How To Do a Backlink Audit in Easy Steps

In today’s business world, having a good ranking visibility in both the paid and organic search results is imperative for any site. Another sub-process that directly contributes to rankings is backlinks, which are links directed to your website from other websites. Thus, a blend of good backlinks, often managed by an SEO link building company, can make a website more authoritative.

However, issues can arise when the site acquires low-quality, toxic backlinks that could eventually harm its SEO standing. This article will walk you through the easy steps to perform a backlink audit, which will help you identify and eradicate the links that are detrimental to your website while beefing up the overall health of your site’s link portfolio.

Step-by-Step Approach to Perform Backlink Audit

Gather Your Backlink Data

The first process included in the backlink audit is to collect information regarding all the backlinks linking to your website. The data can be compiled with the help of different tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz, and Google Search Console. They offer detailed backlinks’ details such as the source of the link, the anchor text and the domain’s authority of the linking site. Copy this data to a spreadsheet for more of an easier analysis on the results obtained.

Analyze the Quality of Your Backlinks

Backlinks have always been deemed as one of the most influential components; therefore, it is high time to check the quality of the backlinks acquired. Not all the backlinks provide the benefits as sometimes they may work against your SEO strategy than for it. Engage in the search of backlinks from websites of a high authority and relevance in the niche. Backlinks can be of high or low quality depending on their domains; the best backlinks should have a high DA score and should not be irrelevant to your site. However, links with low-quality sites or sites that are deemed ‘spam’ sites can harm your website.

Identify and Remove Toxic Backlinks

Hazardous links are links that may prove detrimental to your site rather than being beneficial to it. These mostly originate from spammy, unrelated, or low credible websites. Using the SEO tool of your choice, analyze for the spam score or domain authority to potentially toxic backlinks. After the identification is done, you can then contact the owners of the web and request for the removal of the link. There is the Google Disavow Tool through which you can tell Google not to consider the low-quality or spammy links as part of your site’s ranking in case the above approach does not yield a positive result.

Monitor Anchor Text Diversity

Another issue, which should also be explored in backlink audit, is anchor text diversity. The overuse of the exact anchor texts is bad for SEO and results in penalties from engines, albeit after exceeding the desired frequency. Make sure your backlinks are diversified, with respect to the anchor texts; they should contain brand, generic and the exact matches. This diversity is friendly to the search engines because it shows that your backlinks are genuine and are of high quality..

Assess Link Relevance

Relevance is key when it comes to backlinks. Links from websites related to your industry or niche are more valuable because they signal topical authority. Review your backlinks to ensure they come from relevant sources. For example, if you run a fitness blog, a backlink from a health magazine would be more beneficial than one from a fashion blog unless the content is closely related.

Check for Link Building Opportunities

During your audit, you may uncover potential link-building opportunities. Look for instances where your content has been mentioned but not linked, or where broken links to your site exist. Reach out to the appropriate site owners and request that they add or fix these links. Additionally, identifying competitors’ high-quality backlinks can provide insights into potential new link-building targets for your strategy.

Regularly Monitor Your Backlink Profile

Backlink audit is not a one-time process; it forms a subset of the ongoing process. To incorporate this into your daily practice, make sure to check your backlinks profile using the chosen SEO tools frequently. It synthesizes information to enable you to take appropriate action for any new problem that may arise quickly or new opportunities that can be seized, all the time making sure that your backlink profile is well maintained and beneficial to your SEO goals.

To summarize, it is possible to note that an effective check of backlinks can become a key to enhancing SEO indicators of a web page. Thus, knowing these steps allows ensuring that the backlink profile contributes to the overall digital marketing strategy. EZ Rankings offers the best link building services that can help you build a strong and relevant backlink portfolio. Contact EZ Rankings today to learn more about how we can improve your website’s search engine rankings through effective link building techniques.