SEO External Link Audit ‘Put together’ by

James Allen

http://www.example-site.om

Backlink Profile Analysis

Crawl Data & Insights

Links Overview

Backlink Crawl & Brief SummaryWhen crawling backlink databases, we found:

• 88,172 backlinks• …of which 60,758 are still live (after re-crawling)• Some of the ‘dead’ links may be due to linking sites changing their

architecture and backlink tools failing to update their link databases quickly. Some links are also ‘transient’

• Almost 70% of backlinks which we could find were still live! This is really good going, many sites don’t make it to 50% of their discoverable backlinks remaining live

• Overall the backlink profile is in relatively good health. There is room however, for further link building and anchor-text optimisation opportunities!

Links Overview

Live Links by Linking Domain

Links Overview

23% of all backlinks (14,006 links) come from Boostblogtraffic.com, or “SmartBlogger” as it is now known (they have re-branded, you get fired through a 301 redirect).

Although this is a HUGE volume of links to take in from one domain, a no-follow tag has been added. This will prevent some SEO benefit, but will also prevent an SEO-related links penalty. In this situation, this was a really good choice so well done there!

Most of the links come from comments left on the site by [Site Owner Name], the anchor text for her username forms the backlink. The comment was genuine ([Site Owner Name] has been reading posts, then replying!) so there’s little to no chance of comment-spam link flags going up on Google.

This is really great to see as a while ago, many SEOs incorrectly labelled blog commenting a spam tactic. Whilst it is (highly) susceptible to spam, not every blog-comment link could or should be classed as spam. Keep reading and writing, keep doing what you’re doing here!

Pro Tip: On some of the blogs you comment on, register your username as “Example Site” which is your brand-name. This will gain you more SEO-authority for related queries.

DON’T go crazy and change your username on all the sites you’ve been posting on so far. Just mix it up a bit in the future…

Live Links by Top Linked Content

Links Overview

32% of all backlinks (19,546 links) hit the homepage. This is pretty typical, a homepage is the shortest, least complex variant of a domain’s potential web-page and because many webmasters link ‘lazily’ (to the site, not the specific resource); most links are usually homepage links!

The second largest segment of backlinks goes to a ‘mistype’ of the homepage’s address. In these modern times, many still aren’t aware that the “www.” portion of a URL isn’t usually required any more. Some sites don’t use this by default, in order to get shorter, more truncated URLs with higher overall potency. That’s exactly what’s happened here!

Either webmasters have accidentally put “www” in the link or the site used to be based on “www” and has since moved over, losing the W’s

Did you know that links lose a bit of authority as the flow through a 301 redirect? Why not contact webmasters who have erroneously put “www” in their link-coding and ask them to remove that? That would gain extra SEO authority for no real extra effort!

Live Links by Anchor Text

Links Overview

44% of all backlinks (26,942 links) use the anchor text of “[Site Owner Name]”. Usually if we saw such a huge usage of one single word as anchor text in the backlink profile, we’d flag it immediately as a high risk for gaining a Google Penguin penalty.

That’s not the case here though! The anchor text is non-commercial (e.g: “car insurance” would be commercial, exact-match anchor text). The anchor text also comes from UGC (user generated content) in the form of comments genuinely left by [Site Owner Name] on other blogs.

Most of the comments seem at least to reference the topic of the original post on the external site, so we’re saying this isn’t a bit risk. A lot of those links are also no-followed which is handy!

We also scan for typical spam comments, we’re sure you know them as a blogger: “Hi! Wow, really insightful post. Thank you so much for this I will read it every day!” etc, etc.

We found hardly any to NO spam-level comments left by [Site Owner Name], so again – keep commenting. Keep reading and writing, that’s great stuff

All Links: Live vs Dead

Links Overview

Almost 70% of backlinks (60,758 links) which we uncovered using various historic backlink indexes, were still live when we re-ran them through SB Link Checker and Screaming Frog.

