One cannot fully explore the concept of SEO without an in-depth understanding and analysis of linking. In fact, linking is an inevitable concept in optimizing a site’s performance in search engine results. For a website to get proper recognition in the world of the internet, there must be connections to other websites. But only a backlink auditor can help you understand the quality of your links.
Unfortunately, many content creators and web developers ignore this fact and try to succeed with other aspects of SEO. People write and upload posts without proper link juice to develop a high recognition on Google search console. With each and every moment they get this wrong, the website loses its relevance and in no time, it gets lost in the crowd.
In this post, however, we’ll take the entire concept of link-building step-by-step for amateurs and professionals alike. Afterwards, we’ll have an in-depth analysis of a backlink audit with a checklist on how to carry out a basic backlink audit. If you’ve been putting up those posts and seeing no results, perhaps it’s time to call on a backlink checker or backlink auditor!
What is a Link?
How much more basic can we go than to begin where it all started? What, exactly is a “link”? A link, also called a hyperlink, is a hypertext reference that lets you jump from one web website to another.
Referring someone to a specific web website, blog entry, picture, or other digital resource is as simple as providing a web address (or “link”). A link’s primary purpose is to facilitate human interaction. By clicking it, you can quickly and easily “travel” from one spot on the Internet to another.
Of course, search engines also benefit from connections. One can say that the “spiders” they use to crawl the web use them to find new and interesting content. The term “crawling’ illustrates the movement of such search engine bots around internet content. So when you hear the term “crawl” a blog post or site, you shouldn’t find it strange.
You need links to your site from another site that has already been scanned by a computer. Such scanned sites can be described as “authoritative websites.” This is the only way your own website shows up in the search results. When launching a brand-new website, one of the most important things you can do is first link acquisition. Let’s see the different types of links you should be working on.
Types of Links to Involve in Your Link-Building Strategy
There are basically three types of links to consider when building your link profile. For a brief run-through, by “link profile,” we mean the nature and quality of the link data connecting to your site. Your link profile is what Google basically checks, favouring high-quality links to web pages of sites with domain authority.
That said, such links could either be an internal link, an external link, or a backlink. Here’s a breakdown of these different link types:
Internal Links
Internal links are links that connect a site’s audience to other posts within the domain. There are two benefits to using internal links. The first is an apparent advantage, but the second benefit is more subtle. Those who are unfamiliar with SEO and content promotion may not easily get the second – just observe closely, though.
The primary benefit is that users will spend more time on your site. You will be able to naturally lead them through your material with the help of internal links. For this reason, it is recommended that you include a link to another relevant article on your site when making a post.
Secondly, the crawlability of your website benefits from articles linked to pages within your site. This effect may not be apparent on your site at first.
Google’s algorithms will perform what’s called “indexing” on your site every once in a while. It will incorporate any new content you’ve released, such as webpages or blog entries, into the search engine’s database during this phase.
If a page is indexed in this way, it will be easier to find and retrieve in search results. A lack of indexing makes it extremely difficult for people to locate your site.
External Links
External links, as you should know, are link connections to other sites. Writers are naturally against the idea of having to include these external links in blog posts.
It’s easy to see where their speculations are coming from – why direct your writers to another platform? If you’re serious about growing your website’s audience, you wouldn’t want to send people elsewhere, would you? The whole purpose of having a website is to attract visitors, not to throw them away.
While SEO can seem like a black-and-white industry, things are rarely that simple. It is generally accepted that connecting to other websites improves rankings. In certain ways, it can help you establish credibility in your field. Hence, you should certainly include links to current studies and how-to guides written by other experts.
Lastly, you should be cautious about the quantity and quality of hyperlinks you distribute. You should also pay close attention to the type of site you’re linking to.
Backlinks
The third, the hardest to get and certainly, the most profitable type of links are a site’s backlinks. It’s also the aspect of linking we’re giving the highest focus on because of the massive impact it can have.
Backlinks are special links from other sites to your own site. It’s a way for a site to tell its audience that it trusts your article well enough to refer it to readers. When you connect an external link to another platform, to you, it’s an external link and to the site, a backlink.
To a greater or lesser extent, backlinks affect a website’s search traffic rankings. The greater the number of external connections leading to your website, the better.
There is a wide variety of backlinks you can seek out to boost your backlink profile. However, the most highly appreciated form of them from a backlink analysis is editorial links. Editorial links come from highly credited write-ups that mention a post on your site. However, even links from comments or social media links still count as backlinks. You can also create links quickly by buying links from Instalinko if you have a budget.
When you have more backlinks on your site, it produces a significant impact on search engine rankings. When other websites connect to yours, visitors will start to pour in.
Considering just how important these backlinks can get, you don’t want to leave bad backlinks or dead backlinks hanging around your site. So how do you fish out these bad backlinks and do away with them? This is where a backlink audit comes into play.
What is a Backlink Audit?
A backlink audit is a procedure of checking every link that points back to your site. It’s the process of doing a thorough run-through of the backlink data available on your site and rooting out the dead backlinks.
You should start your complete link audit by trying to find them. Afterwards, you should be able to identify the good and bad links. When that is done, you can then employ a link-building strategy to ensure every low-quality links are sound.
Let’s pretend your company has a substantial online presence, complete with a long list of linking pages. In this scenario, if you’re not experienced with conducting a backlink assessment, doing one on your own can be time-consuming and resource-intensive. In this case, you may want to consider using a third-party backlink service.
Basic Backlink Audit: 7 Simple Steps and Checklist for Beginners & Professionals
Let’s walk you through how to start backlink audit easily and conveniently. After your link profile audit, you’re bound to see significant changes on your platform. Here’s what to do:
Go Through the Pre-Audit Process
One thing you can do before beginning your assessment is to research how your competitors are using backlinks. Now, this process is not compulsory. However, it is recommended because it will provide you with valuable insight and background.
