Without a backlink analysis, you’re robbing your website of an opportunity to maximize its potential, and you risk losing it to harmful backlinks.
The importance of a backlink analysis goes beyond assessing the number of backlinks on your website up and over to the quality.
It helps you to:
- Evaluate the number, quality, and relevance of links.
- Understand how those links affect your search engine ranking, and
- Identify issues or opportunities to improve your backlink profile
But how do you do it and when? In this article, we’ll take you through a backlink analysis guide. The goal here is to ensure you can undertake this process, and make important strategic decisions for your business.
…how will that impact your website?
Let's find out.
What is Backlink Analysis in SEO
Backlink analysis is an assessment of the type and number of links directed to your website from other sites.
This can be done manually by going through each backlink one by one or you can opt for a much easier and time-saving method of using tools such as the:
- Legiit GMSD dashboard tool
- SEMrush, and
- Ahrefs.
Different tools have different features and allow you to measure different metrics. The best backlinking tools are the ones that fit all your needs so while going for backlink analysis tools, consider:
- Your goals, and
- Your budget as some tools are paid while others are free.
When should you Perform a Backlink Analysis?
If other websites can link back to your website without your permission, it means that they can also add bad backlinks to it.
Therefore, conducting a backlink analysis should be a regular activity as long as your website is active.
Some circumstances might require you to perform a backlink analysis on the spot.
Such include:
- Receiving a penalty from Google.
- A sudden decline in organic traffic.
- A change in Google's algorithm.
- A drop in search engine ranking.
- Starting a link building campaign.
All these are signs that your website is stuffed with bad backlinks and a thorough backlink analysis will allow you to filter out good from bad backlinks and prevent severe damage to your website.
Why Should You Conduct a Backlink Analysis
For other websites to link back to you it means that your site:
- Has high-quality content that relates to your audience.
- Commands high authority in its niche.
- Offers valuable and up-to-date content.
- Has credibility and trust.
These qualities attract more readers to your website which converts to organic traffic. Since Google uses backlinks as indicators of a website's worthiness it will reward your website with a higher ranking on SERPs for more readers to find easily.
These and so many more benefits can be brought about by good backlinks.
A backlink analysis will help you find such links on your website and invest in them.
Other reasons to perform a backlink analysis include:
#1 Identify high-performing content
As we said, high-quality backlinks are generated as a result of various reasons, one of them being high-quality content.
If you published an article on a certain topic and it got several good backlinks it means that your content is resonating with your audience and has some value to offer.
A backlink analysis will help you identify that on your website. From there you can create more similar content to that and increase the visibility and performance of your website on search engines. With time this might convert to sales and bring in a great ROI.
#2 Improve site traffic and ranking
Organic traffic and search engine ranking are two of the most coveted aspects by anyone with a website.
These two are largely influenced by how your readers interact with content within your website and the website itself in general.
If more people are naturally visiting your website for its valuable and helpful content, the higher you will rank on SERPs—and high-quality backlinks are known to indicate relevancy.
Backlink analytics will show you how many backlinks are on your website and how good they are.
A huge number of high-quality backlinks will attract more readers to your website from the source website which will then increase your organic traffic and ranking on search engines.
The opposite is also true for low-quality backlinks.
A backlink Analysis will help you identify toxic backlinks where you can remove them and make room for better ones that will improve your organic traffic and ranking.
#3 Identify Good and Bad Backlinks
Good backlinks are backlinks naturally generated to your website from other sites.
Such sites are mostly relevant to your niche and have high domain authority. Good backlinks can come from:
- Referral or resource sites
- HAROs, or trusted directories.
Bad backlinks on the other hand are links generated to your website in a malicious and manipulative way.
Such backlinks are blacklisted by Google and might lead to a penalty as they are considered manipulative. Most of them originate from suspicious websites such as PBNs and spammy sites.
The good thing is a backlink analysis can help you tell apart a good backlink from a bad one by revealing its toxicity levels or potential toxicity.
These types of metrics can be found in backlink analysis tools such as SEMrush.
#4 Uncover Opportunities
There are numerous opportunities beneath backlink analytics. They can vary from potential backlinks to potential clients depending on what metrics you're focusing on and your business goals.
An assessment of your competitor's website, for example, can lead you to other potential backlinks within their site.
By analyzing the type of backlinks they have and filtering the high-quality ones you can grab yourself a chance to get similar backlinks from the same websites that linked to them. This will come easy as you're both in the same niche.
It can also lead you to high-quality websites within your niche that you're likely to partner with in link building strategies such as guest posting or any other productive collaboration.
#5 Understand Your Website’s Backlink Status
A website without a single backlink is a sign that something is missing in it. Especially an established website.