This is really great news! Most sites have a much larger proportion of dead links as shady link-networks which they have abused go down, taking the links with them (without even telling their clients!)

Most links are clean, most links are alive and well

Pro Tip: You can browse through a list of your dead links (contained in the separately attached spreadsheet) if you feel like contacting any webmasters, asking why links have been removed or why their sites have gone down. This can result in the free re-acquiring of previously held backlinks

Live Links by Link Type

Links Overview

Most links are no-followed. This matches up with our assertion that the bulk of links built to example-site were built by [Site Owner Name] using blog commented to leverage web-traffic; and also to help out those sites and communities by leaving insightful information for them to read over

The no-followed links can’t cause any problems in terms of Google Penguin link-penalties, so that’s really great.

Image links make up 23% of all live links and just like no-followed links, these are extremely unlikely to pass any link penalties. That’s fantastic!

Finally: Only 22% of backlinks are plain text links. With such a safe and secure backlink profile, you can probably afford to go after a few more of these with brand (“Example Site”) or other relevant anchor text. Don’t go mad as exact-match anchor text is seen as a form of ranking manipulation by Google. A few quality links here and there with relevant anchor text though? There’s room to push the boat out a bit further here…

Live Links by Safety Check Flags

Links Overview

58% of backlinks have not triggered any warning flag whatsoever, that’s great news!

The orange and red segments come from links which are viewed to be over-numerous either in terms of the domain they come from or their anchor-text usage.

As we have previously discussed however; the most used anchor text is actually the site owner’s name (no one is getting a penalty for that!) and the domains which link thousands of times mostly nofollow those links, which are mostly comments left on other sites by [Site Owner Name].

Because of this, we’re saying that in this situation none of these links are both awful and frequent enough to warrant action by Google. If you want to browse this data in more detail, open the attached spreadsheet and look at Column T “Link Safety Check”. The yellow and red segments may be worth a look in the big, main table

Good Link ExamplesGet more links like…

Link Examples

Examples of Good Backlinks

Link Examples

This link is nice because the site hosting the link (maybebabybrothers.com) has a solid citation flow (32) and 148 referring domains, 142 of which are linking to their homepage.

The link is not no-followed, so some SEO authority is flowing through the link image. Because the link is an image (not exact-match anchor text) it’s low risk.

This site gets a lot of visitors and backlink attention (10,174 backlinks to their root domain according to Majestic SEO). The link is likely to be yielding a bit of traffic in addition to some small amount of SEO equity.

The site’s design is nice, it would be unlikely to be triggering spam flags from Google. Great link!

Examples of Good Backlinks

Link Examples

This link is nice because the site hosting the link (onblastblog.com) has a solid citation flow (32) and 1,100 referring domains, 29 of which are linking to this specific blog post.

The link is not no-followed, so some SEO authority is flowing through the backlink. Exact-match anchor text is not used, thus keeping the link safe.

This site gets a lot of visitors and backlink attention (27,327 backlinks to their root domain according to Majestic SEO). The link is likely to be yielding a bit of traffic in addition to some small amount of SEO equity.

The site’s design is solid, it would be unlikely to be triggering spam flags from Google. Great link!

Examples of Good Backlinks

Link Examples

This link is nice because the site hosting the link (madlemmings.com) has a solid citation flow (28) and 813 referring domains, 27 of which are linking to this specific blog post.

The link is not no-followed, so some SEO authority is flowing through the backlink. Exact-match anchor text is not used, thus keeping the link safe. That being said; this post uses some very relevant anchor text (this is good)!

This site gets a lot of visitors and backlink attention (116,847 backlinks to their root domain according to Majestic SEO). The link is likely to be yielding an amount of traffic in addition to a solid amount of SEO equity.

The site’s design is polished, it would be unlikely to be triggering spam flags from Google. Great link!

Questions!?email:

jamesrichardallen@gmail.com