Do you have a new SEO client on board? Has your firm put you in charge of search engine optimization (SEO) for the corporate website? A backlink audit is something you need to do.
Required Items
A subscription to Ahrefs is all you need to accomplish all of this
To acquire the most accurate picture of your backlink profile, it’s best to pull information from as many different sources as possible, such as Ahrefs, Google Search Console, Majestic, Moz, etc., if at all possible.
But be warned, it’s not always easy to combine data from many sources into one. If you aren’t confident in your ability to use APIs and manage massive data sets, it’s probably best to stay with a web-based solution that has an easy-to-navigate interface
Take a bird’s-eye look of your link profile
Let’s get started with some fundamental site analysis by loading it into Site Explorer.
In Site Explorer, after typing in the domain name, select the “prefix” setting.
For the sake of keeping things localised to the Ahrefs blog rather than the entire site, we’ve opted for the “prefix” approach. Choose “*.domain/*” if you want to check every page on your domain.
Open the site in Site Explorer, type in the domain, and switch to “*.domain/*” mode.
Check out how your rivals’ backlink profiles stack up to your own
The most fundamental question is how many other sites link to yours (backlinks) and how many people go through to your site (referring domains).
There are apparently 40,2K incoming links from around 5,000 unique domains.
These are impressively high figures that, could they be replicated for your own website, may give you a little sense of pride.
Consider your rivals’ and your own backlink acquisition rate over time
To begin, it’s helpful to examine the raw data; nevertheless, this alone won’t give you much insight.
To what extent, for example, have we maintained a regular schedule of link building? Has there been a prolonged lull in activity? Do our rivals seem to be building their link profiles more quickly than we have been? Hence, let’s have a look at the graphical representation of links between domains to find out.
Check for sudden increases in inbound links to detect bad search engine optimization attacks
Our referring domains graph is quite straight forward, with no unusual spikes or dips over time. We are steadily gaining links.
But if you check at the identical chart for matthewwoodward.co.uk, you’ll see something quite different.
Keep an eye out for an excessive number of links coming from so-called “spammy” CTLDs
Is it true that majority of Ahrefs’s backlinks come from Chinese and Russian websites?
Obviously, that comes out as artificial and spammy to you. Correct. Fortunately, that’s not the situation here. Just look at the Overview report’s CTLDs graph.
Scan your anchor text profile for signs of spam
The majority of inbound links will use your brand’s name as the anchor text.
Some examples of branded anchor text for links to Ahrefs are “ahrefs,” “ahrefs.com,” “here’s something I read on ahrefs,” and so on.
Our site’s anchor text structure displays this phenomenon.
Dig (just a little) deeper
Our Overview report is called that for a reason: it provides just that, an overview, and nothing more.
Bad links are like hidden mould behind decades of paint; they only become obvious after years of poor SEO. Hence, we must investigate this matter further.
Only in that way can you proceed with confidence in your SEO decisions.
Identify dead links pointing to your web page
Attracting high-quality inbound links is a time-consuming process that presents several challenges when working to build links.
This is why using our Best by links report to ensure that none of your backlinks are going to waste is so crucial.
Analyze which websites are linking to you and which aren’t
Investigating the Referring Domains report will reveal the websites that have linked to yours. Even without further investigation into the top and worst referring sites, this information can be rather illuminating.
thirdly, make sure the complete “anchors” report is not full of junk.
In the first phase, we briefly discussed the problem of spammy anchor text
Yet, for most sites, the top 10 most popular link anchors are not even represented in the Overview report’s anchors report. That’s why it’s a good idea to glance over the entire Anchors report and look for red flags.
Investigate if there are any inbound links from C-Class IPs (advanced)
IP addresses, like 192.168.653.789, are where websites are physically located online.
IP addresses look like this: AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD, with the first three indicating the “a-class,” the next three the “b-class,” and so on. This is significant because websites that share a c-class IP address are essentially web hosting neighbours.
Go over the entire backlinks report
Thus far, we’ve used a number of Site Explorer reports to identify typical challenges and opportunities in the realm of backlinks. The whole Backlinks report has not been examined as of yet.
The reason for this is straightforward: prioritising the discovery of systemic issues and opportunities will aid in the process of navigating the entire list of backlinks (of which there are often thousands).
Concluding Remarks
It’s easy for backlink audits to get overly involved when large quantities of data are exported from multiple sources. In spite of this, this article should serve as proof that a respectable audit may be carried out even with minimal resources and in a short amount of time.
