How to Perform a Detailed SEO Link Analysis for Your Website

Do you have great content and a sleek web design but aren’t seeing the desired traffic? The issue could lie in your website’s link profile. A thorough SEO link analysis deepens your site's connections across the web to find ways to unleash its full potential. As soon as you address these overlooked opportunities, you are on your way to greater visibility and growth.

At tiny lever, we provide high-quality link building services and SEO link analysis. We check the quality, relevance, and number of backlinks pointing to your site to ensure you're linked to trusted domains. We can also find and remove harmful backlinks if you're concerned about penalties. On top of that, we’ll compare your backlink profile with competitors to find areas for improvement.

Leveraging our expertise in SEO and link building strategies, we will start by defining a backlink profile and why it matters for your site’s performance. From there, we’ll provide the tools to analyze your backlinks and guide you on using them effectively. After reading, you’re set to develop an actionable plan for your next link building campaign.

Let’s get started!

Step 1: Understand the Basics of SEO Link Analysis

SEO link analysis evaluates the quality and quantity of inbound and outbound links on a website. It helps identify potential toxic backlinks, areas for improvement, and opportunities for strategic link building. Businesses can improve user experience, avoid penalties, and refine link-building strategies if done right.

What Is a Backlink Profile?

A backlink profile is the collection of all external links pointing to a website. It includes the total number, quality, and relevance of backlinks directing users to a site's pages. This profile digitally represents a website's authority and trustworthiness.

Search engines, particularly Google, assess backlink profiles to determine a website's authority and relevance. Here’s how they evaluate these profiles:

Maximize your website's rankings and traffic by learning what SEO link analysis is and how it works to enhance your backlink strategy

Authority Assessment

Domain Authority: Links from high-authority domains (e.g., major news sites or respected industry leaders) hold more value. The overall authority of the linking domain impacts how much weight a backlink carries.
Page Authority: The domain and the specific page providing the backlink are also important. A page with strong content or high traffic boosts the link's value.

Relevance Analysis

Topical Relevance: Links from websites that are thematically similar or in the same niche as the linked page are more valuable. Google prioritizes links from relevant sources because they indicate a more authentic connection.
Content Context: Search engines also evaluate the context surrounding the link. If the content around the link is closely related to the topic of the linked page, the link holds more weight.

Link Quality Factors

Editorial Nature: Google favors links that appear natural as part of editorial content rather than being bought or placed for SEO purposes. These links usually come from quality, well-written content.
Diversity: A natural backlink profile contains links from various sources, such as blogs, news websites, forums, and directories. A diverse set of backlinks signals that the site is gaining organic recognition across the web.
Link Location: Links placed within the main body of content (rather than in footers or sidebars) are generally more valuable, as they are seen as more relevant to the content.

Technical Considerations

Anchor Text: The words used as anchor text (the clickable text in a hyperlink) should be varied and relevant to the linked content. Overusing exact-match keywords can appear manipulative.
Link Attributes: Links with specific attributes, like "nofollow" (which tells search engines not to follow the link), are factored into the evaluation. Links without these attributes are more valuable for SEO purposes.
Link Velocity: The rate at which a site acquires backlinks is important. An unnatural backlink spike can be seen as suspicious, while a steady, organic increase is more favorable.

Key Metrics for Analyzing Backlinks

Several important parameters can be used to assess the strength and quality of the backlink profile. Let's explore these metrics and their importance:

Domain Authority (DA): Predicts how likely a website is to rank in search engine result pages (SERPs), with scores ranging from 1 to 100. Higher scores indicate a greater likelihood of ranking. DA offers a comparative measure of a website's overall SEO strength to evaluate the quality of backlinks from different domains.
Page Authority (PA): Measures the strength of individual pages rather than entire domains. While it is not explicitly mentioned in Google search results, PA is important because it helps assess the ranking potential of specific pages and allows for a more granular analysis of backlink targets.
Link Diversity: Refers to the websites linking to a particular domain, including the types of linking websites, authority levels, and geographic locations. A diverse link profile appears more natural to search engines, reducing the risk of over-reliance on a single type of backlink.
Anchor Text: This is clickable text in a hyperlink. Having a natural and diverse anchor text profile is important because it helps search engines understand the context and relevance of the linked page. A diverse anchor text profile seems much more organic, which can help minimize the over-optimization and penalties.

Tools for Conducting SEO Link Analysis

Website owners and SEO teams can use these SEO tools to analyze links. They have features that assist in conducting backlink audits, spam detection, and competitor analysis.

