit, Taylor set up redirects for all the 404 pages.

Lastly, a backlink audit helps you stay informed about your competitors.

It allows you to analyze and replicate competitors’ tactics to generate quality backlinks.

You can also find gaps in your strategy and discover high-quality link sources.

Evelina Milenova, SEO and Growth Manager at Opinion Stage, mentions how she keeps tabs on the competition with backlink audits. She uses them to understand:

• What type of links competitors are getting
• What pages they’re linking to
• What anchor texts they’re using
• How quickly they acquire links

She adds a pro tip for marketers:

Before Starting: Choose a Backlink Audit Tool

Manually auditing backlinks can be a chore.

So, let’s look at five backlink audit tools that make the process easier and more convenient.

Here’s how these tools compare against each other:

1. Semrush

Semrush’s Backlink Audit tool analyzes your backlink profile against 50+ parameters. Like authority and toxicity scores, link attributes, anchor text, referring domains, and more.

One of Semrush’s standout features is tracking real-time referral traffic.

Connect your Google Analytics (GA) account to Semrush to estimate the referral traffic coming from each domain.

Semrush will also give detailed insights based on GA data. Such as “67% of organic traffic has been lost over the last six months.”

You can also conduct email outreach within Semrush.

Send requests to reclaim backlinks and track responses in one place.

Or, build a list of backlinks to remove and send emails requesting removals.

2. Ahrefs

Ahrefs offers tools to audit different aspects of your backlink profile.

With the Backlink Checker, you’ll get a comprehensive list of backlinks with metrics like:

• Domain rating
• Domain traffic
• Page traffic
• Anchor text

The tool offers many filters, like backlink type, attribute, traffic, and more.

You can create specific rules for each filter.

For example, create a filter to find links with page titles containing the words “seo” or “link building.”

Competitive Analysis is another handy tool to compare competitors’ backlinks against your site.

This tool will list all the domains or ULRs linking to one or more competitors but not your domain.

3. Moz

Moz’s Backlink Checker provides an overview of your backlink profile and tracks its real-time progress.

Find newly acquired and lost backlinks for any week, month, or other duration.

Use the Link Intersect feature to discover new link-building opportunities.

This tool will analyze all the links referring to your site and your competitors to find key backlinks that you’re missing out on.

You can also benchmark your backlink profile against competitors.

It compares parameters like spam score, types of links, page authority, and more. You’ll find insights for improving link-building strategy.

4. Majestic

Majestic’s Backlink Checker provides two types of datasets to find and assess backlinks:

• Fresh index: All the links collected in the last four months
• Historical index: All the links collected in your domain’s lifetime

Trust Flow is a crucial metric for evaluating a referring domain’s trustworthiness based on its backlink profile.

Citation Flow tells you the number of links earned from a specific page or domain.

A higher citation flow vs. a low trust flow can indicate a link spam attack on your website.

The Topical Trust Flow metric analyzes a referring domain’s relevance to your site.

It analyzes the contextual relevance of each link to your site based on the topics covered.

5. SE Ranking

SE Ranking’s Backlink Checker calculates your domain and page trust rating.

It evaluates 15 parameters, such as anchor text, dofollow and nofollow links, and more.

The tool also shows a dynamic chart to help you see your link-building progress.

It highlights important factors like the number of backlinks, organic traffic, and domain trust.

You can also check real-time performance data to track new/lost domains and backlinks.

How to Perform a Backlink Audit

A backlink audit isn’t just about finding broken links. It’s about understanding your site’s health and identifying opportunities to boost your SEO.

Here’s how to do it step-by-step:

1. Analyze Your Backlink Profile

The best place to start a backlink audit is by evaluating your current profile.

You can assess your domain’s overall health by checking a few key metrics.

Let’s cover each one.

Website and Page Authority

Website and page authority scores indicate how well your site will rank in search engines.

Website authority reflects your overall site’s reputation. And page authority reveals the ranking potential of individual pages.

Higher authority means your website can rank well for relevant topics.

Every backlink audit tool provides a website and page authority score.

