Backlink Audit: A Practical Checklist

Find out which backlinks help your site, which ones are broken, and which deserve a closer look. A practical audit with specific tools and next steps.

A backlink audit should answer three questions: Which links are valuable? Which ones no longer work? What needs to be fixed? It is not a race for the highest score or a reason to remove every link that looks unusual.

You can sort most of the data in an SEO tool. Then review only the important or suspicious cases by hand.

1. Collect data from several sources

Start with the free Links report in Google Search Console. It is not a complete list, so add an export from Ahrefs, Semrush, Majestic, or a similar tool. Include your own records of links from PR articles, partnerships, and campaigns too.

For each link, you only need:

• the referring domain and exact page,
• the target URL and anchor text,
• the target URL's status code,
• the link attribute, such as follow, nofollow, or sponsored,
• the first and last seen dates, if the tool provides them.

The easiest way to combine the exports is in Google Sheets:

1. Keep the same columns in every export: referring page, referring domain, target URL, anchor text, and link attribute.
2. Copy all rows into one sheet. If an export does not include the domain, extract it from the source URL in cell A2 with =LOWER(REGEXEXTRACT(A2,"https?://(?:www\.)?([^/]+)")).
3. Use Data > Data cleanup > Remove duplicates to remove rows with the same referring and target URL.
4. In a pivot table, use the referring domain as the row and the link count as the value.

This quickly shows whether your profile is built on links from a range of relevant websites or hundreds of repeated links from one place.

2. Assess link quality

Domain Rating and similar metrics are useful for the first pass, but they cannot judge link quality on their own. For important domains, check whether:

• the website is relevant to your topic or audience,
• it has genuine content, identifiable authors, and real visitors,
• the link is a natural part of useful content,
• the destination page matches the context of the link.

A relevant link from a smaller specialist website can be more valuable than one from a strong but unrelated domain. Use authority metrics for comparison, not as an automatic verdict.

Review the anchor text as well. A natural profile contains brand names, URLs, article titles, and general phrases. Repeated commercial anchors across many unrelated websites are a stronger warning sign.

Paid links should use sponsored, or at least nofollow, while links in user-generated content should use ugc. A nofollow link is not worthless - it can still bring visitors, brand awareness, or customers.

3. Find lost and broken backlinks

A lost backlink no longer appears on the referring page. A backlink pointing to a 404 page still exists, but sends visitors to a broken page on your website. These are two different problems:

• Lost backlinks require a tool that stores historical backlink data. Ahrefs, for example, provides a Lost backlinks report. Screaming Frog cannot discover them on its own.
• Backlinks pointing to 404 pages appear in the Broken backlinks report. Without a paid tool, export the target URLs from your data and check them in Screaming Frog using Mode > List. The free version can check up to 500 URLs.

Enable redirect tracking in Screaming Frog. You will see the final URL status and any unnecessary redirect chains.

If a removed page has a suitable replacement, set up a 301 redirect to it. Do not redirect every old URL to the homepage. When there is no relevant replacement, a 404 or 410 response is better than a misleading redirect.

It is worth trying to recover a valuable lost link. First find out whether the article moved, the publisher removed the link, or a URL change on your website caused the issue.

4. Look for suspicious patterns

Low authority, a foreign language, or one unusual link does not automatically mean trouble. Focus on repeated patterns such as:

• many domains using the same template and anchor text,
• automatically generated pages with no useful content,
• hidden links or footer links on unrelated websites,
• a sudden increase in referring domains with no clear reason,
• paid networks built mainly to manipulate search results.

Document risky links and stop acquiring more of them. Use Google's disavow links tool only when the site has a clear history of manipulative link building or a manual action. Using it incorrectly can harm the site.

5. Turn the audit into clear tasks

An audit should produce more than a spreadsheet. Assign every important finding to one of these groups:

1. keep and monitor,
2. fix the URL or redirect,
3. try to recover a valuable link,
4. manually review a suspicious domain,
5. use it as an opportunity for new content or outreach.

To find new opportunities, briefly compare the backlink profiles of three to five direct competitors. Look for websites that link to them but not to you, and note the type of content that attracts those links.

If you actively build links, review new and lost backlinks every month. For a smaller website without regular campaigns, a quarterly audit is usually enough, plus an extra check after a major migration or redesign.