Ahrefs: As one of the best SEO analysis tools, Ahref's Site Explorer provides detailed insights into a website's backlink profile and link structure. The backlink SEO checker analyzes the quantity and quality of backlinks. It also offers historical data to track link growth trends and a competitor analysis tool.
Semrush: Offers robust link analysis tools, including features like Backlink Analytics for comprehensive backlink data and metrics, Backlink Audit to identify potentially toxic links, a Link Building Tool to discover new link building opportunities and competitor backlink analysis.
Moz Pro: Its Link Explorer tool provides insights into your backlink profile, metrics like Domain Authority and Page Authority to gauge link strength, and a spam score to check for low-quality or spammy links. The Link Intersect shows which sites link to your competitors but not to you.
Google Search Console: It provides a Links report showing external and internal links pointing to your site. It can identify the pages with the highest number of connections and provide some information about anchor text in your backlinks.
Google Analytics: Offer insights into referral traffic from external links. Integrating it with Google Search Console can provide a fuller picture of your site's organic search performance, including user behavior conversion rates.

Step 2: Evaluate the Quality of Your Backlinks

The value of backlinks can vary greatly. Some links are more than others based on factors. Here’s what you need to do when assessing the quality of your backlinks:

Identifying High-Quality Backlinks

Identifying high-quality backlinks is important for your website's SEO score and performance. Here's how to evaluate backlinks for relevance, authority, and trustworthiness through SEO link analysis:

Relevance

Relevance is one of the most important factors in determining backlink quality. To assess relevance:

Examine the content theme of the linking site and web page.
Check for contextual integration of the link.
Analyze the audience overlap between the linking site and yours.

A backlink from a site within the same niche or industry is generally more valuable than one from an unrelated site. For instance, if you’re running a gardening site, a link from a popular gardening blog would be more valuable than a link from a tech news blog.

Authority

The authority of the linking site plays a crucial role in determining backlink quality. To evaluate authority:

Use SEO tools like Moz DA, Ahrefs DR, or Semrush Authority Score.
Check the linking site's backlink profile.
Look for links from trusted seed sites.

High-authority websites like major news outlets, educational institutions, and industry leaders typically provide the most valuable backlinks. For instance, a link from The New York Times or BBC would carry more weight than one from a small, relatively unknown blog.

Trustworthiness

Trustworthiness focuses on the credibility and reputation of the linking site. To assess trustworthiness:

Look for signs of quality content and regular updates.
Check for transparency, such as clear authorship and an "About" page.
Evaluate the site's overall design and user experience.

Websites that demonstrate expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) in their field are more likely to provide high-quality backlinks.

Spotting Low-Quality or Toxic Backlinks

Toxic backlinks are incoming links from low-quality, spammy, or malicious websites. They harm your site because they come from black hat SEO techniques. However, conducting SEO link analysis helps identify and disavow or remove these harmful links.

To spot low-quality or toxic backlinks, look for the following:

Low-Quality Websites: Low-quality websites can be identified by poor content, a lack of transparency, and low domain and page authority. These sites often lack HTTPS, which is used for secure connections.
Unnatural Link Patterns: Irrelevant links that don’t fit the context of the content or come from unrelated websites are a red flag. Excessive reciprocal links, sometimes natural, can also be suspicious if overdone.
Spammy Links: These are low-quality backlinks that use artificial intelligence to boost a website's search engine ranking. Most of these links are from link farms, low-rated websites, and paid links, which infringe search engine policies.

Reviewing Anchor Text Distribution

Anchor texts shouldn’t be missed in SEO link analysis. They help search engines understand the content and relevance of the linked page. While anchor text is valuable for SEO, it's crucial to maintain a natural and diverse anchor text profile to avoid penalties.

Diversifying Anchor Text Types: Diversifying anchor text types helps create a more organic link profile and minimizes over-optimization risk. This should feature branded anchors (e.g., "Nike," "Apple"), exact-match anchors (e.g., "best running shoes"), partial-match anchors (e.g., "top-rated running shoes"), generic anchors (e.g., "click here," "learn more"), and naked URLs (e.g., "www.example.com").
Anchor Text Density: The anchor text density ratio breakdown should follow these guidelines for optimal SEO performance: 75% of your links should have branded anchors, 15% should be naked URLs, 5% should be generic anchors, 4% should be LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) anchors, and less than 1% should be exact match anchors.

Best Practices for Anchor Text Optimization

Here are a few tips to keep your branded, exact-match, and generic anchor texts balanced:

Conduct Thorough Keyword Research: Identify relevant terms for your content to ensure your anchor text aligns with user search intent and search queries.
Use Natural Language: Don’t force keyword placement in anchor text to maintain readability for users.
Keep Anchor Text Concise: Aim for anchor text under five words for clarity.
Vary Anchor Text Across Different Links: Use a mix of anchor text types to create a more natural link profile.
Place Anchor Text in Prominent Positions: Strategically position anchor text within content to boost click through rates and engagement.

