Link Audits

We have been involved in link audits since link audits have been a thing, thats over 7 years of audit work across some of the worlds biggest and most complex link profiles. We have seen every possible issue, diagnosed many issues and repaired and protected countless link profiles during that time. We live and breathe links and we understand what needs to happen for your audit to provide you the maximum value, protection and insight going forward.

Some people suggest that only Google Search Console is required when doing an audit but our experience tells us that for complete coverage you need to have at least two of the major link data sources in your audit. Combining that data provides us with as complete a view of the total link profile as possible.

As part of the link audit process we will review any legacy disavow activity and, if required, trim or create a new disavow file. Its important to have a lean and efficient disavow file in place to negate any of the historical risks that may have built up and to help ensure that your profile is clean, natural and relevant as possible to the sites position in the link graph.

There is no magic button that can diagnose and clean a link profile. Our teams isolate the links that matter and then each of those linking domains are reviewed by hand to make sure that we understand the underlying intent and what patterns they reveal. Only by doing this data work can you truly reveal the issues and opportunities within that ocean of link data.

As part of Google’s efforts to negate the manipulation of their search results through link spam they use a part of their ranking algorithm called ‘Real Time Penguin’ to ignore those links that they detect as possibly manipulative. When doing a link audit its important to not just look for risks and issues but also to work out what Google is still counting and what they may now be choosing to ignore. By conducting an audit and finding the links that still count it allows us to make much better decisions about where to spend our time and resources in building new links and it feeds into our decisions on internal architecture and linking from a technical SEO perspective.

The link audit should only be the start of your stewardship of your link profile. By putting in place a regular update and review of the profile as new links are built and the link graph changes we can be sure that we are keeping the profile clean, healthy and getting stronger every day.

From simple metrics or top level analysis its impossible to understand the relative strengths of your link profile when compared to your direct competition. From the headline figures you cant see what they may have disavowed, what Google may have ignored through Penguin or what risks they have in their profile. By producing an audit where the profiles are benchmarked side by side you can make better decisions about your true trust and power and invest accordingly.