How to Audit Website Backlinks: Step-by-Step Guide

Backlinks are key to improving your search rankings, but bad links can harm your site. A backlink audit helps you identify harmful links, improve link quality, and discover new opportunities. Here’s a quick breakdown of how to do it:

• Why It Matters: Prevent penalties, improve link quality, and gain competitive insights.
• Tools to Use: Google Search Console (free), Semrush ($139.95/month), or Ahrefs ($99/month).
• Steps to Take:
  1. Gather backlink data with tools like Semrush or Ahrefs.
  2. Check link quality (domain authority, relevance, traffic).
  3. Remove harmful links (spammy, irrelevant, or toxic).
  4. Build better links through guest posts, HARO, and original content.
  5. Monitor your backlinks regularly with alerts and scheduled reviews.

Quick Tool Comparison

Start your audit today to protect your rankings and uncover new growth opportunities.

How to Audit and Remove Toxic Backlinks with SEMrush

Step 1: Setting Up Your Backlink Audit

Start your backlink audit by choosing the right tools and organizing your data. This step sets the foundation for analyzing backlinks and addressing issues effectively.

Tools for Backlink Analysis

Here are two popular platforms for analyzing backlinks:

For a free option, Google Search Console provides essential backlink data, though less detailed than paid tools.

"Semrush’s competitive analysis quickly helped me identify what sites I should be doing outreach for." – Angela Skane, Author

Once you’ve picked your tool, the next step is gathering your backlink data.

Collecting Your Backlink Data

• Semrush: Use the Backlink Analytics feature to export your entire backlink profile. Daily updates ensure your data is current.
• Ahrefs: Open Site Explorer and check the "Backlinks" report. Use filters to focus on specific metrics like authority scores or link types.
• Google Search Console: Head to the "Links" section and export external links into a spreadsheet for further analysis.

Once you’ve gathered your data, it’s time to organize it for a smoother evaluation process.

Structuring Your Data Sheet

Set up your spreadsheet with these key columns:

Pro Tip: Add a separate tab for competitor analysis. This helps you identify opportunities to acquire similar high-quality backlinks and spot patterns in successful strategies.

To streamline your process, sort by domain authority and filter for high spam scores to quickly identify harmful links.

Step 2: Checking Your Backlinks

Measuring Link Quality

To evaluate the quality of your backlinks, focus on these important factors:

"High-quality backlinks from reputable, relevant, and authoritative domains are crucial for improving a website’s search engine rankings and domain authority." – Backlink Manager

Once you’ve assessed link quality, it’s time to identify and address harmful links.

Finding Bad Links

Harmful links can damage your site’s reputation and rankings. Here’s how to spot them:

• Spam Indicators
  Look for websites with red flags like:
  • Too many ads or pop-ups
  • Auto-generated or poorly written content
  • Missing contact details
  • Bad grammar or sloppy formatting
  • Content unrelated to your niche
• Suspicious Link Patterns
  Pay attention to patterns that suggest low-quality links:
  • Multiple links from the same IP range
  • Links from known link farms
  • Sudden surges in backlinks
  • Links from irrelevant sites

"Most backlinks, even in a worst-case scenario, will not cause negative SEO, but rather will just be ignored by Google. In cases where a backlink is especially spammy, such as a bad traffic trend, or has outbound anchor texts like ‘casino’ AND it is completely irrelevant to your business, then taking action is recommended." – Greg Heilers and Morgan Taylor, Jolly SEO

After identifying harmful links, you can work on balancing your anchor text distribution.

Checking Anchor Text Balance

A natural anchor text profile is key to avoiding penalties. Research shows that high-ranking sites use exact-match keywords in less than 10% of their anchors. To keep your profile balanced, use a mix of:

• Branded anchors
• Generic phrases
• Partial-match keywords
• URL-based anchors

As FATJOE explains, "Unnatural anchor text distribution is a clear red flag for search engines." Tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush can help you track your anchor text usage, spot over-optimization, and refine your link-building strategy.

