Link Audit SEO: How to Build One That Gets Used

What a link audit is

A link audit is a full review of every website linking to yours, scored for quality and risk. A link is a hyperlink from another site to one of your pages, and search engines treat links as votes of confidence. Good links from relevant, trusted sites help rankings. Links from spammy or irrelevant sites do nothing at best, and at worst they signal manipulation. An audit sorts the whole backlink profile into four piles: keep, monitor, remove, and disavow. The output is a spreadsheet and a short action list, not a report that sits unread.

Step 1: Export every linking domain

Start with two sources, because no single tool sees every link. Export the linking domains from Google Search Console, which is free and shows the links Google knows about, and from a backlink tool such as Ahrefs or Semrush, which finds links Search Console misses and adds authority scores. Merge the two exports into one spreadsheet and remove duplicates.

Judge links at the domain level, not the link level. One bad domain can send hundreds of bad links, and scoring each link separately wastes hours. A small site may have 200 to 500 linking domains; a larger site may have thousands. Record the domain, the number of links from it, the pages it links to, and the anchor text it uses. Anchor text is the clickable words in the link, and exact-match commercial anchor text repeated across many domains is a warning sign.

Step 2: Score each domain for quality and risk

Score every domain on four checks, and write the score in the spreadsheet so the decision is visible later.

• Relevance. Does the linking site cover a topic related to yours? A link from a cooking blog to a plumbing site is irrelevant, and irrelevance at scale is a pattern.
• Trust. Does the site look real? Real sites have an author, a contact page, and original content. Sites with no author, scraped content, or thousands of outbound links to unrelated sites are not real in any useful sense.
• Traffic and authority. A domain with no traffic and no authority score in any tool is worth a closer look, not an automatic rejection. New sites score low too, so check the site itself before you judge it.
• Link pattern. Does the domain link to you from a sidebar, a footer, or a comment? Sitewide links and comment links carry little value and often come from link schemes.

Give each domain a simple verdict: good, neutral, suspicious, or harmful. Good links come from relevant, real sites. Neutral links do nothing but do no harm. Suspicious links fail one check. Harmful links fail two or more, or come from a known link scheme, a hacked site, or a paid link network.

Step 3: Work through the harmful links first

Sort the spreadsheet so harmful domains sit at the top. For each one, try removal before disavowal. Find a contact email on the site, or use the domain's WHOIS record, and send a short removal request naming the exact page that links to you. Keep a record of the date and the address you wrote to. Most site owners never reply, and that is normal; the record matters because it shows you tried.

Do not pay for link removal. Sites that charge a fee to remove a link are usually the same sites that sold the link in the first place, and paying them rewards the scheme. If a site asks for money, move it straight to the disavow list.

Give outreach two weeks. Then check which links are gone, and move the rest to disavow.

Step 4: Build the disavow file carefully

Google's disavow tool tells Google to ignore specific links when it ranks your site. It is a last resort, not a routine cleanup step. Google says it ignores most low-quality links on its own, so disavowing everything that looks weak can remove links that were helping you.

Disavow at the domain level, using the format domain:example.com, one entry per line. Disavow only domains you scored as harmful, that you could not remove, and that you do not trust. Do not disavow a domain because its authority score is low, because it is new, or because it links to a competitor too. Upload the file in Search Console, and keep a copy with the date. A disavow file takes weeks to take effect, and Google does not confirm when it has been applied.

Step 5: Fix the links you control

An audit usually finds problems on your own side too. Check for these and fix them in the same pass:

• Broken targets. Links pointing to pages that return a 404 error waste the link's value. Redirect the old URL to the closest live page.
• Redirect chains. A link that passes through two or three redirects loses value at each step. Point it at the final URL where you can, or shorten the chain.
• Wrong pages. Links pointing to a homepage when they clearly mean a specific guide or product page. Ask the linking site to update the target where the link is valuable.
• Internal links. Pages on your own site with no internal links pointing to them are hard for search engines to find, whatever the backlinks say. Link to them from relevant pages.

Step 6: Write the action list and repeat

The audit is only useful if someone acts on it. Write a one-page action list: links to remove, domains to disavow, broken targets to redirect, and internal links to add, each with an owner and a date. Then schedule the next audit. Every six months is enough for most sites. Audit immediately after a sudden ranking drop, a manual action notice in Search Console, or a site migration, because all three can change the backlink profile fast.

A worked example: a small site with 1,240 linking domains

A small business site has 1,240 linking domains. The audit takes six hours, and the classification breaks down like this:

Outreach goes to the 80 harmful domains. Twelve reply and remove the links. The remaining 68 go into the disavow file. The audit also finds 14 links pointing to pages that return a 404 error, and those URLs are redirected to the closest live pages. The whole job, including outreach and the disavow upload, takes about eight hours across two weeks. The next audit is scheduled six months out, with a note to check the 230 suspicious domains first.

Checklist: running a link audit

• ☐ Export linking domains from Search Console and a backlink tool
• ☐ Merge the exports and remove duplicates
• ☐ Record domain, link count, target pages, and anchor text
• ☐ Score each domain on relevance, trust, traffic, and link pattern
• ☐ Mark each domain good, neutral, suspicious, or harmful
• ☐ Send removal requests to harmful domains and record the dates
• ☐ Wait two weeks, then check which links are gone
• ☐ Build a domain-level disavow file for the rest
• ☐ Upload the disavow file in Search Console and keep a dated copy
• ☐ Redirect broken link targets and shorten redirect chains
• ☐ Write a one-page action list with owners and dates
• ☐ Schedule the next audit

Mistakes to avoid with link audits

• Disavowing everything that looks weak. Google ignores most low-quality links on its own. Disavow only harmful links you cannot remove, or you risk deleting links that help.
• Judging a link by one number. A low authority score does not make a link bad, and a high score does not make it good. Read the linking site before you score it.
• Auditing links and ignoring your own pages. Broken targets and missing internal links waste the value of good backlinks. Fix both in the same pass.
• Paying for link removal. A site that charges to remove a link is usually the site that sold it. Move it to the disavow list instead.
• Running one audit and never repeating it. Backlink profiles change every month as new sites link to you and old ones disappear. An audit from a year ago says nothing about today's profile.

Five link audit terms worth knowing

• Backlink profile: the full set of links pointing to a site, across all linking domains.
• Linking domain: a website that links to yours, counted once no matter how many links it sends.
• Anchor text: the clickable words in a link, which tell search engines what the linked page is about.
• Disavow: a file uploaded to Search Console that asks Google to ignore specific links when ranking a site.
• Manual action: a penalty applied by a Google reviewer, shown in Search Console, usually for links that break Google's spam policies.

To choose the tool for the export step, see the best backlink analysis software and the best backlink checking tool. The how to build backlinks guide covers earning good links after the audit, and link building outreach covers the emails. For the reporting side, read SEO reports for clients, and Adziq's SEO services cover audits and link reviews for teams that want it done for them.

Common questions

Sources

• Google Search Central: Spam policies
• Google Search Central: Disavow links
• Adziq: Best backlink analysis software
• Adziq: Best backlink checking tool
• Adziq: How to build backlinks

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