Backlink analysis is an important part of a search engine optimization strategy. But it is quite difficult at the same time. There are many relevant tools which you can use for the analysis, but it can become a difficult task. However, the good thing is that you don’t really have to go a difficult path for SEO. Given below is a guide to backlink analysis by Medialinkers SEO services.
Choose the tools first. There are many options available such as:
There are many different factors to consider in a backlink analysis. Instead of wasting your energy and time, most important metrics to pay attention to are as follow:
This is an important backlink metric. It’s really important to analyze the isolation. There are a number of total links which don’t tell you how strong a site is, as majority of links could come from a low quality domain. You need to monitor the total number of links, but you need to take the unique domain number also in consideration while doing it.
By analyzing the number of unique domains, it will indicate how competitive a site is. The best case is to have the same number of links vs. the unique domains, but it’s obvious to fetch more links than domains. As a thumb rule, 100 links from 100 different sites is much better than 1000 links from a same site.
Keep a track of using anchor text. Check out the different keywords it is optimized for including branding and diversity. Ever since the Penguin 2.0 update, it has become important to use a variety of anchor text for your brand opposed to the keywords to rank for. Check the variety of anchor text in your backlink profile.
This metric indicates that your current link building strategy is working. Track the unusual spikes in incoming and fresh links. Check to see if they are a red flag for your site as can indicate unnatural link building strategies as part of competitors. Also, track the links of competitors. Monitoring their links will help in discovering the new linking opportunities which you need to take advantage of.
Evaluating the link quality of your competitor’s website is also a good way to determine the kinds of healthy, low-risk links you should try to garner, as seen below in the chart from SpyFu:
There are tools which will help in figuring out the link quality; however none will offer as much depth as possible manually. Given below are the types of backlinks you need to avoid:
After analyzing the important metrics, you need to clean the bad links in the backlink analysis issue. There is a disavow feature in the Google search console which you can use to ensure the low quality links are not counted by Google’s algorithm. However, use this feature with caution and not before manually seeking out webmasters to remove links. If thing don’t work out then use Disavow tool.
Cleaning up the broken links is also important part of SEO backlink plan. Also run an alert to know the number of 404 pages to fix them. Fixing broken links helps in improving the conversions and UX. This also affects site quality rankings according to Google’s search quality guidelines.
Analyze your competitors in detail to link to sources they have linked to. There is a tool known as The Common Backlinks Tool using which you can analyze your competition accordingly. Backlink analysis might seem like a complicated process, but has many benefits, if done properly. Instead of following a detailed guide and unnecessary SEO tips, just focus on the tips mentioned above to audit your backlinks.
