The Basics of Link Profile Analysis

A solid and clean backlink profile is crucial if you want to expand your company's online presence, as toxic links can destroy your SEO strategy in an instant.

This is where a link profile analysis comes in. Everyone wants to keep their place at the top, and the only way to do so is to have a healthy link profile. Even if you're ticking all the other boxes - good website speed, on-page SEO, blogging etc. - a sub-par link profile can damage your online reputation.

You can ensure that your site only has relevant and high-quality links by conducting a link profile analysis every few months. Otherwise, it may cost you your spot on the SERPs.

What Is A Link Profile Analysis?

A link profile analysis evaluates your entire backlink profile to spot potentially problematic links and eliminate them before they negatively affect your SEO efforts. In plain English, a link profile analysis is essentially a backlink checker.

You should do an analysis every six months to clean out your profile before toxic links cause problems.

It can track your overall reach and how many publishers feature your site. An analysis can also pick up on mistakes and correct them, and you can tie the quality and quantity of your links to the results you are seeing.

This tool can also act as a competitive analysis to look at your competitors' profiles for inspiration or to examine the differences. In strategic terms, link analysis can help you find the weaknesses in your strategy, and in technical terms, it lets you catch bad links that can negatively impact your site's success.

The Importance Of A Link Profile Analysis

Your SEO strategy's success is determined by the quality of your link profile. Good link building efforts improve your website's Google rankings, and high-quality inbound links are crucial for your SERP positioning.

Google assigns a site its ranking using a complex link analysis algorithm with many variables. The total number of referring IPs, backlinks, independent dofollow links, text anchors, and anchors containing keywords are all taken into consideration.

Link City can help you with building the right links. Our skilled and dedicated team ensures that you have the correct number of links and that they are of good quality.

Helpful Link Analysis Tools

There are some fantastic tools available that can help you view and analyze your profile. We recommend the following:

• Ahrefs
• Moz's Link Explorer
• Google Search Console
• Majestic's link analysis tool
• Semrush Backlink Checker
• Dead Link Checker

These tools can give you a breakdown of the following:

1. The performance of your domain and an estimate of your domain rating and authority.
2. The number of links from other sites, referring domains that point to your site, and their corresponding anchor texts.
3. The total links pointing to your site from different referring domains.
4. The number of internal links your site has and their anchor texts.
5. The number of keywords that your site ranks for.
6. The mix of dofollow links and nofollow links.
7. The number of links you have lost or gained over a certain period.

Every tool available to you has its pros and cons, and it all comes down to personal preference and which one gives you the most accurate information.

How To Conduct A Link Profile Analysis

Before performing an in-depth analysis and link correction process, look at the bigger picture. Analyzing competitors' link profiles is helpful throughout the preparation phase as it lets you identify your profile's advantages and disadvantages rapidly and indicates the best direction for your link building strategy.

No matter how good your results are, there is always room for improvement: ensure your company's link profile always meets the highest standards, cutting back on low-quality links and monitoring your site's performance.

The following criteria allow you to evaluate a backlink profile and assess whether it will help you improve your search engine rankings:

Page and domain authority

The domain authority, or DA, of the referring domains leading to you is another factor to consider. In general, a connection is more valuable the higher its DA. Many weak links from low-quality sources are generally less valuable than one strong connection from a high-authority source.

Dofollow links with similar DA can have a considerable effect on your rankings, so always look out for links that come from questionable or low-quality sources. If Google picks up on bad or spammy links, it could damage your DA.

Even if you aren't deliberately looking for links to your website from low-authority sites, like questionable forums or article directories, they could still be there, flying under the radar. A link profile analysis can help you remove these bad and low-quality links; you will need to contact the webmaster for assistance or to disavow the link.

You can also see which of your links may be considered toxic links.

Link quantity

Everyone in the SEO community knows that going crazy with links can be very problematic and damaging. If you build loads of links and do it too quickly, you could face a penalty since it looks suspicious.

Link quantity affects how the trustworthiness of your site is evaluated; the more links you have pointing to your site, the more trustworthy you'll seem. It is best to keep track of the number of backlinks on your profile.

