SEO Link Audit: 12 Techniques to Perform in 2025

An SEO link audit provides higher search rankings and checks all the websites linking to yours. This process identifies why your website isn't ranking, it also shows the gaps by comparing your link profile with your competitor’s to spot any harmful links. While Google claims they don't "lose sleep" over broken links, these issues directly impact user experience. 

Moreover, according to the research, a productive SEO link audit has helped websites increase organic traffic by 30%  in just 12 months. This blog covers 12 important steps for the SEO link audit process, and how to figure out where you stand to make a clear plan for building better backlinks in 2025.

What Is an SEO Link Audit?

A link audit systematically examines all links connected to your website. Unlike basic SEO checks, this process specifically looks at your entire link profile to find both helpful connections and potentially harmful ones that could sink your rankings.

During a thorough link audit, you'll examine three types of links:

1.       Backlinks: Incoming links from external websites

2.       Internal links: Connections between pages on your site

3.       Outbound links: Links from your site pointing to other domains

Benefits of performing an SEO Link Audit 

Regular link audits maintain a healthy profile and maximize your SEO efforts. It boosts your site's credibility and authority, enhances visibility, targeted traffic and conversions. These are key points that justify the benefits of performing an SEO link audit: 

• Prevents search engine penalties and site de-indexing.

• Attracts higher-quality inbound links.

• Resolves canonical issues caused by conflicting inbound links.

• Detects toxic backlinks from spam sites or sites with inappropriate or unrelated content.

• Identifies which pages naturally attract links.

• It also shows anchor text distribution and warns against over-optimized exact-match anchor text.

• It accurately tracks link velocity (rate of gaining/losing links).

12 Steps To Smartly Perform SEO Link Audit

Here are simple yet successful tips to perform an SEO link audit and improve your website rankings: 

1. Assess Your Backlink Profile 

Before working on your SEO link audit strategy, understand your current backlink situation. The first part of any backlink assessment involves two important metrics:

• Total backlinks: All links pointing to your website (the raw number)

• Referring domains: The unique websites linking to yours

Referring domains are more valuable than raw backlink counts. Ten links from one website won't boost your rankings as much as ten links from ten different websites. To get an overview, use an SEO tool like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz:

1. Enter your domain into your chosen tool's backlink analyzer

2. Review the dashboard showing your total backlinks and referring domains

3. Export this data to track your progress later.

2. Identify dofollow vs nofollow links

Analyze the distribution between dofollow and nofollow links in your profile. Dofollow links (the default type) pass "link juice" to your site and directly boost your SEO authority. Nofollow links (rel="nofollow") tells search engines not to necessarily pass authority through these links, and are valuable for driving traffic and creating a natural link profile. Otherwise, an imbalanced profile with too many dofollow links could trigger search engine suspicion.

To check your distribution:

• Use Ahrefs or SEMrush to filter your backlinks by attribute type

• Calculate the ratio between dofollow and nofollow links

• Look for unusually high percentages of either type

3. Find Your Most Linked Pages

You can effectively focus your efforts both during and after an SEO audit by understanding the best-performing pages and those that require improvement.

You'll need reliable tools to track your link data accurately. Google Search Console (GSC) offers a free way to analyze your links through its Links report. After logging in, navigate to the Links section to find:

• Top-linked pages on your site

• External sites linking to you most frequently

• The most common anchor text used in your backlinks

• Pages with the most internal links

4. Use internal linking from the best-performing pages

Your top-performing and link-rich pages hold high authority that can be strategically distributed throughout your site. This process, often called "link equity sharing," should be a core part of your internal link-building strategy. To smartly use these authoritative pages:

• Export a list of your top pages by backlinks from GSC or your preferred SEO tool.

• Identify less authoritative pages that would benefit from an authority boost.

• Add contextually relevant internal links from your high-authority pages to these target pages.

5. Identify Toxic or Spammy Links

Toxic backlinks directly impact your website's visibility in search results and can even trigger Google penalties. These come from untrustworthy or low-quality websites that have nothing to do with your industry. During your SEO link audit, watch for these red flags:

• Links from sites with thin or automatically generated content.

• Connections from irrelevant niches (like gambling sites linking to your cooking blog).

• Sites with excessive advertising, pop-ups, or aggressive monetization.

