Is your backlink profile in peak physical condition, or is it fighting off the flu?
Whenever SEOs refer to the ‘health’ of a backlink profile, they mean more than its quality. In fact, a profile containing only high-quality backlinks actually isn’t healthy.
Why is that?
It has to do with what Google views as ‘natural’ backlinks.
In other words, Google doesn’t want you to build links just to rank higher in the search results. Instead, they want you to create outstanding content and generate backlinks based on its merit.
While some digital marketers think this means all link-building tactics are bad, this isn’t true.
As long as the links you build are valuable and come from reputable websites in your industry, you’ll be fine.
Yet, your backlink profile must appear natural to Google in order to receive a clean bill of health.
This means building a diverse profile that contains backlinks from a wide variety of sources, such as news sites, media outlets, social media profiles, directories, and forum comments.
Why do diverse links appear more natural?
They do because you’re mimicking what happens whenever users decide to link to your content organically. It’s normal for websites to accrue backlinks from social media, forums, and even low-quality sites without even trying.
So, if your link profile only contains guest posts on highly authoritative websites, it screams spam to Google.
That’s why we’re here to teach you how to create a healthy backlink profile that helps you dominate the SERPs in your industry, so stay tuned to learn more.
What are Backlinks, Anyway?
Feel free to skip this section if you’re already familiar with the importance of backlinks for SEO.
For everyone else, it’s not entirely clear what the term ‘backlink’ means when you first hear or see it.
A backlink is a link on another website that links back to your website, which is where the name comes from (linking back to you).
In the years before Google emerged (we’re talking super early internet days), search engines didn’t have a reliable way of judging the credibility and accuracy of a website’s content.
As a result, SEO was extremely simple back then. If the site contained keywords related to a user’s query, then it would appear in the search results.
The only problem was this led to a lot of unhelpful, low-quality websites showing up in the results.
While the creators of Google were still at Stanford, they devised a way to rank only high-quality websites coming from trusted sources.
In the same way a graduate student uses citations to back up claims made in their papers (such as citing a professional study or journal), websites would use backlinks to prove their credibility.
Therefore, whenever Google officially launched, backlinks were already a significant ranking factor.
For a website to rank in the top organic positions on Google, it needs relevant backlinks coming from trusted websites.
Think about it like this.
If a major publication like Forbes links to one of your articles, it’s a strong sign that your content is also trustworthy. A site like Forbes will inevitably have quality checks in place, meaning they wouldn’t link out to just anyone.
In a sense, they’re effectively endorsing your website by linking to it.
This concept persists to this day, which is why link-building is a major aspect of SEO, especially for Google (although backlinks matter on other search engines, too).
What is Backlink Management?
Backlink management is the process of monitoring, analyzing, and optimizing your site’s backlink profile. It’s different from link-building, which is the actual process of acquiring links.
Instead, backlink management is all about taking good care of the links you’ve already built.
If you just build backlinks and don’t keep track of them, all sorts of things could go wrong, including:
- The link could no longer direct to its intended page, causing a 404 Not Found
- A site owner or admin may remove the link (either intentionally or by mistake)
- Certain links may no longer be relevant and need updating (such as a link to an outdated product or service)
- You may accrue too many links of a certain type which can signal spam to Google’s algorithms
These are the main reasons why it’s crucial to manage your backlink profile, but they’re certainly not the only ones.
If you want to maintain the search rankings you worked so hard to obtain, then you’ll need to keep a close eye on your backlinks to ensure they’re still in working order.
For instance, let’s say you pick up a highly valuable backlink from a huge name like Forbes. If that link breaks and leads to an error page, the ranking power (referred to by SEOs as link juice) provided by the backlink will disappear.
This will negatively impact your search rankings.
Also, when managing your backlink profile, you should ensure that it appears as natural as possible.
Look for links coming from a wide variety of sources. If you start to build too many links of a certain type, like guest posts, slow it down and focus on building links from social media or forums to balance things out.
