Table of Contents Introduction Why Does My Website Need A Backlink Audit? Perks Of Performing Backlink Audits What’s The Difference between High-Quality and Low-Quality Backlinks? How to Perform a Backlink Audit? 1. Introduction There is a common misconception that the number of backlinks generated matters a lot than the quality of the backlinks earned. Well, Brain Sutter said it right, “Sadly, much of the content being published is simply not worth linking to. 75% of it is getting zero inbound links. So forget the ‘more is better’ approach to content if you want links. Go with quality instead. Your content will generate links only if it is truly exceptional—’remarkable,’ as Seth Godin would say.” Link building is still one of the most effective ways to get into the good books of Google and other search engines. But, that doesn’t mean you can build links by tricking search engines. While high-quality links can boost your website traffic and help rank you better, low-quality links could result in link penalties. Yes, not all links are good and created equal. If your website has a lot of unnatural, irrelevant, and broken links, you’ll be punished by Google, which can negatively impact your site’s performance. In the worst case, you’ll have to start from scratch. You wouldn’t want that to happen. Would you? This is when the backlink audits come into play. 2. Why Does My Website Need A Backlink Audit? Have you ever looked at your site’s backlinks? If you do so, you’ll understand the power of a good backlink. Yes, good backlinks! You can even notice some places where there are possibilities to get high-quality backlinks that could boost your website’s performance and rankings. If you haven’t done it before, then you are losing something important. Backlinks are still one of the most important ranking factors to search engines, especially Google. The more links from reliable sources, the more useful and valuable your page must be. That said, links from irrelevant or unreliable sources or spammy, also called bad backlinks, are considered as indicators of poor quality and worst service by the search engines. If your page has more bad backlinks, it significantly impacts your site’s value and authority, which often results in link penalties. You could lose your site rankings and all the efforts you have put into SEO. Practicing blackhat techniques to build links by tricking the search engines was not a big deal before the release of Penguin 4.0. But, today, it’s all about white label SEO and organic rankings. So, the search engines will punish you with link penalties if your site has more bad backlinks from unreliable resources. This is when the backlink audit comes to the rescue. You don’t have to wait till search engines’ algorithmic update to remove your backlinks. In fact, you don’t have to wait till you get the message from search engines that your site is experiencing link penalties. A comprehensive link audit could help you remove those unwanted links that are affecting your site’s ranking and performance. 3. Perks Of Performing Backlink Audits Performing a comprehensive backlink auditing is a tedious job. But, it offers a plethora of benefits. In fact, you could get to know how your link profile is doing. 4.What’s The Difference between High-Quality and Low-Quality Backlinks? The authority and trustworthiness of the link’s origin are the two major significant factors that differentiate the good links from back links. Keep in mind, if the website that is linking back to your website is relevant, popular, and trustworthy, the link you have gained will help improve your sites’ ranking. On the other hand, a bad backlink does the opposite and leads to link penalties. The inbound links which you get from a source that is unrelated to your industry or fishy are bad links. Moreover, they also come in the form of spam links. Your site needs to experience link penalties as search engines will penalize the websites that are linked to spam websites. Bad backlinks can make your site unprofessional and not worthy. Here is how you’ll be benefited by performing regular backlink audits Let’s take a look at the bad backlinks: Low-quality links could come from untrustworthy sources, but from where? Here is a list of bad sites that will land you in trouble with Google and receive link penalties:- Links from Cheap link services Low-quality directory sites spammy guest posts foreign language sites private blog networks blog comments sites that are known for publishing duplicate contents these sites are bad links that could actually do more damage to your website than good. Earning backlinks through good, useful content, hard work, and following white label SEO practices is the best way to boost your rankings and sustain in the world of SEO without being knocked out by your competitors. Now that you have learned the importance of backlink audit and the impacts of link penalties, you would want to know how to audit backlinks. Read on to find out. 5. How to Perform a Backlink Audit? The process of backlink audit is not as complicated as you imagine. It’s easy, simple, and fast. Here are five actionable steps:- 1. Know All the Links of Your Site The first and foremost step you need to take is to determine whether your website has bad backlinks or not. To identify those unnatural, low-quality backlinks, you need to get to know about all the links your site has. What’s the best way to run a comprehensive backlink analysis? You need to have the whole list of the links. One of the easiest ways to do it is by using a link audit tool. Link audit tools are exclusively designed to show the complete list of the links your site has. All you need to do is just add your website, and you’ll instantly get the information of all your links in one place. SEMrush Backlink checker, Sitechecker, Neil Patel’s Backlink tool, and Ahrefs Backlink checker are some of the free backlink checker tools. These tools are very simple to use. Once you add your website URL, the tool helps you figure out the number of links your site has, from where you have earned those backlinks, and determine whether it’s good or bad for your website. 