A backlink audit is the backbone of your seo strategy. We call them the “website maker”. They are a key factor in determining your website’s authority and rankings. Think of it as the X-ray of your website. When audits are done, you can determine the site issues and then make them clean, strong, and Google-friendly.
If you are unaware of how to conduct a backlink audit, you might treat every backlink as equally valuable. This backfires as it can damage your seo efforts and trigger penalties. Hence, we provided a six-step checklist on how the right backlink audit can be a game-changer for you.
Step 1: Diagnose your backlinks
If you are serious about measuring the progress of your backlinks, then you need to take these metrics seriously. Start by doing these
- Total number of backlinks that you have gathered
- The domain authority
- Do-follow and no-follow links that you have
- Link velocity (the rate at which backlinks are gathered
Step 2: Treat your backlink
Once the diagnosis is done, you need to treat your backlink by reviewing referring domains and evaluating link quality. We will go through them one by one so you know what we are talking about.
Reviewing
When a site links to your website, make sure you check its domain authority, geographic distribution, industry relevance, and website trustworthiness. A healthy backlink profile will always consist of links that are meaningful and diverse.
Evaluating
Please remember that not all backlinks carry the same weight. Once you’re done reviewing, the next step is evaluating. Evaluating is a simple process and can be done by checking the authority of the linking domain, link age, and stability. Additionally, check the placement done upon a page.
Step 3: Know the importance of anchor text distribution
People don’t really pay attention to anchor text, and this is where they miss the most. Anchor text is basically clickable text that tells search engines the context of your page. Take note of how your anchor text is distributed
- Naked URLs: Check the raw URL of your website
- Generic anchors: Check your non-specific texts like learn more and click here
- Keyword-rich anchors: Check your target keywords
- Image anchors: Check where images are served as links
- Branded anchors: Check text that has your company name ( ex: Beeboom)
Step 4: Identifying spammy links
Seo perfoimance can be damaged if you have spammy links on your website. There are some easy signs that you can see, and they are stated as follows
- Links to sites that are penalized by Google
- Links from sites that have poor content
- Sites that have an unfamiliar linking pattern
- Links from sites that deal in foreign languages
- Links from sites that have overoptimized anchor text
Step 5: Watch the link gap
One of the fastest ways that you can do this is by using SEO tools like Ahrefs and SEM rush; these tools can help you unpack untapped link sources, analyze competitors’ most linked content, and determine backlink standards and notice gaps in backlink strategy.
Step 6: Action plan
This should target two things: Toxic links and link-building opportunities. For toxic links, the fastest way is requesting the webmasters for link removal and then using the Google Disavow tool to create a disavow file for the links that are out of your memory.
For link building opportunities, make sure that you do the following :
- Create content that has the most popularity on your page
- Target your competitors through domain linking
- Fix any link that is discovered during the audit
- Diversify your anchor text
Learn, adapt, change
These are some basic steps that we have shown you on how to audit your current link-building service. For advanced steps, you can easily connect to our skilled professionals at Fastlinky, who would assist with your every need in this domain.