Don’t stress about links coming from low-quality websites
Some digital marketers freak out whenever they discover backlinks they didn’t build coming from low-quality or even downright spam sites, but this shouldn’t be a cause of concern.
It’s completely natural for websites to generate lower-quality links just by simply existing, so there’s no need to try to disavow low-quality links.
In fact, low-quality links will help diversify your link portfolio and make it appear more natural.
Google’s algorithms have become increasingly adept at spotting backlinks coming from spammy sites, and they devalue them automatically. This means low-quality links will have no impact on your search rankings, neither negative nor positive.
Google’s Disavow Tool is not something to use on a whim, as it can have devastating consequences when not used properly. As a rule of thumb, you should only disavow a link if you know for sure it will cause a manual penalty (more on this below).
So, if you analyze your backlink profile to discover numerous links coming from not-so-authoritative sites, there’s nothing to worry about.
Why is it worth investing time and resources into backlink management?
While we’ve already gone over the main reasons why backlink management is a must, it’s important to mention a few others, including:
- Protecting your website. Monitoring your backlink profile will help you identify potentially toxic backlinks before they land you a manual penalty from Google. Penalties are difficult to recover from, so it’s best to avoid them at all costs. Engaging in manipulative link tactics is never a good idea, and you should disavow any harmful links you built on purpose.
- Reclaim lost links. Whether a link is moved or unintentionally removed, managing your backlinks is the #1 way to catch broken links and reclaim them.
- Discover new opportunities. Another core aspect of backlink management is analyzing your competitor’s backlink profiles, which can yield powerful backlink opportunities for your website.
Strategies for Backlink Management
By now, it should be clear that backlink management is definitely worth the time and effort. Therefore, it’s time to learn how to put it into practice.
Here’s a look at our favorite backlink management strategies that we use every day for our clients. They’re thorough, innovative, and proven effective – so let’s dive in.
Step #1: Gather all your backlink data
First, you can’t manage your backlink profile if you don’t have the data, which means you’ll need the aid of a tool.
In this regard, you have two options:
- The paid route. There are plenty of helpful paid tools that make backlink management a breeze. These include Ahrefs (the focus of today’s article), Moz, and Semrush. While these services require a subscription fee, they’ll provide you with all your backlink data in a centralized location. You can also run countless reports and analyze your backlink data in umpteen different ways with these tools, so they tend to be worth the investment.
- The free route. That’s not to say that there are no free options out there. In fact, we offer a few free tools related to backlink management, such as our free backlink checker and domain authority checker tools. While free tools are more limited than paid tools, they’re still useful for backlink management, competitor analysis, and audits.
In this guide, we’re going to stick with using Ahrefs for backlink management.
Exporting your backlink data in Ahrefs
Here’s how to grab all your backlink data and export it as a CSV file for further analysis.
First, log in to Ahrefs and navigate to the Site Explorer tool (located in the navigation bar at the very top of the page):
Next, enter your domain name into the tool’s search bar and hit the Search button:
This will take you to the general overview of your site’s SEO statistics, but we want to see backlink data in particular. To do so, navigate to Backlink profile on the left-hand sidebar, and select Backlinks:
Now, you’ll be able to see a ton of data and metrics related to your backlinks. In the top-right-hand corner of the page, there’s a button labeled Export. Click on it.
This will direct you to the export options pop-up window. You’ll have CSV options that work best for Microsoft Excel and OpenOffice, so select the one that will work best for you.
Once this is done, you’ll have a detailed CSV file containing all your backlink data that you can easily import into spreadsheet software.
Step #2: Analyze your backlinks
Okay, now you’ve got a ton of data related to your backlinks, but what should you do with it?
The next step is to sit down and actually analyze the quality of your backlinks, and there are a few ways you can go about it.
Check each link’s Domain Authority and Domain Rating scores
We should start by saying that Google’s official domain authority metric is kept a secret, and has been for many years now.