Track these metrics to:

• See how your link-building efforts are paying off
• Evaluate the quality and impact of backlinks gained/lost
• Internally link high-authority pages to pass more authority

Relevance of Referring Domains

Search engines value links from high-quality, authoritative sites. These links tell search engines that your content aligns with your audience’s interests.

Semrush’s Backlink Audit tool lists 100 referring domains with their relevant categories.

Use this report to find referring domains irrelevant to your brand.

Then, you can plan the necessary next steps to remove these domains.

Link Velocity

Determine your link-building progress by tracking link velocity.

Link velocity is the speed at which you’ve gained and lost backlinks.

A sudden surge in backlinks, especially from low-quality domains, can trigger Google penalties.

So, keep an eye on your link acquisition rate to find a potential spam attack early.

Here’s how Ahrefs tracks the movement of referring domains and pages over time:

Link Placement and Attributes

Did you know that links within the main content of a page carry more weight than those in sidebars or footers?

Chris Tzitzis, co-founder of SirLinksalot, emphasizes that a link’s placement determines its value.

By analyzing your backlink placement, you can optimize them for higher value.

You can also factor in link attributes to optimize your backlinks. Here are some examples and what they mean for your backlink profile:

• Dofollow: Tells search engines to crawl the linked page and passes link juice
• Nofollow: Cuts off link juice by telling search engines not to crawl the linked page
• UGC: Offers a vote of confidence to the linked page by tagging it as user-generated
• Sponsored: Indicates that the link is added as part of a paid collaboration

For example, Ahrefs’s Backlink Checker adds tags about link placement and attributes.

It specifies the content type (wiki, in-content, frame, etc.) to show the link’s placement.

2. Examine Each Link Individually

Not all backlinks are equal.

Links from authoritative domains carry a higher value and improve your website authority.

Low-quality links are spammy and can harm your SEO performance.

So, it’s important to assess the quality of every backlink you’ve acquired.

How do you perform a backlink quality check?

Start by analyzing anchor texts.

Anchor texts describe the content of the linked page and convey the intent of a backlink. They influence the link’s relevance to both the linked and unlinked pages.

Analyzing anchor texts explains how search engines perceive your linked pages.

For example, this article on the best CRM tools links to Salesforce. As a result, search engines will interpret the linked page as relevant to CRM tools.

A healthy backlink profile includes a mix of branded and keyword-rich anchor texts.

That said, avoid overusing exact-match keywords. Search engines can flag this as an over-optimization tactic and penalize your domain.

Besides analyzing anchor texts, monitor the toxicity scores for your backlinks.

Why?

Because harmful backlinks can drag down your site’s SEO performance. Link toxicity reveals bad backlinks that negatively impact your domain.

If you find toxic backlinks, request site owners to remove the links or disavow them (more on this later).

Semrush’s Backlink Audit Tool uses 45+ markers to determine whether a link is toxic.

You can use this tool to identify specific types of toxic links. Like links from spam forums or link network domains.

Another common issue to watch out for is broken links.

Dead or broken backlinks mean you lose valuable referral traffic and link equity.

Even worse, they create a poor reader experience when users land on a page showing a 404 error.

Tools like SE Ranking highlight these broken 404 backlinks. Here are the details you’ll find on SE Rankings to identify which links are broken and where they’re located:

To avoid losing link equity, you can either set up redirects for these broken links, or reclaim them.

3. Remove or Reclaim Backlinks

Losing some backlinks is inevitable. But high-value links from authoritative sites are worth recovering.

Here’s how to reclaim them:

Step 1: Identify the reason behind losing the link. Was it because of a content update, a website redesign, or something else?

Step 2: Draft a clear message requesting the site owner to add your links again.

In your message, remember to:

Share the page where your link was added and highlight where it was placed

Explain how your link provided value on the topic and establish its relevance

Suggest a new link placement opportunity if the original content was removed or replaced

Here’s a template:

But what if you discover toxic links that negatively impact your domain?

The first step is to create a list of low-quality, spammy links based on their toxicity score. Then, reach out to the site owners with a request to remove them.

Write a message with the exact URL of the page where your link(s) appears, and highlight its placement. Then, briefly explain why you’re requesting the removal of this link.

Remember to avoid accusatory language. Instead, request their cooperation and use logical reasons to make your case.

