SEO Backlink Audit Checklist

Many factors impact how your website ranks in Google. All of the pieces — your website content, the design, the number of backlinks, etc. — come together to help you rise in the rankings and generate more traffic. But how do you influence these factors to ensure the best results?

One area of influence is link building, which involves auditing your existing backlinks, finding new backlink opportunities, and procuring links from other websites. This is a multi-step process, made easier with the right guide!

Here, we’ll break down how to do an SEO backlink audit into a simple, easy-to-follow checklist. You’ll have the clarity you need to analyze your links, find new links, and establish your outreach strategy.

What is a Backlink Audit?

A backlink audit is a system or process that aims to identify the quality, quantity, source, and placement of backlinks to a website. A “backlink” here simply refers to a link from one website to another. When auditing your website, you want to determine how many backlinks are pointed to your site and where they’re coming from.

Backlink audits are essential when it comes to developing a comprehensive SEO strategy. They assess whether the backlinks directed to your site are benefiting your website authority and rankings, driving traffic to your site, or are the source of spam. “Cleaning up” your backlinks and procuring new, relevant ones are important SEO activities.

Benefits of Conducting a Backlink Audit of Your Website

Many website owners are blind to their backlink profiles, simply because they don’t have the time or resources to audit their links on a regular basis. If you’re in this boat, you might want to consider adding a backlink audit to your list of monthly or quarterly activities. Here are many business-critical benefits to conducting a backlink check of your website:

• Disavow Harmful Links: A backlink audit can find toxic or spammy backlinks that may be harming your website’s ranking. You can then “disavow” these links to improve your site’s SEO performance.
• Find the Best Links: A backlink audit will allow you to see which backlinks are driving the most value (authority and traffic to your site), so you can target similar link building opportunities in the future.
• Leverage Media Partnerships: A backlink audit will uncover what media outlets (if any) are linking to you, giving you the opportunity to reach out and potentially earn more backlinks and/or guest post opportunities.
• Boost Site Authority: Regular backlink audits and link building are crucial for managing your backlink profile. These intentional efforts can greatly contribute to your website’s authority, rankings, and traffic.
• Avoid Penalties: Search engines can sometimes penalize websites that have unnatural or manipulative backlink profiles. Conducting regular backlink audits can help ensure compliance with search engine guidelines.
• Spy on the Competition: A backlink audit lets you compare your backlink profile against your competitors, helping you identify gaps, untapped opportunities, media partnerships, and content topics.
• Drive Relevant Traffic: Targeted referral traffic from other websites can lead to higher conversion rates. A backlink audit lets you see what websites are linking to you and whether those sources are aligned with your target audience’s interests.

You might find other benefits to conducting a backlink audit, such as mitigating the negative effects of algorithm updates or identifying trends in user interests. In sum, backlink audits should be high on your list of regular activities when it comes to managing your website.

Step 1. Analyze Existing Links

• Sign up for an SEO tool like Ahrefs or Semrush that offers backlink audit capabilities
• Conduct an overall domain assessment to see the domain authority (DA) of your website. Record this as a benchmark.
• Navigate to the respective backlink analysis tool and enter your domain URL (domain.com). Run the report.
• Export the results of the backlink analysis to a spreadsheet
• Review each backlink’s DA or domain rating (DR) to assess link quality
• Look for and take note of spammy or irrelevant domains in your backlink profile
• Analyze the backlink anchor text for unnatural patterns or over-optimized keywords. Take note of these.
• Review the follow vs. nofollow ratio. Identify nofollow links that might justify outreach to request a followed link.
• Identify backlinks pointing to broken pages (404 errors) on your site
• Look for backlinks from websites penalized or deindexed by search engines. Take note of these.