In fact, Google claimed for a while that they didn’t measure domain authority at all, but leaked documents proved the contrary to be true.
What’s domain authority?
It’s a metric representing the likelihood of a domain ranking high on the SERPs. It’s a scale of 1 – 100, with 100 being the strongest.
Since Google’s metric is kept under lock and key, third-party metrics by Moz (Domain Authority) and Ahrefs (Domain Rating) are most digital marketers’ go-to’s.
Moz’s Domain Authority measures not only a site’s backlink profile but also other crucial technical and on-page SEO factors.
Ahrefs’ Domain Rating, on the other hand, strictly measures the strength of a domain’s backlinks.
Our method is to look at a domain’s Domain Authority AND Domain Rating scores to make doubly sure it’s worth pursuing a backlink.
Relevance
This is arguably the most important quality factor for a backlink.
Why is that?
It’s because if a backlink isn’t relevant to your website, it will carry no ranking power at all. In fact, it may actually backfire because irrelevant backlinks serve no purpose to users, which may frustrate or confuse them.
Maintaining a pleasant user experience (UX) is a huge aspect of SEO, and irrelevant backlinks will negatively impact your UX.
More importantly, Google’s algorithms specifically check links for relevance, so you should only ever target links that are topically or contextually relevant to your content.
Anchor text
Google also pays close attention to the anchor text used for each backlink.
What’s that?
Anchor text refers to the text masking a hyperlink. It’s the text that’s typically blue and underlined to let users know that there’s a link they can click on.
Google wants to see diverse anchor text from your backlinks. Otherwise, they may get suspicious that you’re engaging in link schemes (trying to generate bogus links just to rank higher).
Here’s a look at the different types of anchor text:
- Exact match anchors. Whenever anchor text contains one of your target keywords and nothing else, it’s known as an exact match anchor, because it exactly matches one of your keywords. While including keywords in anchor text is a good idea, exact match anchors draw the most suspicion from Google, so you should use them the least. (i.e., using the anchor text pasta roller when your target keyword is pasta roller).
- Partial match anchors. A partial match is when an anchor contains one of your keywords but also another phrase or phrases. These are better to use because they still contain keywords but aren’t as risky as exact matches. (i.e., pasta roller deals instead of just pasta roller).
- ***** URLs. These are URLs that contain no anchor text, hence being referred to as ‘*****.’ (i.e., www.yoursite.com).
- Branded anchors. This is when you use your brand name as an anchor instead of keywords (i.e., your brand).
Do your best to include a mix of these (using partial matches and branded anchors the most) to maintain a healthy backlink profile. You can read more about ideal anchor text ratios here.
| Free tool: You can use Google Search Console (GSC) to monitor the anchor text used in your backlinks via its Links report. |
Link type (follow vs. nofollow)
Lastly, you need to distinguish between your follow and nofollow backlinks.
The follow/nofollow HTML tag lets search engines know whether to count a backlink as an endorsement of the quality of a website’s content or not. A follow tag means it will impact your rankings, and a nofollow tag means it won’t (although nofollow links still contain some ranking power, just not as much).
Google requires all self-promoted press links to contain nofollow tags, such as a press release that you create and distribute.
| Free tool: Our free backlink checker tool will let you know if a backlink is follow or nofollow. |
Step #3: Check for broken backlinks
Next, you need to set up notifications to let you know whenever you gain or lose a backlink. That way, you’ll be able to fix broken links as soon as they appear.
You’ll also quickly find out if a site owner removed one of your backlinks, either by mistake or because they chose to use another link instead (in which case you could reach out to them to try to re-establish the link).
Using Ahrefs, you can quickly view all your broken links in the Backlinks report. Once there, select the Lost filter at the top of the page:
This will give you a full list of all the links you’ve recently lost, and it will provide the reasons why:
As you can see, the tool lets you know if the link disappeared because of a crawl error, 404 Not Found, or 301 redirect, which lets you know how to resolve the issue.
