Brands that win in their marketing through SEO take their time auditing their website for backlinks. Backlink auditing isn’t easy to come by as one would have a clear understanding of the SEO audit checklist. Your website could be at risk of being penalized due to spammy backlinks you know nothing about.
This happens a lot in the SEO industry and the truth is that you just have to be ahead to win the game.
When looking at auditing your website for backlinks, many questions come to mind. What process would you follow to get the best result? What backlink auditor tools are available for the project? How much SEO knowledge do you need to use these tools effectively? Are these backlink auditor tools free or paid?
If you can answer these questions correctly, you're sure to arrive at a good end. And it will be one of the most interesting adventures you have embarked on for your business growth.
That said, in this article, I will walk you through some of the trusted backlink auditor tools you can use for SEO backlink audits. These tools will guide you and put you ahead in your backlink analysis for an effective strategy. But first, let’s define what a backlink audit is:
What Is a Backlink Audit
In simple language, backlinks are links pointing to your website for ranking and visibility. So, we can say that a backlink audit is taking a closer look at the links pointing to your site to see if they’re free from spam or toxic. Meanwhile, you must have crafted a winning backlink building strategy to do this. Although there are diverse reasons to do a backlink audit for your site. As you read further, you’ll discover some amazing benefits of why doing a backlink audit is paramount to the safety of your website and business.
Why It Is Important to Perform a Backlink Audit for Your Site
A backlink audit is vital for any website that wants to succeed with SEO backlink building strategies. Just as the foundation of a building is crucial for the stability of the house, conducting a backlink audit for your website is essential for its safety.
As part of your off-page SEO strategy to gain more page and domain authority you need to
Build a Website With Great Security
The first step toward achieving a great on-page and off-page SEO audit is to build a website with great security. When you do this, you’ll be sure of what you’re starting with, as you will avoid building spammy or toxic backlinks intentionally to rank and disguise search engines.
Building your website afresh will enable you to do keyword research, and know the kind of links to build. On the other hand, if you purchase a website from a company or anyone, you would take your time to do a backlink audit for that site. Since you’re not the one who built the site, you don’t know the kind of backlinks the former owner has built. You will need to do a backlink audit to know the kind of links to keep or disavow.
This can be overwhelming especially if the site is in a competitive niche. As it will require a lot of effort to get it in the right shape. A proven method to build good links is Reddit’s backlink building strategy for competitive niches. Additionally, the SEO audit of a website helps you fine tune the direction of growth.
Sure, the foundation for your website is right, your link building strategies for SEO ranking and visibility have found a path. Then monitoring your competitors closely could help you to know the type of backlink auditor tools to use.
Monitor Your Competitors Closely
Nothing is more interesting when you discover the secret your competitors are using to roll in the ball consistently. As you come across many SEO audit examples, do your due diligence to monitor your competitor's channels of link building.
Always check out the content and the pages producing backlinks opportunities. Usually, content and collaboration are strategies to build backlinks, so you’ll keep an eye on this approach.
Additionally, always look out for the speeds they are acquiring their backlinks, the methodology they’re using, and the tools helping to scale at that level. There’s more to this, but when you do this, you'll get ideas that you can harness for outstanding results.
Thankfully, the approach is ever rewarding as it further allows you to look into ensuring your backlinks profile remains healthy.
Ensure Your Backlink Profile Remains Healthy
SEO audit of a website for backlinks is a common practice that works in all industries. If you keep an eye on what is working, you’ll consistently win at your game. The same works for backlink auditing.
A routine check on your backlinks for spammy links can help you avoid the Google Penguin hit. As usual, the big boss, Google dislikes spammy links. They're always developing their system to keep up-to-date with fishy trends.
If your company hasn’t been keeping track of backlinks, you’re making a big mistake that could lead to a dead end of your business. I know you don’t want to lose the brand you have spent years building, isn’t it?
Then, it’s time to jerk up your push towards making your backlinks lively. If you don’t have the time, you can hire someone to do the monitoring for you. Brands budget hundreds of hours for this and they pay thousands of dollars for this too. While at this, ensure to track your site backlink building progress, it will earn you a good spot on SERPs.
Track Your Backlink Building Progress
You have known the health status of your website, now it’s time to track what your competitors are doing to rank. This approach would help you track your link building progress and monitor how your backlinks progress over time.