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Step 3: Fixing Backlink Problems

Removing Bad Links

It’s crucial to systematically remove harmful backlinks, especially those that could lead to penalties. Here’s a quick guide on how to prioritize and handle these links:

Steps to Remove Toxic Links:

• Document the problematic URLs, contact details, and removal status.
• Reach out to site owners via email or other available channels.
• Wait 1-2 weeks, then send a follow-up if needed.
• If unresponsive, use Google’s Disavow Tool. Prepare your disavow file with these rules:
  • Use UTF-8 or 7-bit ASCII text format.
  • List one URL per line.
  • For domain-wide disavows, prefix with "domain:".
  • Keep the file under 2MB (or 100,000 lines).

Once you’ve eliminated harmful links, shift your attention to safeguarding your valuable backlinks.

Keeping Good Links

After dealing with toxic links, focus on maintaining links that add value. These links typically show:

• Steady referral traffic.
• High domain authority.
• Strong relevance to your niche.
• Natural placement within content.
• Positive traffic trends over time.

To preserve these links, stay connected with linking partners by:

• Regularly updating your content to keep it relevant.
• Interacting with them on social media.
• Maintaining direct communication.
• Offering mutual value through collaborations.

Once your existing links are secure, it’s time to work on acquiring new, top-tier backlinks.

Building Better Links

A quality-driven link-building strategy is key to long-term success. For example, in December 2024, Content Whale boosted their Domain Rating to 45 in just 30 days by focusing on targeted, high-quality link acquisition.

"Links acquired solely for manipulating search rankings are link spam. Our algorithms and manual actions aim to nullify these unnatural links at scale, and we will continue to improve our coverage." – Google

Use tools like Ahrefs ($99/month) or SEMrush ($119.95/month) to monitor your progress, identify opportunities, and refine your strategy.

Step 4: Tracking Backlink Health

Setting Up Link Alerts

Keeping an eye on your backlinks can help you catch problems before they hurt your rankings. SEO tools can notify you about new links, lost links, or shifts in authority metrics.

Here are some key alerts to set up:

Make sure to enable real-time notifications for major changes. Combine these alerts with a routine review schedule to maintain a strong backlink profile.

Planning Regular Reviews

Automated alerts are helpful, but they don’t catch everything. Scheduling regular reviews allows you to spot smaller, gradual changes in your link profile.

"Backlink analysis should be an ongoing process, ideally performed monthly or quarterly, to monitor the health of your link profile and promptly respond to any negative changes that could impact your SEO".

Updating Link Strategies

Use the insights from your alerts and reviews to adjust and improve your link-building efforts.

"In most cases, a contextual backlink from the body of the content is better for you. Sidebar and footer links aren’t necessarily bad. But they’re less natural and shouldn’t make up most of your backlink profile".

Tools like SE Ranking can also measure domain trust ratings and provide charts to track your progress. This data-driven approach helps you see which strategies are boosting your site’s authority and rankings.

Conclusion: Backlink Audit Checklist

Quick Audit Steps

Evaluate your backlink profile step-by-step with these key components:

These metrics help you understand the impact of quality links on your site’s performance.

Why Good Links Matter

Backlinks play a huge role in boosting your website’s search rankings and domain authority. Data shows that backlinks remain one of the top three ranking factors for websites. Regular audits ensure your link profile stays healthy and avoids SEO pitfalls. Research from Ahrefs highlights that about 7% of backlinks disappear yearly, so monitoring them regularly is crucial to maintain your rankings.

With this in mind, it’s time to kick off your audit.

Starting Your Audit

Here’s how to get started:

1. Initial Assessment
   Use tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, or Moz to review your current backlink profile. Focus on identifying your strongest referring domains and any potential issues.
2. Quality Evaluation
   Analyze your backlinks for quality and toxicity. Chris Tzitzis, co-founder of SirLinksalot, provides this advice:

   "In most cases, a contextual backlink from the body of the content is better for you. Sidebar and footer links aren’t necessarily bad. But they’re less natural and shouldn’t make up most of your backlink profile. Stick to body content for more natural, effective backlinks."

3. Action Planning
   • Document quick fixes, such as updating broken redirects.
   • List areas for gaining new high-quality backlinks.
   • Set up a monitoring schedule.
   • Configure automated alerts for link changes.

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