A backlink audit is a straightforward review of every link that points to your website. Which includes tracking them down, sorting them into good and bad, and coming up with a plan to handle them.
Google’s Webmaster Tools makes it possible to export a complete list of your links for manual inspection. In contrast, this can take a very long time if you are managing a large, authoritative website with many referring domains.
Five simple actions will help you increase your backlink portfolio using our new backlink database, Google and Majestic integrations, and toxic link evaluation (45+ hazardous flags).
Compare your link profile to that of your rivals
This is optional but recommended. But it can help you evaluate your own profile more accurately and gain valuable insight into how your competitors are gaining links.
Type in your own domain and the domains of one to four of your rivals into Backlink Analytics. Everything you need to know about whether or not your link-building plan is heading in the right way can be found in the “Overview” section.
The Key Ingredients to Consider
How large your backlink footprint is in relation to the competition can be estimated by looking at metrics like the number of backlinks, referring domains, and referring IPs.
Think of your domain’s Authority Score as a measure of how appealing your site should be to potential link builders.
Using Backlink Kinds, you may find out what types of links are pointing to your competitors’ material.
Applying Link Attributes, one can identify potential loopholes in a competitor’s profile.
Referring Domains will help you determine if expanding your network of referred domains is a good idea.
Track Down and Assess Every Existing Backlink
Knowing whether or not your portfolio of backlinks is relevant to the competition enables you to zero in on the most significant obstacles standing between you and a victory. Finding the spammy links that could hurt your rankings is the first step in fixing the problem.
You should also keep an eye out for a variety of other factors, such as the loss of any particularly valuable links or any gaps in your link-building plan.
Find and examine your backlink profile with Semrush. To begin, create a Project in Backlink Audit and adjust the settings.(enter your target countries, categories, and brand name). As a result, the tool can assess the quality of each link.
The Key Ingredients to Consider
Select the “Overview” menu item.
An extremely toxic rating. Too many questionable links lead to your page.
Total number of analyzed backlinks is either too high or too low. The risk of a spam attack increases if it is high and you are not actively working to improve your site’s link profile or posting new content. If it’s too low, people may avoid visiting your site out of fear it contains harmful content.
Few domains linking here. Too many inbound links to a single domain raises red flags with Google.
Determine whether to disavow or delete the harmful links.
The next stage is to evaluate whether or not to eliminate potentially harmful inbound links. Two methods exist for accomplishing this:
Making contact with the site’s owner and requesting they remove the connection (Removal)
Having it exported to the Google Disavow tool and then sent to the disavow list (Disavow)
You should sort your poisonous links into those you can have removed and those you can’t so that you don’t waste time contacting spammers and scammers.
Under the ‘Audit’ section of Backlink Audit, whitelist all links with a Toxic Score of 45 or less or more.
After that, you can sort your poisonous links by the key problems you found in Step 2 and view them in a filtered list.
If your Toxicity Score is high, for instance, you’ll want to pinpoint the offending connections. The most dangerous links will appear first, allowing you to quickly scan their labels and narrow down your results to only the most dangerous websites. Most likely, the domain owners whose links you locate this method won’t be amenable to your request to have them removed.
Organize your backlinks
Removal
Connect your email address with the ‘Remove’ page, from which you sent some of your harmful links in Step 2. Modify the sample letter to solicit removal of the link. You can either let the system find the recipient’s email address for you or manually enter it if you happen to find it online.
It’s crucial to take the proper steps when asking for the removal of a link. If you want to communicate with webmasters, you’ll need to demonstrate that you are not a spambot. The tone of the communication should be friendly and casual.
Both Semrush and your inbox will allow you to monitor replies. If you ever find yourself in need of a disavow, you can use these as evidence of your efforts.
Disavowing
Disavowing is your sole recourse if you are unable to locate the offending link or contact the site’s owner.
Navigate to the Disavow tab, copy its contents to a.txt file, and then upload it to the Google Disavow tool for the relevant domain.
Look for Fresh Inroads to Form Useful Connections
The purpose of a backlink audit goes beyond only identifying and eliminating harmful inbound links. It can aid in the discovery of fresh avenues leading to high-quality inbound links, allowing you to refine your approach to link development as a whole. In place of a conclusion, I’ll provide some advice.
To provide Semrush with information about your backlinks, connect Google Analytics and Google Search Console to Backlink Audit. To learn more about which pages of your site can be optimized to attract more inbound links and visitors, click the “Target Pages” tab.
Use Backlink Analytics’ export function to retrieve information about the Referring Domains. You should include in your outreach list the authoritative websites that are already linking to your rivals.