A backlink audit is a structured review of the links pointing at your website, done to find three things: links that help you, links you’ve lost or broken, and link patterns that could get you in trouble with Google. The output is a decision for every referring domain. Keep it, reclaim it, fix the page it points to, ignore it, or in rare cases disavow it.
Most audits I see stop at a scary “toxic” score and a disavow file. That’s the wrong way round. In my experience the biggest wins in a backlink audit are boring ones, like a page with dozens of links that now returns a 404. Below is the exact order I work in, the conditions that change the answer, and an audit sheet you can copy.
When Do You Actually Need a Backlink Audit?
Not every site needs one every month. I run a full audit when one of these is true:
- Search Console shows a manual action for unnatural links.
- Someone bought links, ran a link scheme or used a cheap “SEO package” on the site before you.
- You’re about to migrate, redesign or delete a lot of pages.
- You just took over a site and have no idea what’s pointing at it.
- Organic traffic dropped and you want to rule links in or out.
If none of that applies, a light check once or twice a year is plenty. Honestly, for a small business site with a clean history, the audit is mostly about finding broken pages and lost links, not about defending against spam.
The Four Conditions That Decide What You Do
Before touching any data, I answer four questions. They decide which branch of the process you follow later.
- Is there a manual action? If yes, the audit becomes a cleanup project with a deadline. If no, you have far more freedom to ignore junk.
- Did anyone build links on purpose in the past? Paid posts, link exchanges and automated tools leave patterns. A site with no link building history rarely has anything to clean.
- Do pages with links now return errors? This is where lost value hides, and it’s the easiest fix you’ll find.
- Do your anchors look natural? A profile where most links use the same money keyword tells a story you can’t hide.
Keep those answers next to you. I’ll refer back to them in the decision steps.
Step 1: Pull Your Link Data From Search Console
Start with Google’s own data. In Search Console, open the Links report. It shows your top linked pages, top linking sites and top linking text, plus internal links.
Know its limits before you trust it. Google’s Links report documentation says plainly that it “isn’t a comprehensive list of every link on your site” and shows a sample. Tables are capped at 1,000 rows, so bigger sites get truncated views.
The exports go deeper. “Latest links” gives you up to 100,000 rows sorted by discovery date, and “More sample links” gives up to 100,000 rows sampled from Google’s full link set. I download both, because they overlap only partly.
Two more gaps matter. The report doesn’t tell you whether a link is nofollow, and it may still list links that were removed or pages that no longer exist. So treat it as a starting list, not a verdict.
Should You Add a Third-Party Tool?
I usually do. Commercial backlink tools run their own crawlers, so they find links Google’s sample skips, and they track new and lost links over time, which Search Console doesn’t. Pick whichever one you already pay for. For this job the differences between them matter less than people think.
Just remember that a third-party index is a different crawler’s view of the web. It isn’t Google’s view, and its authority or spam scores are that vendor’s guesses. I use the tool for discovery and history, then make decisions myself.
Step 2: Clean the List and Group It by Referring Domain
Raw exports are messy. The same page links to you from paginated archives, tag pages and print versions, and each shows up as a separate row.
Here’s how I clean it:
- Merge all exports into one sheet and remove exact duplicates.
- Strip tracking parameters and normalize http, https and www versions.
- Remove your own properties, like a second domain or your staging site.
- Collapse everything to the referring domain level, with a count of links and the pages they point to.
Grouping by domain is the step people skip, and it’s the one that makes the audit manageable. Ten thousand links often come from a few hundred domains, and one sitewide footer link can be thousands of rows on its own. If the difference is fuzzy, my post on backlinks vs referring domains explains why the domain is the unit that matters.
Step 3: What Should You Look For in the Link Data?
Now sort the domain list and look for four things. Each one leads to a different action, so tag each domain in a single column as you go.
Link-Scheme Patterns
I work from Google’s own definition. Its spam policies describe link spam as “the practice of creating links to or from a site primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings.” The examples include “Exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links”, “Low-quality directory or bookmark site links” and “Widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites”.
In an audit, those patterns show up as clusters. Dozens of unrelated blogs that all link with keyword anchors. Sites whose “write for us” page lists prices. Footer links across a network of sites with the same template. One odd link is noise. A pattern is a signal.
Anchor Text That Looks Engineered
Look at the top linking text table. Natural profiles are dominated by your brand name, your URL and generic phrases like “this guide” or “their website.”
If an exact commercial phrase like “best plumber Chicago” makes up a big share of your anchors, somebody placed those links. I don’t use a magic percentage here, because no official one exists. I compare against how real people would naturally refer to the business.
Lost Links Worth Reclaiming
This needs a third-party tool with history. Filter for lost links from domains that were relevant and editorial, the kind you’d love to earn again.
Then check why each one disappeared. Sometimes the page was updated and the link was cut. Often the link still exists but points at a URL on your site that you moved without a redirect. Those are the easiest reclaims in SEO.
Broken Pages That Still Have Links
In the Links report, open top linked pages and check each target’s status. Any page with external links that returns a 404 or 410 is throwing value away.
The fix is a 301 redirect to the closest relevant live page. I don’t dump them all on the homepage. Google’s 404 guidance calls that move “problematic,” and it’s one of the classic causes of a soft 404.
Step 4: Decide What to Do With Each Domain
This is the decision tree. Go domain by domain, and take the first branch that fits.
If the link is relevant and live, keep it and move on. Most of your list lands here, and that’s good news.
