Backlink audit: how to analyze my link profile

Backlink auditing is an essential process in any SEO audit. It focuses on analyzing and evaluating the links pointing to a website, identifying improvement opportunities and potential risks. In this article, we explain how to conduct a backlink audit and what aspects you should consider to maintain a healthy link profile.

1. What is a backlink audit and why is it important?

A backlink audit is the thorough analysis of all the links pointing to your website. Its goal is to identify:

• High-quality links that provide authority to your domain.
• Toxic links that could harm your rankings on Google.
• Linkbuilding opportunities to enhance your site's authority.

Conducting audits periodically allows you to adjust your SEO strategy and improve your website's performance in search engines.

2. How to analyze your backlink profile

When analyzing your backlink profile, consider the following aspects:

• Diversity of referring domains: The more quality websites link to your site, the better. This shows that your content is relevant and valuable.
• Anchor texts: Variety in anchor texts (the words linking to your site) is key. A natural profile should include brand anchor texts, generic anchor texts (like "click here"), and some with target keywords, as long as it feels natural.
• Geographical distribution: Analyze where the links are coming from, as they could indicate the international relevance of your site. Especially if you want to rank in specific countries.
• Dofollow vs. Nofollow links: A healthy balance between both link types is advised. Dofollow links pass authority, while nofollow links help diversify the profile. It’s normal to have nofollow links, and Google is aware that many sites use this policy. Still, these signals are important for Google.

3. Identifying and disavowing toxic links

Toxic links can negatively affect your SEO. These are links that come from:

• Low-quality or spammy sites.
• Link farms.
• Purchased links that don’t comply with Google’s guidelines.

To identify them, use tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, or Semrush. Once detected, you can request their removal or use the Google Disavow tool to disavow the harmful ones.

4. How to build a backlink profile with natural patterns

The key to a healthy backlink profile is naturalness. This translates into:

• Links from relevant content: Ensure that the sites linking to your site are related, relevant, and authoritative in your niche.
• Variety of domains: Receiving links from different sites, rather than many links from a single domain, is more natural and safer.
• Collaborations and guest posts: Publish content on other blogs naturally, without overusing target keywords.
• Brand mentions: Work on branding strategies that generate mentions and eventually links from relevant websites and blogs.

Link acquisition is a subsequent phase to backlink auditing but relies on it. This is what we call linkbuilding.

5. Recommended tools for backlink auditing

For conducting a backlink audit, these tools can be highly useful:

• Google Search Console: Identifies the links that Google recognizes pointing to your website. And it's free!
• Ahrefs: Offers a detailed analysis of all incoming links, with quality metrics. It’s probably the most comprehensive offpage SEO tool.
• Complete SEO tools: If you have an all-in-one SEO suite like Semrush, Sistrix, or Majestic, they also include solid backlink analysis tools.
• SE Ranking: Provides a detailed backlink profile analysis, helping identify toxic links and opportunities to improve link building with an easy-to-use interface.

6. Case study: Step-by-step backlink audit

In this section, we conducted a case study using DRIM toy stores and performed the audit using Semrush. We have no prior relationship or information on this project. Let’s begin:

At first glance, we observe the following:

• Referring domains: 1,000 referring domains, which is a fairly significant volume.
• Backlinks: Semrush counts nearly 10,000 incoming links, which means an average of 10 links per domain. This is a bit excessive; ideally, we aim for an average of 2-3 links per domain.
• External domains: DRIM links to 30 domains and receives links from 1,000. This ratio is good, but it's so extreme that it might seem unnatural.
• Authority score: A metric used by Semrush to determine domain authority. These scores aren’t the final word but offer a relevant reference.

Regarding the evolution:

• Abnormal backlink growth in 2019, probably due to an overly aggressive linkbuilding campaign or spam/negative SEO.
• Decline in late 2024, possibly due to neglect in linkbuilding or the opposite: cleaning up due to a recent penalty, maybe from the Google Core Update August 2024.
• Imbalance between domains and backlinks, which might indicate practices like sitewide banners.

Now, let’s analyze the categories of the referring domains. The thematic relationship is crucial in any link acquisition strategy. This chart is essential to identify if most of the links come from sites that are close or far from your niche. In DRIM’s case, we’d expect links from toy-related websites, like manufacturers, distributors, and blogs.

DRIM’s categories are highly diversified, with notable ones being: Retail, Information Technology, Online Services, Media, and Advertising & Marketing. Retail is normal for large e-commerce, as they work with traffic acquisition through comparison sites, referrals, etc., but this distribution is extremely high and could be considered unnatural by Google. The more thematic links from toy-related sites, the better!

Technological websites are unusual and often indicate low-quality links.

The “Online Services” category is typical for large e-commerce, especially if there’s a network of physical stores, as seen here.

Media links are useful for authority but might be too general. They shouldn’t be the only links you have.

Finally, “Marketing & Advertising” links are expected when using tools or collaborating in the marketing field. They’re a good accelerator.

In conclusion: A large volume of links, but the majority are not thematically relevant.

Most of DRIM’s anchor texts are brand-related. There is no clear strategy to highlight categories or specific products.

As for authority, most of the referring domains have very low authority. With 1,000 incoming domains, this is concerning.

We want text links to dominate. However, there are many image links, which are inevitable in popular sites, especially e-commerce.

Link attributes are also worth reviewing. A natural link profile should have a mix of dofollow and nofollow links, which is the case here.

We’re also interested in the distribution of TLDs. Ideally, we want as many general domains as possible (.com, .net) and if we have a regional extension like .es, the more .es domains, the better. .gov and .edu links are highly sought after.

Next, let’s analyze the similar link profiles. What domains share the most links with us? Ideally, they should be from our same industry. If not, that might raise suspicions.

Regarding the distribution of link profile, we should have almost as many domains as IPs. Low ratios could mean Google suspects we're relying on private blog networks (PBNs).

Next, we’ll determine which URLs those links point to. Usually, the home page gets the most links, but the rest should align with our SEO priorities. In DRIM’s case, 60% of the links go to the home page, which is reasonable.

As for the countries of those IPs: the proximity of servers is no longer important, but some regions like Singapore stand out.

And bingo! All of these links are from low-quality sites. When you spot patterns like this, it’s a red flag.

Conclusion

Conducting a backlink audit is essential for ensuring the health of your SEO strategy. A balanced and natural link profile will help improve your visibility on Google and strengthen your website’s rankings. If you need help with a backlink audit or want to optimize your linkbuilding strategy, feel free to contact us.

After a theoretical explanation, we’ve performed a practical case with a real client. We’ve identified an anarchic and neglected link profile. It’s so careless that it might seem natural, but the key is to have a robust profile with built and controlled naturalness. DRIM should clean up links (remove/disavow low-quality links) and focus on acquiring links from high-quality and relevant sites to become a reference in SEO authority for any toy-related query. They should also focus their linkbuilding efforts on the URLs and keywords they want to prioritize for business.