This way, you can ensure that you reach your targets and evaluate your natural links. Link quantity is also essential for your pages, as you will need to focus on page and domain authority.

Essentially, you should build links that direct users to several internal pages. However, if you want to emphasize a particular piece of content or landing page, consider adding a disproportionate number of links.

Relevance of linking domain

Every domain that links to your site should be relevant to your industry, article, site, or the purpose of your domain. If you run a clothing store and all of your links come from sports stores, it might look like your links are illegitimate and don't give any value to your clients.

This can indicate if any websites are maliciously or carelessly linking to your pages, yet another indication of spammy links to search engines. Once more, it's an excellent opportunity to intervene and remove them.

Domain diversity

When backlinks are on the same domain, their value decreases. You will gain a ton of authority (and worth) from the first time you secure a link to your website on a domain.

The second link will also have a great impact, but not as much as the first. Once you have started building more links on one domain, you won't get additional authority benefits from the new links you've created.

You will receive links from various sources, including nofollow and dofollow links. Your backlink analysis will show you how close you are to achieving that objective. If you can see that you have tons of links from a series of sources, or the same source, it should be a clear sign that you need to branch out more.

Anchor text relevance and diversity

Strategic keyword terms can be great for your rankings, but they must be relevant and different. For a link to be strong, the anchor text needs to be relevant to the article it is in and the article it links to.

Although you don't need to use perfectly relevant anchor text, you should nevertheless look at your usage patterns and record instances of irrelevant anchor text. The integrity of your link will benefit more from anchor text that is semantically natural and appropriate.

You should check the diversity of your anchor texts during your backlink profile audit. It is best to avoid overusing a single phrase or keyword as an anchor text, as Google will catch it and give you a penalty.

If you see many of the same anchor texts but still want to target the same keywords, you can try using synonyms and alternative wording to get the same effect. Google will take similar phrases and synonyms into account.

Link velocity

The rate at which you get all the links during a certain period can significantly affect your ranking relevance. Having links is terrific, but a natural link graph means a gradual build-up of backlinks instead of a vast flood of backlinks over a short period.

Link diversity

It is essential to have link diversity in your backing profile, even if you are pushing for one page. Building links from relevant referring sites to numerous internal pages, in addition to your homepage, makes your link profile appear more natural and increases your page authority across your entire site.

You can evaluate how well you are doing through your backlink audit and make any necessary adjustments. Every time you add some valuable content to your website, you can make sure that there are several new destinations to target.

Link history

Another essential part of link profile analysis is looking at your link history. The easiest way to determine whether links stay up for a long time is to monitor your link profile; if an unusually high number of links disappear, it may indicate that your material is of poor quality or that you aren't focusing on the correct publishers.

The aim is to make your links last as long as possible. However, Google also loves fresh links, so if you have a huge number of old links or your newer ones come in big chunks, it could be a red flag for Google.

To keep your link profile up-to-date and relevant, make sure you have many fresh inbound links. However, if you're already working on your link profile analysis, you will likely invest in new links frequently.

You should consider the additional benefits like thought leadership demonstration, brand exposure, referral traffic, and earning your future publication opportunities when assessing the overall efficacy of your link development plan.

Since some of these factors might be quite challenging to measure, you might struggle to asses and analyze them objectively.

FAQ

What is link profile analysis?

Simply put, link analysis thoroughly examines all the links that lead to your website and make up your overall link profile. The analysis's focus can identify issues that negatively impact your site's overall SERP performance.

What does a healthy backlink profile look like?

Different link forms, such as editorial links, dofollow links, nofollow links, badges, picture links, etc., will form part of a healthy backlink profile. A good link or backlink profile will also contain a mix of high- and low-authority links.

Final Thoughts

A solid link building strategy and profile analysis work hand in hand. The better your links and maintenance of your online platforms, the more positive results you'll see.

If you can maintain your page but need help building the right links you need to grow as a business, Link City is your right-hand man! At Link City, we get the job done efficiently and thoroughly so you can start seeing the results you deserve.