Once every year, we’re supposed to go to the doctor for our routine checkup. Notice how we said supposed to? Routine checkups are an important part of staying healthy. It allows your doctor to benchmark your vitals, diagnose potential health issues, and provide recommendations to remedy your health issues.
In search engine optimization (SEO), a backlink audit is very similar. A backlink audit allows an SEO to meticulously comb through a website’s links to identify harmful referring domains. It ensures your website stays in optimal “health,” avoiding penalties and maintaining its vitality in search rankings. In this article, we’ll dive further into what backlink audits are, how often you should do them, and the steps necessary to complete one.
What’s a backlink audit?
First, let’s start with the basics and answer the most important question: What is a backlink audit?
A backlink audit is a comprehensive check of all the backlinks pointing to your website. To do this particular exercise correctly, an SEO should manually review the potentially toxic or confirmed toxic backlinks pointing to your website. Many tools, like Semrush or Ahrefs, have an algorithm they use to determine whether or not a backlink is harmful to your website, but they aren’t always correct. So, it’s important to manually review each one to confirm if it’s, in fact, toxic.
Once you’ve completed your thorough check of any toxic backlinks pointing to your website, the next step is to compile them into a disavow file. A disavow file is a simple TXT file that allows you to communicate directly with Google’s search algorithm, telling it which backlinks to ignore when evaluating your site.
To sum everything up, a backlink audit at a very high level is a simple, three-step process:
- Manually review all toxic backlinks that are linking to your site
- Compile all those shameful links into a TXT file
- Upload that file into Google Search Console
How do I create a disavow file?
You may also be wondering, how do I create a disavow file? Luckily, disavow files are pretty simple to create and many times, SEO tools like Semrush will generate them for you automatically, so you don’t have to do much. But, just so you are aware, disavow files must be formatted very specifically. Here’s how to structure your disavow file:
- Use one line per domain and URL you’d like to disavow
- Utilize domain: to disavow a domain or subdomain
- For example, domain:example.com or domain:fun.example.com
- Use # to leave comments for other humans who might be viewing your file
- For URLs, simply separate them from your list of domains with a # comment and begin listing the full URLs, one per line
Here’s what your disavow should look like:
Now, let’s dive into how often you should complete a backlink audit.
How often should you complete a backlink audit?
I’m sure you’d love to hear this answer: It depends.
Determining how often to complete a backlink audit is difficult. This is primarily because each website is different. Some might have a huge problem with link spam, while others may get spammy links every once in a while.
If we were to answer this question honestly, we’d recommend doing a backlink audit at least one to two times per year. However, we also recommend scheduling your SEO software to review your backlinks once every week so you can keep a close watch over your toxicity score. Doing this will give you a fresh look at your toxicity score regularly so you can complete an audit if things get out of hand.
Why backlink audits are important
We assume that if you are reading this article, you are probably aware of the importance of backlinks within organic search. However, if you aren’t, we’ll give you a quick crash course that’ll help contextualize the importance of backlink audits.
Backlinks are votes of popularity in the eyes of search engines. While they aren’t the end-all-be-all, it’s said they hold a significant amount of weight in organic search because it’s Google’s way of determining the authority in the niche you occupy.
Now, back to backlink audits!
If backlinks are important, then what happens when you get toxic ones?! Well, that’s up to Google to decide. If they see you getting tons of spammy or toxic backlinks from questionable websites, then Google can dish a penalty if they feel you are gaming the algorithm. So, backlinks are an important safety net, allowing you to communicate directly with Google and keep your website’s authoritative perception in good standing.
Allow us to add a caveat: While we say backlink audits are an important safety measure to follow when implementing an organic search strategy, Google’s search algorithms are pretty smart. Thus, while you are completing your backlink audit and discovering all these spammy-looking backlinks you didn’t build, it’s important to note that Google has (or will) likely ignore them to begin with.
Google understands that you can’t control who links back to you, whether good or not, so they have already ignored some of the websites in your disavow file. With that said, backlink audits are still a good safety net!
How to complete a backlink audit (in Semrush)
Now, let’s jump into what you came here for: a step-by-step guide to running a backlink audit in Semrush!
Before starting a backlink audit, you’ll want to ensure you have the tool properly configured in Semrush. To set it up, go to this URL: https://www.semrush.com/backlink_audit/
Find your project within the Backlink Audit project interface, and select the blue ‘Set up’ button. After you’ve clicked the setup button, you’ll be directed to the Backlink Audit settings panel. Here’s a brief overview of each of the settings to help you decide how to configure it for your project:
- Campaign scope: Select ‘Root domain’ for your campaign scope. This tells Semrush to analyze every link pointing to all subdomains on ‘example.com’ rather than ‘www.example.com’ or only ‘example.com’
- Brand settings: Thoroughly list out every brand name that the company uses.
- Domain categories: Select each category the domain is related to (i,e. Arts & Entertainment, Home & Garden, Science, etc.)
- Target countries: Select the country your website belongs to or the country you are trying to optimize for.
Once you’ve filled out these settings, select “Start Backlink Audit.” You may also want to provide Semrush access to Google’s backlink database so the tool can be connected to Search Console. Learn more about how to do that here.
Step 1: Manually analyze all toxic links
After setting up the tool, manually analyze each backlink Semrush identifies as toxic. Remember, we do a manual review because sometimes Semrush will tag acceptable links as toxic. We don’t want to tarnish our authority by accidentally disavowing an acceptable link. So, do your due diligence, use your best judgment, and only disavow the links that look like spam.
To add spammy backlinks to your disavow file, click the checkbox left of the link, then click the blue ‘Disavow’ button. This will automatically add the backlinks you selected to the Disavow tab, where you can generate your TXT file. Alternatively, if you’d like to whitelist backlinks that appear to be harmless, select each of them, then click the gray ‘Whitelist’ button
Pro tip: As you begin your review, you’ll start to pick up on patterns within the anchor text or URL path. Spammy links usually have one of these in common while having a different domain name. So, if you catch on to that pattern, cautiously disavow all the links that follow that particular pattern.
Step 2: Export your disavow file in TXT file format
After you’ve manually reviewed each of the backlinks, it’s time to export them as a TXT file. Luckily, this is one of the easiest parts of running a backlink audit. Semrush makes it easy to click a single button to export your spammy backlinks into a neatly organized TXT file.
All you have to do is go to the Disavow tab in the Backlink Audit tool.
Then, press ‘Export to TXT’ and voila! You’re now ready for the third step.
Step 3: Upload the disavow file to Google Search Console
The final step in the Backlink Audit process is to upload to Google Search Console. Simply make your way over to Google Search Console’s Disavow Links portal.
Select the web property for which you’d like to disavow links. Once the property is selected, grab the .txt file you downloaded from Semrush and press upload. Boom, you’ve officially completed your first Backlink Audit.
Spammy links be gone!
Now you know how to run (and read) a backlink audit! Backlink audits are a lot like routine checkups with your doctor. You should do them 1-2 times per year, and it’s an excellent way to check in on your website health and address any issues it might be having. As you saw, backlink audits are a simple 3-step process, so don’t forget to do it. If you don’t have time, simply schedule an appointment with the SEO doctors at Redefine!