You can spend no more than 30 seconds on a Majestic or ahrefs audit of every one of your competitors. A platform like Majestic would give you the information you need on your competitors without you having to subscribe.
Simply enter your rival’s URL and hit the orange magnifying glass icon to learn more about them. The total number of external hyperlinks, referring domains, referring IPs, referring subnets, link kinds, link records, etc., are all displayed instantly. That’s a massive amount of data.
There’s no need to panic if you have no idea what any of this implies. Importantly, you can use the data about your rivals’ link profiles to better understand your own site’s link profile. Now that you have this knowledge, you can begin your in-depth assessment of your link profile.
Fish Out Any Linking Domain using Google Search Console
Find out how many backlinks are directing people to your web pages before doing anything else. Employing Google Search Console is the most convenient method. You can monitor the status of your connections with the help of Google analytics.
It’s easy to find other resources that will provide you with a rundown of your connections. However, Google has always provided the most reliable and up-to-date results.
Click “Sign In” in the upper right corner of Google Search Console (Webmasters) to access this information. After logging in, select “Search Traffic” from the menu on the left side of the Dashboard.
The next step is to select “Links to Your Site.” You can now see the grand sum of domains linking to your site. That’s not all, you can narrow down and customize the results of the website linking. You can see the websites linking to you the most in the “Who links the most” section. Discover which of your articles receive the most clicks and how such pages are connected.
Make an Analysis of the Backlink History
There are two ways to proceed with your link profile audit at this stage. Firstly, you can decide to analyze your site’s backlink profile manually. For this, you’ll have to go through each link manually and fixing dead backlinks yourself.
However, as you should expect, this process is actually tiring and you would need massive knowledge to identify negative SEO attacks. It’s possible that you’ll click on tens of thousands of websites and linked pages which is no small feat.
To make everything easier for you, you can employ the use of a backlink audit tool. Such a tool will provide you with a comprehensive backlinks report after running around the search engines for you.
Look Out for Link Penalties from Dangerous Links
Make sure none of the links is a spammy backlink penalized before diving into the data to see what you can learn. For link schemes, bad backlinks and toxic backlinks, there are both manual and algorithmic link penalties.
When the Google team performs a manual evaluation of your link profile and finds an issue, you will face manual link penalties. This could be the result of a spammy links complaint or an action on your site that causes an analyst to manually examine your link profile.
Secondly, when the current Google algorithm, Penguin, detects a problem with your link profile, it imposes an algorithmic penalty. Both will likely lower your site’s domain rating, which will in turn reduce the organic search traffic. Thus, you may be feeling the effects of link sanctions if any of your connections have been penalized.
If you’ve been hit with a connection penalty, don’t worry: there is hope. You should check first if there are any fines or fees. Check any notifications you’ve received from Google Webmasters to see if you’ve been hit with any discretionary fines. You have been manually punished if you have received this notification.
It can be more challenging to identify algorithmic fines because Google typically won’t alert you to their presence. Nonetheless, a significant decline in your organic traffic is a clear indication of an automated punishment.
Fixing Dead Backlinks, NoFollow Links, Toxic Backlinks and Other Low-Quality Links
Once you have completed your link profile assessment, the next step is to develop a strategy for link building. Do not neglect this procedure as the goal is to ensure your backlink profile compares to that of your competitors.
A link profile audit is fantastic. However, it serves no purpose if no action is taken. There are SEOs out there who can make up a fantastic link assessment. However, they are unprepared to deal with the issues when the time arrives.
The last 15 minutes of your link assessment are crucial. You will not only have access to the relevant data, but you will also outline a strategy for improving your search engine results. This is a very basic procedure. The key is to prepare ahead and then follow through.
We can simplify this into a few key steps that may be relevant for you:
- Reprieve from link punishments
- Restoring broken links
- Refining your DA and PA
Let’s analyze each scenario and determine the best course of action.
Reprieve from Link Punishments
Once you’ve identified all of your toxic backlinks, getting rid of them and getting over the fines is easy-peasy. Try using Monitor Backlinks to track down any potentially harmful or lost links you may have missed.
You should begin by tracking down all of your toxic links connections. Look out for spammy links, sponsored links, and connections from sites that have been punished.
The second step is to formally request that the connections be deleted. If Google disregards your request, you’ll have to remove the harmful connections manually. This is where you can disavow links by adding them to your disavow file. Once a link is placed in the disavow file, it proves to Google analytics that you don’t need them.
Restore broken links
You should remove a connection if it comes from a defunct website.n The website “Deadlinkschecker” can be used to verify this quickly and easily. Simply input the URL of your website in the search box to locate a broken link.
Also, you should ensure the linking page doesn’t use more nofollow links when linking to your platform. Dofollow links will actually show Google that the site really wants a connection to yours. You should, therefore, work on dofollow backlinks even if it means writing to the referring domain.
Refine your DA and PA
Improving your DA and PA is a long-term plan unlike undergoing the other two processes above. Getting referral traffic from established sites in your field is a great method to boost these measures.
Get Your Next Link Building Campaign Set with Perfect Referring Domains and Dofollow Links
With a platform like Instalinko, a negative SEO attack should be the least of your problems. The platform ensures that most backlinks on your site are in favour of your backlink profile and domain authority and not spammy backlinks.
Although many would speak against paid links, with Instalinko, you can rest assured your paid links are not spammy backlinks. With topnotch services of a link audit, referring pages boost, anchor text and surrounding link text development, you’re covered. Your organic traffic and domain authority is only a call away.