At times your link building strategies might seem slow, so there’s a need to do a backlink audit to identify areas that need improvement. Whether to increase your outreach, create new pages, or write more helpful content that attracts link building opportunities.
Furthermore, you’ll also discover a quantum load of ideas that can help you create irresistible offers that improve your site ranking. To mention a few, it is worth noting that a previous backlink audit can also help you know if your site backlinks are
- Decreasing spam links
- Increasing juicy links
- Increasing or decreasing in toxicity score
A careful observation will help decide what kind of backlink audit to do. Plus it will also help you focus on using the right tools that give the best result. If you do this right, you will discover fresh opportunities to build links with relevant niches to your brand.
Discover Fresh Opportunities for Link Building
You have tracked your site backlink building progress, you now know which page needs more links to get uphill. This is the power of backlink audit, it puts you ahead of your competitors.
Additionally, your SEO audit checklist is ready, it is time to choose the backlink auditor tools to use for the project. A kind reminder is that you need to act fast on this, as your competitors are also working to dominate the top.
If you successfully incorporate the above SEO link auditing strategies, then it is time to know which tools are beneficial to your link auditing.
Backlink Auditor Tools
Backlink auditor tools help you with SEO audits of your website with ease. Unfortunately, there’s a catch. We have several free backlink auditing tools that will give you amazing results. But, will take you time and effort to decode the data.
Amazingly some SEO gurus came to help and created great tools with awesome features that can help anyone do backlink audits at the speed of light. Top of the list of these tools is the Semrush. This tool has some of the most outstanding features that can help you get results faster. Let me explain what I mean.
Semrush
In the SEO industry, Semrush is one of the most robust link building tools for backlink building. In fact, you can doff your cap for this tool at a glance seeing the amazing features it has built in it. You wouldn’t want to miss using this tool if you want to upscale your business marketing.
That said, here I will highlight some of Semrush’s backlink auditing features. How you can use this tool to do your SEO backlink audit at a beginner level - this is straightforward.
To use Semrush backlink auditors tools, you simply type on the search bar semrush.com and sign up if you do not have an account yet. If you have you simply log in and you’ll be taken to the dashboard.
In the Semrush dashboard, you’ll see stuff like
- SEO Dashboard
- Competitive Research
- Keyword Research
- Link Building
- On page & Tech SEO
You’ll see what I mean in the image below. This is the updated version of the Semrush dashboard
For backlink audit, you simply click on Backlink Audit as highlighted in the image below.
On clicking on backlink audit, this is what it shows you. Picture below
It shows you Toxicity scores, referring domains, analyzed backlinks, and many more.
The process is pretty simple. It is a punch-and-follow kind of stuff. Going forward, let’s look at the features of the Semrush backlink auditing tool.
Highlight of Semrush Backlink Auditor Tools Features
- It has more than 50+ evaluation parameters to help ease your backlink auditing journey
- AI Supported Toxicity Score - it provides the toxicity scores, plus also suggests new toxicity backlinks
- Referring Domains - Amazingly, it suggests you potential links network for link building opportunities.
- Analyzed Backlinks - The fantastic side of this is that it shows the top anchor text, top target pages, and the anchor types.
- Builtin Disavow Option - good to know, the tool also shows you possible pages that need to be removed.
- It provides automatic updates and alerts about changes to your site
- It helps you with outreach flow with site owners' email data
- Provides you with new target page alerts, ultimately helping you to know which pages need more backlinks.
- Amazingly provides error alerts for your target pages
- It helps you identify new, lost, and broken backlink data.
- Most importantly, the provision of Actionable Insights helps you know what to do next.
If you master the Semrush backlink auditing tool, it can help you
- Save time
- Identify what’s working and focus your energy there
- And many others.
The Semrush backlink auditing tools can take you around 10 - 30 minutes to do a concise SEO audit for backlinks. Depending on your SEO knowledge and the size of your website, backlink audits can be fantastic as it shows you the way forward.
Hope this helps you get started with your backlink auditing journey. Another tool we will be looking at is the Ahrefs.
Ahrefs
The Ahrefs SEO backlink building tool is another industry erupting tool with backlink auditing features. For clarity, here are the many features of the Ahref SEO tools
- Competition Analysis - It helps you analyze competitors which makes use of the Site Explorer
- Backlink Research - helps you to audit & optimize your website with the aid of their Site Audit
- Keywords Research - It helps you find keywords your customers are searching for with the aid of the Keyword Explorer
- Content Research - it helps you discover content ideas and link opportunities with the aid of their Content Explorer
- Rank Tracking - Amazingly helps you track your ranking progress with their Rank Tracker tool.
