What’s the search engine ranking of your latest post? Don’t cheat and go look it up on your favorite search engine! If you don’t trust the content you’re posting to appreciate in the rankings in a relatively short period of time, then you need to audit your backlinks and ensure that the ones you have in place are working for you rather than against you.
Not all hyperlinks are created equal. SEO experts used to recommend trying to get as many sites linking back to you as humanly possible. We now know that is not the way to go about building your backlink profile. At Backlink Patrol, we’re always on the lookout for new ways to monitor your links and clean out those that aren’t doing you any favors (or could even be hurting your rankings!). That’s why we put together this simple six-step process to perform a backlink audit.
In many cases it takes just 15 minutes!
1) Pull Backlinks from Various Sources
You’re probably already examining your backlinks from resources like Google Analytics. However, you’ll also want to take a look at the Alphabet’s other option, which is the Google Search Console. Otherwise, you might be missing out on some links that aren’t listed in the more popular research option. On top of this, you’ll want to check results from other search engines like Bing and DuckDuckGo.
2) Purge Irrelevant Off-topic Backlinks
At times, you’ll find that you have backlinks that flat out don’t make sense. Whether due to the actions of wayward bots or mere human error, these irrelevant links are functionally junk. As soon as you have your list of backlinks to audit, you’ll want to glean these right off the top.
3) Check for Cookie-cutter Anchor Text
Having anchor text that doesn’t support or promote the quality of your links doesn’t make much sense. Look for things that are either carbon copies of things which have been used in links before or, alternatively, text that’s flat out spam. In either case, you’ll want to change these since search engines have a tendency to rate anything down that isn’t natural.
4) Note Any Signs of Link Manipulation
In today’s climate, web administrators are starting to become nearly paranoid over the possibility of getting associated with a link scheme. You don’t have to worry about it as long as you take some time to clean things up during your next backlink audit. Simply pay attention to anything that looks awry after you’ve purged out off-topic and cookie-cutter hyperlinks. This should greatly reduce the risks that you’ll get caught up in one of these schemes, which tend to be at least partially automated. Since you’re trying to run a clean guest blogging operation, completing this step will go a long way to maintaining your public image.
5) Weed Out Dead Links
The web moves fast, and it’s a good chance that many links your profile is pointing to no longer exist. Purge any of these dead links out to keep your profile up-to-date. Some people prefer to do this first, but it’s usually easier to find links that are no longer active once you’ve purged other types of junk.
6) Find Out Which Countries Your Links Come From
Natural traffic will generally come to your site from users in the same country you’re promoting your business in. Once you have your profile under control, take a look at where backlinks are coming from. If you’re mostly surviving on links placed on overseas sites, then it might be time to rethink your strategy.
Streamlining Your Workflows with a Monitoring Tool
Should you ever have to sit through a long and complicated backlink audit you’ll be glad to know that an efficient backlink monitoring tool can make this process that much easier. Backlink patrol can offer valuable analytics and metrics as well as immediate information about all of your landing pages. Contact us online when you’re ready to revolutionize the way you monitor and maintain your backlink profile.