Here's How to Conduct a Backlink Audit and Control Your Backlink Profile

1. Choosing the right tools
2. Get an overview: Where do I stand at all?
3. Linked content and quality of referring domains
4. Broken Backlinks - don't waste link power
5. TLDs and anchor texts
6. One of the goals of a backlink audit is to recognize potentially toxic referring domains and to render them harmless. All the methods you have read up to here serve this purpose, but of course there are others. If you have now found irregularities or are even already affected by a Google penalty, you need to get rid of these links best. A time-consuming but precise method is to export the list of referring domains from Ahrefs as a table. Make sure that you only export dofollow domains, as nofollow links according to Google do not belong on a disavow list. With a so-called Disavow list, you give Google a list of URLs to your website that you want to have declared invalid.
7. provides you with everything as an SEO tool that you need for your backlink audit and its detailed evaluation (or that of your competition). Practice here also makes perfect. Read exactly all the bases of calculation of the key figures and make your own derivations. As everywhere in SEO, one thing always depends on the other. There are no optimal relations between TLDs, backlinks and referring domains or anchor texts. Therefore, always take a close look at the detail and question the data, then you will understand your backlink profile better and also recognize where you need to intervene.

Backlinks are both a grace and a necessity for good SEO work. In this article, Tertius Wahlich shows you in a few steps how you can analyze your backlink profile at the most important points using Ahrefs and what these insights can bring you.

Choosing the right tools

SEO tools are as common as sand on the beach. The interesting differences therefore lie both in pricing and in the quality of the data. When it comes to off-page measures and analyzing the backlink profile, one tool has emerged as particularly valuable: Ahrefs.

Ahrefs not only convinces with its variety of functions, but also with a large database of backlinks. With metrics such as the Domain Rating, valuable conclusions can also be drawn about the quality of incoming links, but more on that later.

Although Ahrefs can also be seen as an absolutely solid all-in-one tool and already provides an extensive insight into your own backlink profile, good SEOs naturally use more than one backlink tool for data collection and evaluation.

Important: Each tool ultimately has limited expressiveness. Which key value of the tools you use for evaluating domains or links is entirely up to you. No tool can guarantee 100% accuracy. Therefore, it makes sense to collect the same data from multiple tools and compare them. This way you can fill any gaps that a single tool normally has, with the strengths of other tools.

However, we limit ourselves in this review to Ahrefs, as it is particularly well suited for a backlink audit.

Get an overview: Where do I stand at all?

Before you act, you must answer the following questions for yourself: Where am I, what can I do, what am I missing and where do I want to go? To get a good overview of the status quo, you first enter your domain into the tool and start the evaluation - up to this point fairly simple. The tricky part, however, is finding the right numbers and gaining insights from them.

Overview of the key figures from claneo.com (Fig. 1)

What you see in this illustration are the key data with which you can classify your backlink profile through a few glances. You can focus on the main metric from Ahrefs, the Domain Rating (DR) and the number of referring domains.

The Domain Rating assesses the quality of the domains that link to your domain and serves as a guide. Using the example of claneo.com (Fig. 1), you can see that the ratio of the number of referring domains to the Domain Rating is very good. This shows that the currently 155 referring domains are primarily strong domains that also pass on link juice to claneo.com.

Important: The Domain Rating includes an assessment on a scale from 1 to 100. A Domain Rating of 100 is the absolute maximum and even google.com has “only” a DR of 98. What was that about the devil and the heap? In any case, domains beyond a DR of 90 naturally find it easy to increase the number and quality of their incoming backlinks, as they have more than twice proven their added value to the WWW and are thus almost self-runners. The fact that the maximum is 100 means that all other pages have to lose DR if “those up there” keep getting stronger. You should know that increasing the DR from 2 to 10 is significantly “easier” than from 10 to 20. The higher the rating, the more difficult it becomes to achieve further increases.

While the DR is more of a general assessment, the metric “referring domains” is a little more detailed. This shows you how many unique domains link to you. In this case, only one link is counted per domain. You have to put the number of these referring domains in relation to the incoming backlinks. You will quickly notice that the number of backlinks is significantly higher, which is due to the fact that certain domains, for example, link to each of their subpages or even in the footer (e.g. as a partner). Again, there is not really an optimal ratio as a starting point, rather it is worth taking a detailed look at the referring domains.

The view of DR, backlinks and the referring domains gives you a first insight into where you stand. But of course, in SEO: more is always possible! Therefore, a regular backlink audit is always worthwhile, in which you take a look at who has linked to you and why.

Linked content and quality of referring domains

Isn't it reassuring to see that your own page already has some backlinks? Somehow yes, somehow no. Far more important than the sheer number is the quality of the links, particularly since the Penguin Update. To analyze these, simply click on “referring domains” in Ahrefs.

The overview “referring domains” for claneo.com (Fig. 2)

Here you get all the important information about your backlinks, based on their domains. You can immediately see which domain links how often and in what way to you, how much traffic this domain has and when the links were created (Fig. 2).

Practical: The domains are automatically sorted by their quality based on the Domain Rating. By clicking on the number of links at “Links to the target”, you can even immediately see in which context the links are and which URL they lead to on your website. This is a wonderful opportunity to understand which of your content is linked. On this basis, you can develop new content strategies and create interesting content that has a good chance of new links. It's even faster with the “Best by Links” function.