Here’s a template:

Be prepared to send multiple follow-ups to the website owner to get your links down.

If the website owners don’t respond to your messages after multiple attempts, you can consider using the Google Disavow Tool.

According to Google, you should use the Disavow Tool only in two specific scenarios:

Here are the steps to disavow spammy links with the Google Disavow Tool:

Step 1: Compile a list of links you want to remove based on toxicity analysis.

Step 2: Add specific domains that you want to remove from your backlink profile. Like link farms and sites flagged for malware or phishing.

Here’s how to mention pages and domain names in the disavow list:

http://okdork.com/2014/09/09/linkedin-publishing-success/ 
http://moz.com/blog/content-audit-tutorial 
http://tools.seobook.com/competitive-research-tools/ 
http://saijogeorge.com/best-marketing-tools/ 
http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-resources 
https://blog.bufferapp.com/content-audit 
domain:builtvisible.com 
domain:ipullrank.com 
domain:leapfroggr.com 
domain:searchenginejournal.com 
domain:rely.com 
domain:mattersolutions.com.au

Step 3: Export this list as a .txt file.

Step 4: Go to the Google Disavow Tool and select your Google Search Console property.

Step 5: Upload the file and confirm that you want to disavow these links.

Google may take a few weeks to remove all the links from your list. During this time, regularly monitor your domain health and site performance.

4. Conduct Competitor Benchmarking

Backlink audits help you figure out how you stack up against your competitors.

Competitor analysis provides:

• An industry benchmark to assess performance
• Insights into competitors’ link-building tactics
• Gaps in your backlink profile and strategy
• New backlink opportunities

Start by analyzing your competitors’ link velocity. Are they gaining backlinks faster than you?

You can track and compare competitors’ link acquisition rates with Semrush. Here’s an example:

This data will tell you which competitors have a good track record in building backlinks. You can zoom in on these high-performing competitors to find what’s working well for them.

How?

By analyzing competitor pages with the highest number of backlinks.

A closer look at these pages can reveal which formats and tactics secure more links and referral traffic.

Here’s what to look for when analyzing these pages:

• Content format: What content secures the highest number of organic links? Is it blog posts, case studies, original research, or something else?
• Type of websites: What types of websites are linking to top-performing competitor pages? Is it industry blogs, news sites, influencers, or niche directories?
• Outreach channels: Which outreach methods do competitors use to acquire backlinks? Is it guest posts, outreach campaigns, partnerships, or content collaborations?

Identify what worked well for your competitors. Then, strategize something similar for your brand.

5. Discover New Backlink Opportunities

At the final step of your backlink audit, think about ways to grow your backlink profile.

How do you find untapped opportunities to acquire new backlinks?

Start with the broken link-building approach.

Here’s how it works:

First, find high-quality pages linking to a 404 competitor page. Then, contact this domain’s owner to replace this broken link with your own content on a similar theme.

Brian presents a great example of doing outreach for the broken link-building method:

Another tactic to discover linking opportunities is to look for unlinked brand mentions.

Where is your brand or product mentioned but not linked?

Contact these sites and request a backlink. Explain how linking to your site will add value for their readers.

Leigh McKenzie, Head of SEO at Backlinko, shares a case study of Sandals.com.

He worked with the hospitality company and converted brand mentions into backlinks. Leigh mentions:

You can also find sites linking to your competitors and request them to add your brand to the list.

For example, let’s say you offer a calendaring tool. And you find this Zapier list of the best calendar apps featuring some of your competitors.

Pitch Zapier to add your tool to the list and secure a backlink. Explain why your tool should be included and how you can help the writer test the tool for this review.

Here’s a template:

A backlink audit helps in finding untapped link opportunities.

Besides improving your domain health, it can also drive continuous growth.

Optimize Your Backlink Profile for Maximum SEO Impact

A backlink audit helps maintain a healthy domain to maximize SEO performance.

Regular audits help you review your backlink profile and find issues affecting your domain authority.

More importantly, auditing your backlink profile can reveal new opportunities. It’s crucial in shaping your link-building strategy.

Strengthen your domain health with our best practices for acquiring high-quality backlinks.