• Domains using suspicious TLDs (.xyz, .info, .biz) are frequently associated with spam.

• Websites lacking proper contact information or with outdated designs.

• Pages with broken links (404 errors) indicate neglect.

6. Audit Your Backlink Profile with Tools

7. Identify link spikes or drops

A sudden spike in backlinks might look suspicious to search engines and lead to penalties. On the other hand, a big drop could mean there’s a technical problem with referring sites. Look for patterns in your backlink growth. Tools like Ahrefs track the movement of referring domains over time using easy-to-read graphs. 

This helps you spot trends, like fast growth or sudden drops. Similarly, SEMrush can alert you about new, broken, and lost backlinks, allowing you to immediately catch possible spam attacks or potential Google penalties. 

8. Disavow or Remove Harmful Links

Clean up the toxic links. This step prevents potential Google penalties that could harm your search visibility and organic traffic. First, check if Google has already flagged your site. Head over to the Manual Actions report in Google Search Console to see if you're facing any penalties. 

Manual actions happen when Google's human reviewers determine that your site violates their guidelines. If you see "Unnatural links to your site" listed, Google has spotted manipulative linking patterns pointing to your website. This requires immediate attention, as it could filter some or all of your site from search results.

9. Keep an Eye on Competitors’ Backlink Profile

This competitive strategy completes your SEO link audit by revealing exactly where your rivals are getting their authority. Use backlink gap tools to identify websites that link to your competitors but not to you. Enter your domain alongside up to four competitor domains in tools like Semrush's Backlink Gap. 

After spotting these gap opportunities, filter your results by authority metrics to focus on high-value targets. Look specifically for domains with valuable traffic and strong authority scores. This is an easier and smarter way of focusing on sites already showing interest in your industry, rather than wasting time with cold outreach.

While using MOZ's Link Intersect tool:

1. Enter your domain in the first field

2. Add competitors' domains in subsequent fields (two is ideal)

3. Sort results to identify the most valuable prospects

10. Identify content formats that earn links

Monitoring which content types attract links for your competitors provides insights. Certain formats consistently outperform others in attracting backlinks:

• Data-driven content and original research

• Detailed guides and tutorials

• Visual assets like infographics

• Expert interviews or roundups

11. Prioritize link outreach targets

Random outreach is a waste of time. Instead, rank potential linking websites using these specific criteria:

• Domain metrics: Focus on sites with DA/DR above 30 for maximum efficiency. Higher authority sites pass more value through their links.

• Blogger influence: Pay attention to social media following and industry reputation. When influential bloggers share your content, it boosts visibility far beyond the initial link.

• Target sites first that hit all three criteria: High domain metrics, significant influence, and strong likelihood of linking.

12. Track progress with regular SEO link audits

Regular evaluation and efforts build a stronger, natural backlink profile that improves your overall SEO and drives more traffic to your site. Maintain consistency by systematically monitoring your progress:

• Link-specific metrics: Track follow vs. nofollow distribution and anchor text variety

• Page-level metrics: Monitor keyword rankings and organic traffic changes

• Outreach performance: Record email open rates, reply rates, and success percentages

Conclusion

Consistent SEO link audits are important for improving website rankings. Similarly, regular analysis of the backlink profile shows potential threats and opportunities. A successful SEO link audit involves identifying toxic links, naturally attracting backlinks, and finding gaps compared to competitors. 

Keeping up with regularly changing algorithms is easy with smart tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush that simplify time-consuming tasks. Moreover, you need to conduct thorough link audits that drive SEO improvements and maintain consistency. 

FAQ

What is link audit in SEO?

SEO link audit refers to the process of monitoring the website using special tools to identify gaps, toxic links and why your site isn't ranking on Google. It analyzes your website issues, navigation, UX or google penalities that could be harming your visibility.  

What is an SEO audit?

An SEO audit understands how well your site is performing in search engine results and what changes you can make to get better rankings. During the audit, elements like your website’s content, keywords, page speed, mobile-friendliness, backlinks, and any hidden technical issues are closely examined. This helps you find out what’s working, what’s not, and how to fix it, so your site can attract more visitors and perform better over time.

What is an SEO content audit?

A content audit is a systematic review of our website's content to identify its quality, performance, and relevance. It helps in identifying the best-performing content, with better structure, data and details, so you can create similar or better content to improve site performance.