Broken Backlinks - don't waste link power

One of the most important insights a backlink audit can give you is broken backlinks. Using the function of the same name, Ahrefs shows you links that refer to your website, but lead to a 404 page. Such links do not pass any link juice on to you, because Google quickly recognizes that this link does not lead to any valuable content.

The “Broken Backlinks” function for claneo.com (Fig. 3)

To restore the link juice, there are two options. So you can contact the operator or author of the link-giving website and ask him/her to set the backlink to a working URL of your domain that has the same or very similar content. Or you set up a permanent redirection of the 404 page to a comparable page, alternatively your homepage. In our example in figure 3 it shows that the career page of claneo.com registered at Kununu is probably no longer accessible, which can even be repaired by claneo.com itself by simply updating the link on kununu.com. These considerations belong to the classic methods of in-house off-page SEO.

Fancy new links? Try the whole thing with your competitor's domain. Get in touch with the link givers and try to guide these broken backlinks to comparable pages on your domain. In the end, the link givers also don't benefit from their links leading into emptiness. Win-win!

TLDs and anchor texts

An important aspect is the naturalness of your backlink profile. The idea is to recognize potential dangers from spam linking, black-hat attacks from the competition or other harmful influences in good time and to eliminate them. For this, it is worth taking a look at the origin of these backlinks. For this, you can sort by TLDs (Top-Level-Doamins) at “,” in the overview “referring domains” at the top or scroll down on the overview page to specifically investigate potentially dangerous links.AhrefsImportant:

TLDs like .xyz, .online, .club or similar are mostly spam and therefore worthless or even harmful. If you run a site in Germany and notice that noticeably many domains from Russia or India refer to you, it is always a first indication to take a closer look here. Keyword: take a closer look! Because in certain cases such backlinks can make sense, even though they geographically raise questions. Here a detailed analysis and a close look at the context in which the links are set is always worthwhile.The same applies to the anchor texts, which you can reach via the category item of the same name at Ahrefs.

The function “anchor texts” for claneo.com (Fig. 4)

Desirable and natural anchor texts are usually those that contain the name of your brand or the URL of your website or clearly show which content they lead on your site. Such backlinks should ideally make up the major part of the anchor texts. It becomes more noticeable when unnatural keyword groups in incorrect grammar or Chinese characters appear in this overview. Here, too, as in the anchor text “<a>no text</a>” in the upper picture, a detailed look is worthwhile, because this stands for image links. Such links can suggest a first suspicion of spam, for example there are millions of .blogspot domains that randomly link products and pages with images.

Spam and Disavow: Getting rid of bad links

One of the goals of a backlink audit is to recognize potentially toxic referring domains and to render them harmless. All the methods you have read up to here serve this purpose, but of course there are others. If you have now found irregularities or are even already affected by a Google penalty, you need to get rid of these links best. A time-consuming but precise method is to export the list of referring domains from Ahrefs as a table. Make sure that you only export dofollow domains, as nofollow links according to Google do not belong on a disavow list. With a so-called Disavow list, you give Google a list of URLs to your website that you want to have declared invalid.

Now it really is about looking at all these domains in detail and rating them. To get through this dataset, you can sort by TLDs or DR, for example. The lower the DR and the more “foreign” the TLD, the higher the risk of spam. Take a close look at each of these pages and decide whether they contain toxic content (pornography, casino, weapons, etc.) or whether “real” content is given in the form of articles, etc. Mark everything that appears to be toxic in your list and write these later on a

Disavow-list, which you then upload in the . This way you can show Google that these links should not be included in the evaluation of your domain. The links remain, but Google now ignores them. So you keep your backlink profile clean!Google Search ConsoleImportant:

Only domains or URLs that are 100% toxic should be on the Disavow list. If you have doubts, then better not write them down on the Disavow. Because if you put strong, valuable domains on the list, you will end up destroying more than you can save.Conclusion: “It depends”, as always!

provides you with everything as an SEO tool that you need for your backlink audit and its detailed evaluation (or that of your competition). Practice here also makes perfect. Read exactly all the bases of calculation of the key figures and make your own derivations. As everywhere in SEO, one thing always depends on the other. There are no optimal relations between TLDs, backlinks and referring domains or anchor texts. Therefore, always take a close look at the detail and question the data, then you will understand your backlink profile better and also recognize where you need to intervene.

Ahrefs liefert Euch als SEO-Tool alles, was Ihr für Euer Bachlink-Audit und dessen ausführliche Bewertung (oder das Eurer Konkurrenz) benötigt. Übung macht auch hier den:die Meister:in. Lest Euch exakt alle Berechnungsgrundlagen der Kennziffern durch und trefft Eure eigenen Ableitungen. Wie überall im SEO hängt das eine immer mit dem anderen zusammen. Es gibt keine optimalen Verhältnisse zwischen TLDs, Backlinks und verweisenden Domains oder Ankertexten. Schaut daher immer genau aufs Detail und hinterfragt die Daten, dann werdet Ihr Euer Backlinkprofil besser verstehen und auch erkennen, wo Ihr eingreifen müsst.