If a good link is lost or points at a broken URL, reclaim it. Redirect the dead URL first, since that fixes every link to it at once. If the linking site removed the link during an update, a short, polite email pointing out the new URL works surprisingly often.
If the link is junk you didn’t build, ignore it. Scraper sites, auto-generated stat pages and random directories point at every site on the internet. Google’s own disavow documentation says “most sites will not need to use this tool,” because Google can usually assess which links to trust. Whether third-party “toxic” scores mean anything is a separate question, and I’ve answered it in toxic backlinks.
If the link is part of a scheme someone built for you, try to remove it. Ask the site owner to delete it or add rel=”nofollow” or rel=”sponsored”. Keep a log of who you contacted and when.
If you have a manual action, or clear scheme links you can’t remove, then the disavow file comes into play. Google says to consider it only when you have a considerable number of spammy, artificial or low-quality links and they have caused, or likely will cause, a manual action. The step-by-step procedure lives in my guide on how to disavow backlinks.
Decision Matrix
| If the domain is… | And… | Then |
|---|---|---|
| Relevant, editorial, live | Anchor looks natural | Keep. No action. |
| Relevant, editorial | Link lost or target 404s | Reclaim: 301 the URL, then email if needed |
| Low quality, not built by you | No manual action | Ignore |
| Paid or scheme link you built | No manual action | Ask for removal or rel=”sponsored”/nofollow |
| Paid or scheme link you built | Manual action present | Remove what you can, disavow the rest, request review |
| Sitewide footer or widget link | Commercial anchor | Ask for removal or nofollow; disavow only if it’s part of a pattern you created |
For scoring one link at a time, use my backlink quality checklist. The audit works at domain level. The scorecard works at link level.
The Backlink Audit Sheet (Copy and Use)
Use one row per referring domain. The action column should only ever contain one of six values, so you can filter and count at the end.
| Referring domain | Links | Top target URL | Sample anchor | Link type | Target status | Pattern flag | Action | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| example-news.com | 2 | /pricing-guide/ | “this pricing breakdown” | Editorial | 200 | None | Keep | |
| oldpartner.org | 14 | /services/ | “your brand name” | Partner page | 404 | None | Fix-301 | Redirect to /our-services/ |
| randomstats.xyz | 1 | / | “yourdomain.com” | Scraper | 200 | None | Ignore | |
| paidblog.net | 3 | /widgets/ | “buy blue widgets” | Paid post | 200 | Paid, exact anchor | Remove | Emailed 2026-09-30 |
Copy this CSV into any spreadsheet:
referring_domain,links,top_target_url,sample_anchor,link_type,target_status,pattern_flag,action,contacted_on,notes
example-news.com,2,/pricing-guide/,this pricing breakdown,editorial,200,none,keep,,
oldpartner.org,14,/services/,your brand name,partner page,404,none,fix-301,,redirect to /our-services/
randomstats.xyz,1,/,yourdomain.com,scraper,200,none,ignore,,
paidblog.net,3,/widgets/,buy blue widgets,paid post,200,paid+exact anchor,remove,2026-09-30,
Allowed actions: keep, reclaim, fix-301, ignore, remove, disavow-candidate. The rows above are illustrations of the format, not real sites.
Edge Cases That Change the Path
- You inherited the site. Treat past link building as unknown. If the anchors and paid patterns show up, assume they were built on purpose and follow the “built for you” branch.
- A competitor points spam at you. Google says it can usually assess which links to trust on its own. Without a manual action, I log it and move on.
- The link is paid but disclosed. A sponsorship link with rel=”sponsored” follows Google’s rules. Keep it, and don’t count it as a ranking asset.
- You’re mid-migration. Pull the top linked pages list before the move, and map every one of them in your redirect plan.
How Often Should You Run a Backlink Audit?
For most small and mid-sized sites, I’d do a full audit once a year and before any migration. In between, a quarterly glance at top linked pages for 404s catches the problem that costs the most.
If you’re actively building links, check new links monthly. That’s not paranoia. It’s how you spot a vendor quietly placing links in places you never approved.
When to Bring In Help
If you have a manual action for unnatural links, or you know links were bought on a large scale, get someone who has filed reconsideration requests before. The review wants documentation of removal attempts, and a sloppy first request slows everything down.
For everyday cases, you can run this audit yourself in an afternoon. If what you find is a thin profile rather than a bad one, that’s where my team’s foundation link building fits: real brand profiles, business listings and niche directories, nothing that would show up as a pattern in your next audit. You can also ask for a free SEO audit first.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Do I Do a Backlink Audit for Free?
Use the Search Console Links report and its two exports, “Latest links” and “More sample links.” Merge them in a spreadsheet, group by referring domain and work through the decision steps above. You’ll miss lost-link history without a paid tool, but you’ll catch broken targets and obvious scheme patterns.
Does a Backlink Audit Always End With a Disavow File?
No. For most sites I audit, the disavow file isn’t needed at all. Google says most sites will not need the tool. The common outcomes are redirects for broken pages, a few reclaim emails and a list of junk domains you simply ignore.
How Long Does a Backlink Audit Take?
For a small site with a few hundred referring domains, expect a few hours. Sites with a paid-link history or a manual action take longer, because every removal request needs to be sent, logged and followed up before you ask for a review.
Is a Link Audit the Same as a Backlink Audit?
People use both terms for the same job. Some teams also include internal links under “link audit.” In this guide I mean external links pointing to your site, grouped by referring domain.
Last updated: September 2026 by Mizanur Rahman