2. Identify Toxic Links This is one of the easiest ways to dig up the bad links and remove them from your website. A high number of links is not good, and that’s why it is essential to do your initial search thoroughly with a more targeted look at your website’s profile. By identifying the toxic links, you get an opportunity to improve the overall health of your site and backlink profile. After auditing and if you find poor links that are negatively impacting your site’s performance, it’s time to act. 3. Contact the Website from Where You Have Earned Backlinks There is no magic wand to remove the bad links and immediately solve all your problems with low-quality links. Yes, you need to be very patient as you have to contact the website owner in order to fix the issue. For example, if you are into the hotel industry and run a high-quality blog on tips to increase sales and manage a hotel. But, your latest blog post is linked to a website that is entirely different from your industry. Of course, you don’t want those links. But, you couldn’t remove the link without the permission of the webmaster. You need to take time, research well, and figure out how you could contact the webmaster and request them to remove the link to your blog. This could take even weeks and months, so you need to be calm to solve the problem. 4. Disavow Links Which You Can’t Remove Google’s Disavow Tool is an excellent way to deal with backlinks. In fact, it’s a huge benefit for webmasters who can’t control their low-quality, poor, and bad backlinks. Although it’s not the first step in dealing with links, it comes in handy when you can’t remove the links that harm your website. Before you disavow links, determine which links are bad and good. Make a list that includes the domain of the links and then submit each individual link to Google. Ensure the list is comprehensive and consists of all the bad links that you couldn’t remove. 5. Prepare for the Future Link Building Knowing who is linking to your website will help build the link easier in the future. Analyze your past high-quality links as it is a good indicator of who is interested in your site’s topic, your content is valuable, has an audience that is relevant to your site. Knowing who is interested in your niche and how to attract the audience are valuable and useful when it comes to link building, as these factors play a significant role in determining the value of the link. Take Away We have discussed briefly the pros and cons of high-quality and low-quality backlinks and how to perform backlink audits. Keep in mind that Google is watching you and paying attention to your links on other websites. So, you should also. It is essential to monitor your links regularly and improve your rankings on Google and other search engines. There are several ways to build the links naturally while making sure that you don’t land in trouble with Google and link penalties. Link building cannot be done overnight as it is an ongoing process that requires a lot of patience, and more importantly, valuable contents that are useful to the users. It’s worth the efforts you have put into building the links because good backlinks can do wonders in terms of search rankings. Need help with auditing your backlinks? We could help you. Our SEO analysts are experts in finding and removing the toxic links that actually harm your website’s performance.
There is a common misconception that the number of backlinks generated matters a lot than the quality of the backlinks earned. Well, Brain Sutter said it right, “Sadly, much of the content being published is simply not worth linking to. 75% of it is getting zero inbound links. So forget the ‘more is better’ approach to content if you want links. Go with quality instead. Your content will generate links only if it is truly exceptional—’remarkable,’ as Seth Godin would say.”
Link building is still one of the most effective ways to get into the good books of Google and other search engines. But, that doesn’t mean you can build links by tricking search engines.
While high-quality links can boost your website traffic and help rank you better, low-quality links could result in link penalties. Yes, not all links are good and created equal.
If your website has a lot of unnatural, irrelevant, and broken links, you’ll be punished by Google, which can negatively impact your site’s performance. In the worst case, you’ll have to start from scratch. You wouldn’t want that to happen. Would you? This is when the backlink audits come into play.
Have you ever looked at your site’s backlinks? If you do so, you’ll understand the power of a good backlink. Yes, good backlinks! You can even notice some places where there are possibilities to get high-quality backlinks that could boost your website’s performance and rankings.
If you haven’t done it before, then you are losing something important. Backlinks are still one of the most important ranking factors to search engines, especially Google.
The more links from reliable sources, the more useful and valuable your page must be. That said, links from irrelevant or unreliable sources or spammy, also called bad backlinks, are considered as indicators of poor quality and worst service by the search engines.
If your page has more bad backlinks, it significantly impacts your site’s value and authority, which often results in link penalties. You could lose your site rankings and all the efforts you have put into SEO.
Practicing blackhat techniques to build links by tricking the search engines was not a big deal before the release of Penguin 4.0. But, today, it’s all about white label SEO and organic rankings. So, the search engines will punish you with link penalties if your site has more bad backlinks from unreliable resources. This is when the backlink audit comes to the rescue.
