Backlinks are one of the most important factors in search engine rankings. Unfortunately, they can also be a major source of risk and hurt your ranking efforts.
Performing a regular backlink audit can help you stay safe from toxic links and keep your SEO healthy. Here are some reasons to do a backlink audit and how to get started.
Increased Traffic
Like when buying a home, performing a backlink audit is your insurance policy. It’s a way to check for damage that may have been caused by previous bad SEO practices or shady link builders and ensure you don’t end up working with someone pushing their problems onto you.
During your backlink audit, you will also examine the number of referring domains linking to your site. While this is important, it’s not as useful as analyzing the quality of those referring domains.
You will want to have fewer links pointing to your site from low-quality domains as this can cause your website to become penalized by Google. This is a manual action that can affect your entire site or specific web pages.
Increased Conversions
A backlink audit service like https://digitalcornerstone.co.uk/back-link-audit/ provides insight into your current SEO health and is crucial to achieving long-term success. It’s important to perform an in-depth audit consistently to identify any broken links, errors, or potential areas for improvement.
Using multiple tools is also recommended to ensure you have a comprehensive list of all your inbound links. This is because one tool may miss some that another will find.
By comparing your backlink profile to your competitors, you can identify potential weaknesses and improvement areas. This will help you stay ahead of the competition. Think of it as a SWOT analysis for your links. Then, create a plan to tackle any weaknesses and make sure you’re on track to reach your goals.
Increased Revenue
A backlink audit is a great way to identify links that may harm your website. Regular backlink audits are also important to ensure your link profile stays healthy.
Analyzing your competitors’ backlinks is a great way to see their SEO strategy. It can help you uncover opportunities for new outreach campaigns. You can also spot issues with your backlink profile, such as duplicate anchor text or low-quality content.
A regular backlink audit can also save you from a potential Google penalty. By identifying toxic backlinks, you can remove them from your site before it’s too late. This will protect your brand reputation and keep you in good standing with search engines. Additionally, a regular backlink audit can help you identify gaps in your link-building efforts and create an outreach list to fill those gaps.
Increased Brand Awareness
It’s no secret that backlinks are among the most important factors in Google’s search algorithm. However, it’s also important to note that not all backlinks are created equal.
A backlink audit will help you identify and remove any toxic links from your site. It will also provide you with opportunities to build high-quality links you might have yet to identify previously.
For example, if you notice that one of your competitors has an article with many links from the same referring domains, it might be worth creating a similar piece of content and then reaching out to those sites to ask for a link.
Lastly, performing a backlink audit will allow you to see if your competitors use Negative SEO against you. This is when they use spammy backlinks to harm your rankings.
Increased Customer Satisfaction
When buying a home, performing a backlink audit is an insurance policy against toxic links that could negatively impact your SEO. It’s also an opportunity to identify new opportunities for gaining high-quality links.
For example, suppose you find many referring domains from a specific country or a page with a 404 error. In that case, this is an excellent opportunity to reach out to those sites and see if they’d be interested in creating more valuable content that could attract natural links.
Furthermore, analyzing competitors’ backlink profiles can reveal new areas of opportunity, especially when a competitor has many referring domains from low-quality websites.
