We all know that backlinks play an essential role in getting a higher rank on SERPs. Search engines consider these backlinks as recommendations from other websites. These backlinks also show the authority of your website to the search engines. The more good backlinks your website would have, the more chances your website will have to rank higher on the SERPs.
It means backlinks are not only essential for getting a higher rank but also helps to improve SEO of your overall website. That is the reason why backlinks analysis is so critical in SEO. With the help of backlink analysis, you can manage all the links pointing to your website and create new opportunities to build new relevant links.
If you don’t know much about it yet, then don’t worry. Here, in this article, I am going to explain what backlink analysis is and how you can do that to enhance your overall SEO game. So, without any delay, let’s get started-
What is Backlink Analysis, and why should you conduct it?
Backlink analysis is a process to check all the backlinks pointing towards a website. It can be your own website or one of your competitors’. This backlink analysis can help you understand the total number of backlinks, referring domains, the variation of anchor texts, link quality, and few other metrics. By seeing these metrics, you can determine the competition, new links opportunities, and you can also develop a link building strategy if you are planning to target that niche.
But to analyze the backlinks of a website, you need a backlink analysis tool. In the market, you can find competitor backlink analysis tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, Majestic, Moz, a few others. You can go with any of these tools, but I suggest you go with Ahrefs or SEMrush. Both are the best competition research tools that I have ever used.
How to Conduct a Backlink Analysis?
To start with backlink analysis, you have to go to the tool you have chosen and enter your website’s URL on the Site Explore’s search bar and hit enter. It will redirect you to the overview page of that URL. On this page, you can find all the summarized details of the targeted URL. Once there, it is time to analyze the backlinks of that URL.
Remember, you can analyze a specific webpage or the whole domain separately just by entering the specific URL.
Check for the total number of backlinks and referring domains
The very first and the essential thing that you should start with is checking the total number of backlinks and referring domains that the URL has.
For example, see this
Here, you can see that Ahrefs.com/blog has a total of 40.2K backlinks from 5.04K referring domains. Referring domains are more crucial than the total number of backlinks. As these numbers are quite high for Ahrefs, it seems like it is a high authority site. By checking these metrics, one can quickly get the basic idea of how competitive these websites are.
One thing that you should pay attention to is the ratio of backlinks and referring domains. If a website has a ratio of hundreds of backlinks per domain, then it could be possible that the website is making unnatural links. In such cases, it is easy to outrank these websites.
Check the number of do-follow backlinks and referring domains
The number of backlinks matters in SEO but you won’t see much impact of them if they are no-follow. Look, no-follow links have their own advantages, but they are not the primary key factor when it comes to SEO. The thing that matters the most is the number of do-follow backlinks.
For that, you have to go to the backlinks and filter out do-follow links. Similarly, look for the referring domains as well. Remember, the more do-follow backlinks and referring domains a website would have, the harder it will be to outrank that website. Also, check the ratio of do-follow backlinks and referring domains.
Look at anchor text and its variations
The next things that you should look for are the anchor texts and its variations. If a website has over 20% anchors texts related to the brand of the website, then it is an indication that they have not used any spammy backlinks technique. Also, look at how diverse those anchor texts are. Many SEO professionals and link builders use keywords rich anchor texts as such anchors can quickly help to see results in SEO. But a recent update, Penguin 2.0 made it clear that you should have anchors that are related to your brand and not to the money keywords you are planning to rank for. That’s why having diverse anchor texts can be the safest way to survive in SEO.
Another thing to look here is if the domain is using dodgy anchor texts. Such anchor texts can lead you to some severe problems. For example, see the image mentioned below.
Look at the best and the worst website that linked to you
The next important thing to check here is what kind of websites are linking to your site. It can help you understand how many low-quality websites have linked to you.
The process is straightforward. Open the referring domain page, add filters of do-follow and sort the list from low DR to high DR. Within a second, your tool would all the low-quality websites that are linking to you on the top.
By this, you can identify junk and crappy websites that are not going to provide much value to your website in SERPs. If such websites are looking fishy, then you can disavow backlinks from those websites to play safely in SEO.
Do remember that all the low DR or DA websites are not evil. These stats just show that if the website has strong backlinks or not. There are chances that newcomer websites might have linked to you, and that is perfectly fine. The main thing that you have to look here is if that website has relevant content or not. If that’s not relevant, then that is not going to help you much in your SEO game.
Closing Comments
There you have it – my favorite method to conduct a backlink analysis. I hope this article would have helped you to get a proper understanding of backlink analysis. Also, how to conduct one. Backlink analysis is an essential skill that you should learn in the early days of your SEO journey because backlinks play a significant role in getting a higher rank on SERPs.
With that said, it is time to wrap up this article. If you have any queries, then you can shoot them in the comment section below. We will try to answer all your queries ASAP.