You don’t have to wait till search engines’ algorithmic update to remove your backlinks. In fact, you don’t have to wait till you get the message from search engines that your site is experiencing link penalties.
A comprehensive link audit could help you remove those unwanted links that are affecting your site’s ranking and performance.
The authority and trustworthiness of the link’s origin are the two major significant factors that differentiate the good links from back links. Keep in mind, if the website that is linking back to your website is relevant, popular, and trustworthy, the link you have gained will help improve your sites’ ranking. On the other hand, a bad backlink does the opposite and leads to link penalties.
The inbound links which you get from a source that is unrelated to your industry or fishy are bad links. Moreover, they also come in the form of spam links. Your site needs to experience link penalties as search engines will penalize the websites that are linked to spam websites. Bad backlinks can make your site unprofessional and not worthy.
Low-quality links could come from untrustworthy sources, but from where?
Here is a list of bad sites that will land you in trouble with Google and receive link penalties:-
Links from
these sites are bad links that could actually do more damage to your website than good. Earning backlinks through good, useful content, hard work, and following white label SEO practices is the best way to boost your rankings and sustain in the world of SEO without being knocked out by your competitors.
Now that you have learned the importance of backlink audit and the impacts of link penalties, you would want to know how to audit backlinks. Read on to find out.
The process of backlink audit is not as complicated as you imagine. It’s easy, simple, and fast. Here are five actionable steps:-
1. Know All the Links of Your Site
The first and foremost step you need to take is to determine whether your website has bad backlinks or not. To identify those unnatural, low-quality backlinks, you need to get to know about all the links your site has. What’s the best way to run a comprehensive backlink analysis? You need to have the whole list of the links. One of the easiest ways to do it is by using a link audit tool.
Link audit tools are exclusively designed to show the complete list of the links your site has. All you need to do is just add your website, and you’ll instantly get the information of all your links in one place.
SEMrush Backlink checker, Sitechecker, Neil Patel’s Backlink tool, and Ahrefs Backlink checker are some of the free backlink checker tools. These tools are very simple to use. Once you add your website URL, the tool helps you figure out the number of links your site has, from where you have earned those backlinks, and determine whether it’s good or bad for your website.
This is one of the easiest ways to dig up the bad links and remove them from your website. A high number of links is not good, and that’s why it is essential to do your initial search thoroughly with a more targeted look at your website’s profile.
By identifying the toxic links, you get an opportunity to improve the overall health of your site and backlink profile. After auditing and if you find poor links that are negatively impacting your site’s performance, it’s time to act.
There is no magic wand to remove the bad links and immediately solve all your problems with low-quality links. Yes, you need to be very patient as you have to contact the website owner in order to fix the issue.
For example, if you are into the hotel industry and run a high-quality blog on tips to increase sales and manage a hotel. But, your latest blog post is linked to a website that is entirely different from your industry. Of course, you don’t want those links. But, you couldn’t remove the link without the permission of the webmaster.
You need to take time, research well, and figure out how you could contact the webmaster and request them to remove the link to your blog. This could take even weeks and months, so you need to be calm to solve the problem.
Google’s Disavow Tool is an excellent way to deal with backlinks. In fact, it’s a huge benefit for webmasters who can’t control their low-quality, poor, and bad backlinks. Although it’s not the first step in dealing with links, it comes in handy when you can’t remove the links that harm your website.
Before you disavow links, determine which links are bad and good. Make a list that includes the domain of the links and then submit each individual link to Google. Ensure the list is comprehensive and consists of all the bad links that you couldn’t remove.
Knowing who is linking to your website will help build the link easier in the future. Analyze your past high-quality links as it is a good indicator of who is interested in your site’s topic, your content is valuable, has an audience that is relevant to your site. Knowing who is interested in your niche and how to attract the audience are valuable and useful when it comes to link building, as these factors play a significant role in determining the value of the link.
We have discussed briefly the pros and cons of high-quality and low-quality backlinks and how to perform backlink audits. Keep in mind that Google is watching you and paying attention to your links on other websites. So, you should also. It is essential to monitor your links regularly and improve your rankings on Google and other search engines.
There are several ways to build the links naturally while making sure that you don’t land in trouble with Google and link penalties. Link building cannot be done overnight as it is an ongoing process that requires a lot of patience, and more importantly, valuable contents that are useful to the users. It’s worth the efforts you have put into building the links because good backlinks can do wonders in terms of search rankings.
Need help with auditing your backlinks? We could help you. Our SEO analysts are experts in finding and removing the toxic links that actually harm your website’s performance.