Step 2. Disavow Low-Quality Backlinks

• Review your backlink profile report for low-quality links. Copy these over to a separate spreadsheet/tab for easy reference.
• Manually review spammy domains to confirm their harmful impact on your site (spam traffic or low DA)
• Identify which domains you want to disavow from your site. Save this list in .txt file format with no special characters.
• Use Google’s Disavow Tool to upload your list of toxic domains or links
• Monitor your website’s performance in Google Search Console after submitting the disavow file for changes in rankings and/or site authority

Step 3. Identify Positive Links/Sources

• Filter your backlink data to find links from high-authority domains (DA/DR > 50)
• Highlight backlinks from reputable sources in your industry/niche
• Cross-reference these backlinks in Google Analytics to identify whether they are sending referral traffic to your website
• Notice which pages on your website attract/have the most backlinks and assess why. Take note of these features with the goal of applying them to future content or link building efforts
• Notice any patterns in anchor text or content types that attract quality backlinks

Step 4. Compare Competitor Backlinks

• Conduct a Google search of your primary target keyword(s). Take note of which websites/competitors are ranking on Page 1.
• Assess the domain authority and backlink profiles of these high-ranking domains using your chosen SEO tool
• Compare the quantity and quality of backlinks to your own
• Compare their follow vs. nofollow backlink ratios to your own
• Look for recurring sources or domains linking to multiple competitors
• Analyze competitor anchor text strategies to spot opportunities for improvement to your site and content strategy
• Take note of domains/publishers to reach out to for guest posting and link building purposes
• Identify which content on competitor sites attracts the most backlinks

Step 5. Find Backlink Gaps

• Use a backlink gap tool (available in Ahrefs or SEMrush) to directly compare your site with your competitors
• Identify any domains linking to competitors but not to your site
• Analyze why these domains may have linked to your competitors (e.g., superior content, outreach, relevance)
• Create a prioritized list of domains for outreach based on relevance and authority
• Develop content ideas to close the backlink gaps

Step 6. Discover New Link Opportunities

• Search for “roundup” articles related to your niche and consider pitching your brand as a feature in the article (if appropriate)
• Search for broken links on other websites in your niche and pitch your content as a replacement
• Reach out to sites that mention your brand but haven’t linked to your website (i.e. “unlinked mentions”)
• Analyze trending topics in your niche and create shareable, link-worthy content related to these topics
• Connect and build relationships with industry influencers and bloggers for potential guest post and backlink opportunities
• Monitor your competitors for new backlink outlets and opportunities

Compiling Your SEO Backlink Audit Results

Many SEO tools allow you to review and analyze your backlink profile within an online dashboard, but we find this makes it difficult to filter your links and take notes on new opportunities. That’s why we recommend exporting your backlink audit results and managing them in a spreadsheet.

Here are a few tips for formatting your backlink audit report:

• Add headings to your spreadsheet with the following key columns to organize backlink data: Linking Domain, URL of Backlink, Target Page, Anchor Text, Follow/Nofollow, Domain Authority/Rating (DA/DR), Spam Score, Referral Traffic, and Notes/Action Required.
• Use color coding to identify “good” versus “bad” links. For example, you can highlight high-risk links in red, high-authority links in green for quick identification, and unlinked mentioned in blue.
• Create separate tabs for Toxic Links ( links to be disavowed or removed), High-Quality Links (links you want to track), Competitor Comparison (competitor backlink data), and New Opportunities (like outreach targets or unlinked mentions).
• Sort your sheets by spam score to quickly identify and isolate potentially harmful links, by domain authority to focus on high-value backlinks, or by action to organize links to disavow, keep, or contact.

Best Backlink Audit Tools

We already mentioned a few useful SEO tools above, but here are more details about the best tools for auditing your backlinks.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is an industry-leading SEO tool best known for its backlink auditing and analysis capabilities. Business owners love Ahrefs because it makes it easy to review a backlink profile in its entirety, compare it with competitor websites, and find untapped backlink opportunities. Ahrefs can also be used for keyword research, competitor analysis, social media marketing, and so much more.

Semrush

Semrush is another fan favorite when it comes to SEO and backlink analysis. Semrush boasts a robust keyword database, allowing business owners, bloggers, and digital marketers to find relevant keywords in seconds. It also provides an in-depth analysis of a domain’s backlink profile, from the quality of the links to the source, anchor text, and domain score. Content creators also love Semrush’s on-page SEO and content optimization features within Content Editor.

Moz Link Explorer

Moz Link Explorer is a comprehensive backlink analysis tool that offers detailed insights into your website’s link profile. It covers important metrics like Domain Authority and Page Authority (PA) to evaluate the quality of the linking domains. This tool also allows you to analyze anchor text distribution, identify potentially harmful links, and develop effective link-building strategies.