If you’re running a website, it’s important to make sure that your links are healthy and helping you rank. In this blog post, we’ll walk you through how to perform a backlink audit. Let’s get started!
No one ever said that online marketing was easy, and it’s especially tricky when you’re trying to build a site’s SEO. Even the best content can be sunk by a few bad links. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to diagnose and correct any backlink issues your site may have. This is called a backlink audit.
What Is a Backlink Audit?
A backlink audit is the process of assessing the quality and quantity of the links pointing to your website. The goal is to identify any problematic or low-quality links, so they can be fixed or removed. This will help improve your site’s link profile and, as a result, its SEO.
Backlinks are an important ranking factor for SEO. That’s because they show Google that other websites are vouching for your site. So, the more high-quality backlinks you have, the better. But it’s not just the quantity of links that matters – the quality is just as important.
Google assesses the quality of a website based on many factors, including the quality of its backlinks. So, if you have a lot of low-quality or spammy links pointing to your site, it will hurt your ranking. That’s why it’s important to regularly audit your backlinks and remove any that could be harmful to your site.
Why Should You Do a Backlink Audit?
There are several reasons why you might want to conduct a backlink audit. Maybe you’ve noticed a sudden drop in traffic or rankings, and you suspect that it might be due to some bad links. Or maybe you’re just trying to proactively improve your site’s SEO.
In any case, a backlink audit can help you identify any link issues, so you can take action to fix them. This will improve your site’s link profile and, as a result, its SEO.
How to Conduct a Backlink Audit?
Now that we’ve gone over what a backlink audit is and why you should do one, it’s time to actually conduct the audit. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do a backlink audit.
Identify Your Backlinks
The first step is to identify all the links pointing to your website. There are a few different ways to do this.
One way is to use Google Search Console. Just go to the “Links” report under the “Search Traffic” section. This will show you all the websites that link to your site.
Another way is to use a backlink analysis tool like Ahrefs, Moz, or SEMrush. Just enter your website’s URL into the tool, and it will generate a list of all the links pointing to your site.
Evaluate the Quality of Your Backlinks
Once you have a list of all your backlinks, it’s time to evaluate their quality. There are a few different factors you’ll want to consider during this part of your backlink audit.
- First, look at the website that’s linking to you. Is it relevant to your niche? Is it a high-quality site? If not, then the link is probably not helping you much.
- Second, look at the anchor text of the link. Is it keyword-rich? If so, then it’s probably helping you with your SEO. If not, then the link might not be as helpful.
- Third, look at the PageRank of the linking page. The higher the PageRank, the better.
- Fourth, look at the “nofollow” attribute of the link. This is an HTML tag that tells search engines not to count the link for SEO purposes. If a link has this attribute, then it’s not helping you much with your SEO.
- Finally, look at the position of the link on the page. Links that are closer to the top of the page are more valuable than those that are lower down.
Remove or Fix Any Problematic Links
Once you’ve evaluated the quality of your backlinks, it’s time to take action on any that are low-quality or problematic. If a link is irrelevant, has bad anchor text, or is from a low-quality site, then you’ll want to consider removing it.
There are a few different ways to remove a link. One way is to contact the webmaster of the site and ask them to remove the link. Another way is to use the Google Disavow Tool. This tool lets you tell Google to ignore certain links.
If you’re not sure whether or not to remove a link, then you can just leave it as is. But if you do decide to remove it, make sure to save a copy of the original list so you can keep track of which links you’ve removed.
Monitor Your Backlinks Regularly
Once you’ve conducted your initial audit, you’ll want to make sure to monitor your backlinks on a regular basis. This way, you can catch any new bad links before they have a chance to hurt your SEO.
You can use Google Search Console or a backlink analysis tool to do this. Just check the “Links” report on a regular basis to see any new links pointing to your site.
Conducting a backlink audit is a great way to improve your site’s SEO. By removing any bad links, you can improve your link profile and, as a result, your SEO. So if you haven’t done an audit yet, now is the time to do one.