I'm going to walk you through a backlink audit in 6 easy steps today.

You may complete your audit in as little as 30 minutes because I've got everything planned out for you, from selecting your tool to spotting backlinks. 

Even if you're new to SEO ,you've probably heard how crucial it is to develop a strong backlink profile for your website.

It is true that backlinks play a significant role in rankings and are essential to your ability to rank highly on Google and other search engines.

Follow these easy step to raise the quality of the traffic to your site and enhance your organic rankings if you want yours to be the next.

What Are Backlink Audits and Backlinks?

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Backlinks are the kind of links that lead to your website from other sources. Therefore, having a lot of backlinks indicates that different websites can visit your website.

However, not all backlinks are beneficial. Some websites have content that is unlawful, like pornographic or drug-related stuff. One of the reasons a backlink audit is necessary is for this reason.

You may assess the quality of these a fore mentioned backlinks using a backlink audit. By doing this, you may keep the positive ones and plan a mechanism to keep the negative ones out along the road.

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• Discover which pages on your site have the most backlinks by looking at the Websites from which you have links.
• Find dangerous backlinks
• Find fresh prospects for link building.
• Make a plan to remove unnatural backlinks.

How to do a Backlink Audit in 6 step

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Don't worry if beginning a backlink audit seems intimidating. Even novice SEOs and link builders can complete the process because I've broken it down into 6 easy steps.

We should start now.

#Step 1: Analyse a Competitive Analysis

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One of the most crucial steps in assessing the general health of a website is carrying out a backlink audit.

It goes without saying that backlink research is a multifaceted process, and in order to have a healthy backlink profile and, consequently, a better-performing website, numerous criteria should be taken into account.

Analyse  a competitive analysis is the initial step, which entails gathering a few websites that are pertinent to yours, preferably your direct competitors, and contrasting your backlink profiles.

In this manner, you'll be able to identify any deficiencies you might possess so that you don't fall behind.

We'll start by using the Ahref backlink audit software's domain comparison feature.

Of course, you are free to use whatever SEO and backlink audit tool you prefer, such as Majestic, Semrush, Moz Link Explorer, or any other program that offers a backlink checker.

#Step 2 :Select a Backlink Audit Tool  

You can choose from a ton of both free and paid solutions, and doing so will spare you hours of frustration.

Although it would take a LOT of effort, you could manually download a list of your backlinks from Google Search Console and evaluate them that way.

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• Data: Compared to tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics, SEMrush provides a much greater volume of link data, which will make the auditing process much simpler. You can approach your subsequent link-building campaign in a data-driven manner with the help of SEMrush's insights.

• Authority & Toxicity Score: These indicators will instantly indicate if a backlink is most likely to benefit or harm your website.

#Step 3: Recognize toxic backlinks

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In search engine optimization, it's a popular fallacy that the more backlinks a website has, the better. This isn't always the case because the calibre of those backlinks is what really counts.

Targeting relevant and authoritative sources with a high DR and no spammy backlinks or content is what you want to accomplish when reaching out to individuals as part of your link building SEO campaign.

Search engines will see this as a sign that you are a reliable source as well and should be listed higher.

Of course, there are times when you have no control over which websites choose to link back to you; some of them are poor-quality links from spammy and unrelated sources that are more detrimental than beneficial.

• The domains that link back to you will then be listed, along with details like their DR, Ahrefs rank, organic traffic, and other relevant data.

• Another effective backlink audit strategy is to examine the anchor texts that are being used to link to your website.
  
  
• The majority of the time, but not always, your branded word will be used as an anchor text.

• Examining the distribution of your CTLDs, or, to put it more simply, the nations from which you receive the majority of your backlinks, is another action you may do to spot dangerous backlinks.

#Step 4: Verify your DoFollow to NoFollow Ratio

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The ratio of DoFollow to NoFollow links is verify in this stage. However, we must first clarify what these two categories of linkages mean.

• Search engine bots can follow this link and reach the source page if it is marked as "DoFollow."
• NoFollow: Thislink uses the HTML tag (rel=nofollow) to stop search engine crawlers from following it.

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This is due to the fact that NoFollow links can be spammy as well as paid or affiliate links. Additionally, they don't help to raise your DR because they don't transfer link juice from one domain to another.

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Let's assume you 'reproducing a piece of content on spammy and low-quality backlinks; if you want to include one, you'll need to "nofollow" it so you don't influence how highly the search engines rank it.

#Step 5:  Compare your competitors' link velocities to your own

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At this point, you should also consider the link velocities of your rivals.

Return to the graph that displays the number of referring domains you earned and lost each week. Remember what I mentioned earlier about being one step ahead? If your competitors are acquiring 100 new referring domains each week, you'll want to do the same, ideally more.

But keep in mind to wait till your site has gained some authority before being overly aggressive with your link-building plan. It may be tempting for you to copy your competition if you notice that they are gaining backlinks quickly and with a high link velocity.

However, gaining too many backlinks too rapidly can make a fresh, unpopular website appear suspect to Google.

#Step 6:  Examine your ratio of referring pages to referring domains

The proportion of referring pages to referring domains is another intriguing measure to be aware of.

This is significant since it's possible for a website to have many backlinks coming from the same domain ,which is a sign of an unhealthy backlink profile.

In the viewpoint of Google's algorithm, having numerous backlinks from a wide range of distinct domains is more beneficial.

You may see the quantity of referring domains and backlinks by simply visiting the summary page of your website that Ahrefs provides for you.

Create  High-Quality Backlinks

Building more of these links should be your first focus if your backlink audit shows you don't have enough high-quality links to compete in your market.

The Link Building Tool from Semrush can be used for this.

The application automatically searches the internet for websites that are relevant and that you may link to. Even better, the application itself allows you to get in touch with the website's owners.

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FAQ

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