You can use GSC’s Index Coverage Report to find out how to fix crawl errors. You can fix 404 Not Founds by using 301 redirects, and you can fix 301 redirects by ensuring they direct to the right page.
You can also set up Ahrefs Alerts to receive email notifications whenever you gain a backlink or lose one. The Alerts page is located under the More drop-down menu on the top navigation bar:
Step #4: Uncover new backlink opportunities
Now that you’ve fully analyzed, audited, and optimized your link profile, it’s time to use the data you’ve collected to hunt down some new backlink opportunities.
The best ways to do this include:
- Analyzing your top competitor’s backlink profiles
- Checking for unlinked brand mentions
- Fixing broken links on other websites by replacing them with your content
Let’s take a closer look at each technique.
Analyzing competitor’s backlinks
The great thing about a tool like Ahrefs (or our free tool, for that matter) is you can use it on any website, not just yours.
That means if you enter a competitor’s URL into Ahrefs Site Explorer, for example, you’ll get to peep all their SEO metrics – including their backlinks.
Why is this valuable?
It is because you can uncover all sorts of relevant backlink opportunities to pursue. After all, your competitors will share the same target audience and offer similar products, so the sites they build links from are fair game for you, too.
Opportunities to look out for include:
- Websites where competitors post guest blogs
- Sites where competitors received brand mentions and product links
- Any relevant directories you aren’t listed in
- News outlets and media sites that accept press releases
- Pieces of content that numerous sites link to
Feeding off the last point about popular content from competitors, these are opportunities to use the skyscraper technique.
It involves finding high-performing pieces of content from your competitors and then making something way better.
Once you’ve outdone their content, you can reach out to all the sites that gave your competitor backlinks. Explain that your resource is far better than yours, and ask that they replace their link with a backlink to your new piece of content.
It’s a link-eat-link world out there, so don’t be surprised if your competitors are trying to do the same thing to your top-performing content.
Checking for unlinked brand mentions
There are times when another website mentions your brand but doesn’t include a link back to your site. While the brand recognition is nice, adding a backlink would make the shout-out a thousand times stronger.
Luckily, you can use Ahrefs to track down unlinked brand mentions so that you can request a backlink via outreach.
Here’s how to do it using the Content Explorer tool (located in the top navigation bar):
Enter your brand’s name in quotes and then add this formula ‘-site:yoursite.com’ to ensure your site doesn’t appear in the results.
Here’s what it looks like:
Hit the Search button, and you’ll get to see all the sites that mention your brand. If there’s no backlink, reach out to them to request one.
Fix broken links on other websites
Your site is by no means the only one that deals with broken links, as it happens to every site online.
By finding relevant broken links on other sites (like links that direct to similar products and content as yours), you can replace them and gain backlinks.
Using Ahrefs, you can take relevant competitor sites and run them through Site Explorer to view their Broken Backlinks report:
This provides a list of all the broken backlinks appearing on a domain, saving you the trouble of having to use a crawler like Screaming Frog (although that method works, too).
Look for broken links that relate to your products, services, and content. These are the links that will be the easiest to replace. Also, ensure that the website has strong domain authority before pursuing a link.
Outrank Competitors with a Healthy Backlink Profile
We’ve covered a heck of a lot so far, so let’s recap.
You need a healthy backlink profile to rank competitively on Google, which means building a diverse link portfolio.
It also means avoiding spammy and manipulative tactics that will lead to costly penalties.
Building a healthy backlink profile means gathering your data, analyzing your backlinks, and looking for new opportunities.
Yet, the best way to enjoy a vibrantly healthy backlink profile is to do things the right way from the beginning so that there’s nothing to fix.
How can you do that?
By partnering with expert link-builders like us, of course!
We’re link-building virtuosos that can fully manage your SEO with HOTH X, and we offer a ton of other helpful products, so don’t wait to book a free consultation with us today!