To use the Ahrefs backlink auditing tool, simply type on the search bar ahrefs.com. If you don’t have an account, sign up and get to the backlink research section. The tool is easy to use, it’s punch-and-go stuff like Semrush.
The next tool we will look at is the Google search console.
Google Search Console
The Google search console is the godfather of all. Free and under-utilized tools in the industry. In fact, all other tools generate their data from the Google search console. If you know how to perform an SEO audit for a website, this tool will be your best.
A fact also proven by many SEO experts and gurus is that it provides the most up-to-date information. So, you may want to try it out. To get started with the tool, simply type on your search bar “Google Search Console” and click on the first link that shows up on Google SERPs. It will take you here, the image below
Another amazing tool we are looking at is the Majestic SEO tool.
Majestic SEO
As the name Majestic is a quick and easy backlink auditing tool that majestically provides a ton of info at a go. This tool helps you carry out a variety of SEO auditing for your website. Stuff like backlink campaigns, site explorer for keywords, link indexation, and more.
Majestic’s big index database helps to provide a handful of metrics that can help you make informed decisions to grow your brand.
To use Majestic, kindly open your browser and type majestic.com. You’ll see the interface shown below.
It is FREE to create an account in a matter of minutes. You can decide to upgrade in the future to have access to some key features.
The last backlink auditor tool we will look at is the Moz. Let’s go there!
Moz
Moz has one of the most robust and user friendly SEO tools for SEO link audit. The backlink analysis features see metrics to any website in seconds. Some of the outstanding features of Moz SEO tools include
- Keyword Research
- Backlink Analysis
- Rank Tracking
- Site Audits
The Moz backlink analysis tool is second to none in the industry. It helps you see index backlinks to all sites in seconds. To use the Moz backlink auditing tools, type in the search bar moz.com and it takes you to this page.
What’s more, the keyword research tool helps you discover thousands of keywords to target. Plus, it also provides you with competitor research and keyword difficulty.
Having seen the various backlink auditor tools, it is recommended that you stick to one for data's sake. If you’re not too a pro with data analysis, you may get confused and things will be messed up. Additionally, you can improve your knowledge of SEO if you learn how to build backlinks the right way.
Conclusion
Doing a backlink audit of your website will give you a handful of data to make informed decisions. Of course, tools make your work easier when it comes to data and link building.
Semrush, Ahrefs, Google Search Console, Majestic, and Moz are some of the robust tools in the industry available for SEO on-page and off-page audits. Stick to the tool that provides you with the best data and results. You can upgrade to any of the subscriptions that best suits your needs.
Now you can go ahead to do your backlink audit without stress, huh? Let's go there! Need articles like this? Contact the author!
How To Do A Backlink Audit: What is A Complete 2024 Guide?
The following steps will help you do a complete backlink audit in 2024
- Check for manual actions
- Look out for spammy and toxic backlinks
- Observe your site spam score
- Check the ccTLD distribution to your site
- Review all your anchor text
How to Do a Basic Backlink Audit?
To do a basic backlink audit, first
- Choose the backlink auditing tools to use.
- Look out for the total number of backlinks that point to your domain
- Identify the referring domains to your website
- Compare the link ratio to your competitors
- Now do a competitor backlink gap analysis
- Analyze the quality of each linking to your domain
- Look out for toxic and spammy backlinks
- Look out for the content with the most link
- Check for 404 errors pages
- Look out for any negative SEO attacks from competitors
- Check your country code top-level domains for
- Analyze every anchor text your backlinks are housed
- Compare the various backlinks your site has
Backlink Audit: How to Analyze Your Backlink Profile?
To analyze your backlink profile, do the following
- Get the complete list of all your backlinks
- Identify the backlinks in your profile
- Compare the links to your competitors
- Highlight potentially dangerous backlinks
- Do a recheck of the backlinks manually
How long does a backlink audit take?
Depending on your knowledge of SEO, a complete backlink audit can take anywhere between 5 - 10 hours. In fact, you can do a backlink audit in less than 5 minutes depending on your goal of the audit. Following all the approaches and tools discussed above
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