Step 3: Analyze Your Competitors' Backlink Profiles

After identifying high-quality and toxic backlinks on your website, the next step is to check on your competitors. In addition to finding new opportunities and gaps in your strategy, you can develop more effective ways to outperform them.

Why Competitive Analysis Matters

Analyzing competitor backlinks can reveal opportunities and strategies that you may have overlooked, which are the following:

Identifying High-Value Link Sources: Discover authoritative websites and industry-specific platforms linking to your competitors. These sources may also be open to featuring your content.
Understanding Content Strategies: SEO link analysis of a website can reveal the types of content that attract links in your industry. You can use these insights for your content creation strategy to develop link-worthy assets for your target audience and potential link partners.
Uncovering Guest Posting Opportunities: Many websites leverage guest posting to build backlink profiles. You can target the same publications to expand your reach by identifying these.

How to Conduct Competitor Backlink Analysis

Analyzing your competitors' backlinks is key to a strong SEO strategy. Here are the steps to conduct a competitor backlink analysis:

Step 1. Identifying Competitors: Use SEO tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to find competitors based on organic search visibility and keyword overlap. Focus on competitors within your industry that target similar keywords and audiences while excluding irrelevant sites such as marketplaces, aggregators, and forums.
Step 2: Backlink Analysis of Competitors: Once you've identified your competitors, enter their domain into the chosen tool and navigate to the backlink analysis section. Here, you can review their backlink profile and assess the sites linking to them.
Step 3. Examine Backlink Metrics: Review SEO metrics such as the number of referring domains and total backlinks. Classify them by DR to learn the solidity of your competitors’ link sources.
Step 4. Identify Top Referring Domains: Sort the backlink report to find the most valuable link sources. Focus on high-authority websites and industry-specific platforms that consistently link to your competitors.
Step 5. Analyze Link Types and Anchor Text: Categorize them into guest posts, directory listings, and mentions. Additionally, examine the anchor text distribution to know your competitors' linking strategies and the relevant keywords they are focusing on.

After conducting a thorough analysis, use the following strategies to leverage your findings:

Target High-Value Backlink Sources: Create a list of potential link partners based on your competitors' top referring domains. The next step is to concentrate on industries relevant to your niche,
Improve Upon Competitor Content: Produce evergreen, shareable content in the form of research, graphics, or tools with higher quality than your competitors.
Replicate Successful Strategies: Use link building strategies that your competitors already use, such as guest blogging or forum participation.
Fill Backlink Gaps: Focus on acquiring backlinks from sources and industries where your competitors have a strong presence but you don't.
Leverage Broken Links: Use SEO analysis tools to find broken links on your competitor's backlink profiles. Then, contact those websites and offer your content as a replacement for the broken link.

Benchmarking Against Competitors

Benchmarking against competitors gives you a better understanding of where you stand in your industry. Here's what to look for when conducting SEO link analysis:

Domain Authority (DA) Comparison: Compare your DA score with your main competitors to understand where you stand in your industry. Analyze the DA trends over time to see how your and competitors' sites progress.
Link Diversity Assessment: Examine the types of websites linking to you and your competitors, such as blogs, news sites, and directories. Compare the diversity of top-level domains (e.g., .com, .edu, .org) in your backlink profile with competitors.
Quantity and Quality of Backlinks: Compare your site's total number of backlinks and referring domains to those of competitor sites to understand the scale of their link profiles.
Link Growth Rate: Track the rate of new backlink acquisition over time for your site and competitor sites to monitor link-building progress. Pay attention to any sudden spikes in competitor backlink growth and investigate the sources of these links.

Benchmarking against competitors helps set achievable goals for enhancing your backlink profile:

Establish Baseline Metrics: Use your current backlink metrics as a starting point and set incremental goals based on competitor performance.
Prioritize Link Building Efforts: Focus on acquiring links from high-quality sources your competitors have successfully targeted.
Set Realistic Timeframes: Analyze how long competitors took to achieve their current backlink status and use this information to set reasonable timelines for your goals.
Define Quality Targets: Instead of just aiming for more links, set goals based on competitor benchmarks to improve your backlink profile's overall quality and relevance.
Diversify Link Sources: If competitors have more diverse link profiles, set goals to expand your range of link sources.

Step 4: Develop an Action Plan for Link Building

SEO link analysis shouldn’t just be about gathering data. The real value comes in the final step—developing a targeted action plan for your link building campaign.