Conducting a backlink analysis will reveal to you how many backlinks are on your website.
This is not to say that the more backlinks you have the better your website is but rather to say that if no one is linking to your website maybe it's time to check on:
- The quality of content you post.
- The type of content on your website.
- The relevance of your content to its target audience.
The more valuable and helpful your content is, the more high-value backlinks you'll get back to your site.
How to Do Backlink Analysis of a Website
Backlinks are key contributors to the growth and ranking of a website. This is owed to the fact that Google views high-quality backlinks as indicators of a worthy and healthy website.
However, your website can also have bad backlinks, that is, backlinks linked to your website in an unnatural way that may hurt and threaten its existence.
Now, before you start panicking there is a way to identify good backlinks from bad ones and maintain your website’s reputation—through a backlink analysis.
But how do you perform a backlink analysis?
#1 Choose The Site To Analyze
Before conducting backlink research you need to pick the website to do the Analysis.
Depending on the reason for the assessment you can choose your website or your competitor's.
A competitor backlink analysis will give you an eye into their backlink strategy, their strength and weaknesses, and opportunities to get backlinks to your website from sites that are linked to theirs. This will help you tailor better link building strategies and stay ahead of the game.
#2 Choose An Analysis Tool
After picking a website to analyze the next thing to do is to pick a backlink analysis tool to use.
Sure, you can do it manually by going through them one by one but it's time-consuming and can give you inaccurate results.
Tools such as the Legiit dashboard, Ahrefs, and SEMrush are the best for the job and will get you your desired results.
Some backlink tools are free while others are paid and offer more features and benefits.
As you pick a tool, consider your goals, the type of metrics you want to analyze, and your budget.
#3 Identify Your Backlinks
Once you've chosen a tool, what you have to do is insert the website URL of your choice and let it scan for backlinks on it.
For example, the legiit dashboard tool can show you all the backlinks generated on your website through the Legiit backlink history feature.
That’s cool, right?
With all the backlinks at your disposal, you can create a list of them in Excel for further analysis.
#4 Analyze the Location of the link
A backlink can appear in different places on a website page. The header, footer, or within the body of a content.
Backlinks that appear within the body and at the top of the page have a better chance of bringing you positive results with Google compared to links that are at the bottom of the page.
Also if the link directed to your website is surrounded by other high-quality backlinks from trusted sources, they are likely to increase the SEO value of your website.
Checking the location of your backlink will provide insights into the level of impact they have on your website.
#5 Inspect Link Quality
What makes a backlink high-quality? So many factors can be used to determine the quality of a backlink on your website.
Some of them are:
i. The relevance of a topic - A backlink about types of dog food from a website talking about pet food is considered high quality as it is relevant to the topic discussed.
ii. The domain authority of the linking website - A backlink analysis tool such as SEMrush will help you check the domain authority of the linking website to determine the quality of the backlink. The higher the domain authority the higher the quality and vice versa.
iii. The source of backlinks - Suspicious websites such as PBNs and other sites that use black hat SEO are bad sources for backlinks and can cost you a penalty from Google when detected.
It's always a good idea to avoid such websites. A backlink analysis helps you detect them early.
Using such factors as a guide will help you evaluate the quality of backlinks on your website.
#6 Assess Anchor Text
An anchor text is the highlighted text that a backlink is linked to. There are different types of anchor text with two of them termed potentially toxic due to their nature.
- Money anchor text
- Compound anchor text
Money anchor texts have the exact match keyword that your website is competing to rank for. Generic anchor texts have general terms like “click here”, “learn more”, etc.
A link to your website with a money anchor text surrounded by other money anchor texts can be labeled as a toxic backlink by Google.
This is because Google regards exact match anchor texts as manipulative tactics used for ranking on search engines (although that’s not always the case).
Assessing the anchor texts on your backlinks will help you filter out potential toxic backlinks and handle them before irreversible damage occurs.
What to do After a Backlink Analysis
After performing a thorough backlink analysis, taking the necessary measures is the next step.
Where there are toxic backlinks from spammy sites, you can reach out to the owners and request removal or disavow them using the Google Disavow tool.
For broken links, you can reach out to the owners as well and offer them your site as a better option for them to link to.
Bad anchor texts and poor backlink location you can also reach out to the owners and request them to make amends.
Whatever the case, remember to write a persuasive pitch and include valid proof and reasons for the request.
Final Thoughts
A routine check-up frequently would go a long way to improve the SEO performance of your website.
Just make sure you do it thoroughly to precision. If in doubt, you can always hire an expert to do it for you instead.
Remember, a website is a long-term investment, and owning one is just the beginning of the journey.
All the best.
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