How do you perform your link audits?

[PurpleGriffon]

What methods and tools do you guys use to perform link audits? Do you also use a traffic light system for links?

[MatthewBarby]

For the link audits that I do for my clients, I use a variety of different tools. With link analysis, the more tools the better really. The tools I use are as follows:

• Majestic SEO
• Open Site Explorer
• Ahrefs
• Google Webmaster Tools
• Yandex Webmaster Tools
• Link Detox Tool

I compile all the link information from the first 5 tools mentioned and then import them into Link Detox tool. I can then start manually analysing the links and highlighting any potentially toxic links. Next step is using BuzzStream to find the contact information for the toxic links and then I compile a separate spreadsheet for this. I also put together a graph that shows the distribution of PageRank from external links within Excel - this is a good visual cue for the client.

Hope this helps.

[PurpleGriffon]

Thanks Matthew.

Can you go in to a little detail as to what you mean by distribution of PageRank please? Also, what indicators do you look for in terms of quality and toxicity? Thanks again.

[MatthewBarby]

No problem, Gareth.

Regarding the distribution of PageRank. I gather a list of all the referring domains to the website in questions, then I lookup the PageRank for these domains (sometimes I use Domain Authority or Citation Flow - depends on your preference). Once I have a list of all the domains and their PR, I create a graph (bar chart) that shows the number of links coming from PR0 domains, PR1 domains, PR2 domains...

This is a nice visual display that you can see the kind of links coming to the site and usually gives a good signal of the quality of links coming through to the domain. Here's an awesome post by Pete Myers that goes through all of this - http://moz.com/blog/link-profiling-with-open-site-explorer

Now, in terms of what indicators I look for with regard to toxicity... I look for the following factors:

• Is the referring domain indexed by Google? If not, then it could be a signal that they have been de-indexed and I would remove this link.
• Is it a sitewide link that is part of a blogroll/footer/sidebar?
• Does the link come from a very low authority domain? (note: this isn't necessarily bad, but you will be able to see if the page has spammy looking content yourself)
• Does the link contain exact match keywords that aren't relevant to the page content at all?

These are the key factors that I look for but once you start analysing your link profile, you will be able to detect a pattern in the links.

Hope this helps

[PurpleGriffon]

Excellent, thanks again mate. That's a really big help.

[MatthewBarby]

No problem - if you have any more questions then just drop me an email (my email is on my profile page). Good luck!