Removing or Disavowing Harmful Links

The Google Disavow Tool is a tool feature that lets Google know which links you do not want to be considered for your site. Here's how to use it effectively:

Identify Toxic Backlinks: Use backlink auditing tools like SEMrush or perform a manual audit to identify the toxic backlinks directing users to your web resource.
Create a Disavow File: Create a .txt file of URLs or domains that will be introduced to Google as domains to disavow: for unique links, write https://example.com/link1.html; for entire domains, write domain:example.com; use # for comments.
Submit the Disavow File: Go to the Google Disavow Tool, select your domain, click "DISAVOW LINKS," and confirm, then upload your file by clicking "CHOOSE FILE" and "SUBMIT."

Before using the Disavow Tool, you can try manual link removal by contacting webmasters. Here's how to approach this process:

Find Contact Information: Use tools like Hunter.io or check the website's contact page to find the webmaster's email address.
Craft a Polite Email: Compose a polite message explaining your situation.
Use Your Domain Email: Use an email address associated with your website's domain (e.g., yourname@example.com).
Be Clear and Specific: Be as specific as possible about the link location and the actions you want to take.
Follow-Up: If you don't receive a response, send a polite follow-up email within a reasonable time.
Document Your Efforts: Keep records of your removal requests if you need to use the Disavow Tool later.

While these methods can be effective, they require time and patience. Sometimes, you may need both approaches to address toxic backlinks and fully maintain a healthy backlink profile.

Securing High-Quality Backlinks

Here are some effective strategies for building valuable backlinks:

Guest Blogging: Research and target websites with high domain authority in your niche when pursuing guest blogging opportunities. Pitch new content ideas that could benefit the host site's audience. Also, include a natural backlink to your website within the guest post content or author bio.
Creating Shareable Content: Create in-depth "ultimate guides" that comprehensively cover a topic, original research or data-driven content, infographics, and other visually appealing formats. Publishing a detailed ultimate guide on a relevant topic can continue to generate backlinks for years after its initial publication.
Outreach to Industry Partners: Leverage your social media network and build new relationships. You can collaborate with industry peers on joint projects or events and offer articles with actionable insights.

When building backlinks, it's crucial to focus on quality over quantity. Niche-relevant backlinks from high-authority domains offer several advantages:

Increased Relevance: Niche-specific backlinks prove your content is valuable within your industry, boosting your topical authority.
Higher Trust Signals: Backlinks from other authoritative, high-ranked sites are considered genuine and reliable, strengthening your site.
Better Traffic Quality: Backlinks from your niche bring better-quality traffic to your site. The visitors referred from these links are usually more interested in your site's offers, translating to higher qualified engagement rates.
Long-Term Value: Backlinks from authoritative domains tend to retain their value over time. Unlike spammy links, they can benefit your SEO efforts in the long run.

Monitoring Your Backlink Profile Over Time

SEO link analysis isn’t a one-time task; it’s an ongoing process. Consistently tracking your backlink profile offers several benefits:

Identifying New Opportunities: It makes it easy for you to gain high-quality backlinks. You can use it to take advantage of new trends other referring domains may use.
Detecting Harmful Links: You can quickly identify and address any toxic or spammy links that could harm your search rankings.
Tracking Link Growth: Monitoring the growth of your backlinks over time provides insights into the effectiveness of your link building efforts. It can help you gauge the success of your overall search engine optimization strategy.
Outperforming Competitors: Analyzing your backlink profile allows you to monitor your competitors' link building strategies and make necessary adjustments.

Utilize reporting tools to stay updated on your backlink profile. Here's how to make the most of these tools:

Track New Backlinks: Set up automated notifications to alert you when new backlinks are acquired. This helps you identify unexpected link opportunities and verify the quality of new links.
Monitor Lost Links: Regularly check for lost backlinks to identify and recover valuable links that have been removed. It also allows you to understand why links were lost and address underlying SEO issues.
Analyze Changes in Link Quality: Check how relevant the linking pages are to your content. Additionally, evaluate the diversity of your backlink profile, including referring domains and anchor text, to keep link distribution balanced.

Key Takeaway

Performing a detailed SEO link analysis is helpful for understanding and improving your link building strategies. It helps you check the strength of your current backlinks, find relevant links, and learn from your competitors’ successful strategies. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming because SEO and backlink manager tools can streamline the process. The key is getting worthy and relevant backlinks while fixing problems in your current profile.

However, this method is one part of enhancing your website’s performance. Other key steps include performing technical SEO audits, adhering to search engine guidelines, and enhancing user experience. Plus, valuable links can disappear over time due to mistakes or content updates. If you don’t neglect backlink monitoring, you could miss out on many SEO opportunities.

Looking for a reliable partner to handle your backlinks? tiny lever is an SEO marketing agency that offers SEO link analysis and premium link building services to boost your website’s authority and rankings. We also craft high-quality SEO content to have linkable assets for your link building strategy. If you need more, we can do technical and content audits to help your website perform its best. Contact us via david@tinylevermarketing.com or fill out this form to get started.