Backlinks are undoubtedly an effective criterion for ranking your website. Search engines like Google favour websites with high-quality backlinks to show them up in the search results. However, amidst all the SEO burdens, business owners in Melbourne often fail to check every backlink and internal link structure on the website.
It is quite understandable that this can happen sometimes, and that is why finding an SEO agency in Melbourne to perform a link audit for your website is crucial. This will identify and fix link-building issues that can rank your website lower.
In this blog, we will guide you through the concept of link audit, how to perform it effectively, and when to consider the help of an SEO expert. Let’s start.
Why Perform a Link Audit?
Knowing the whys behind auditing a link strategy before you get to the practical steps of performing a link audit can make you understand the process more easily.
1. To Get Rid of Toxic Backlinks:
Toxic backlinks are links from lower domain authority, irrelevant, and poor content quality websites. A link audit helps in knowing if your website contains such backlinks so that you can safely remove them and protect your website from not appearing on search engine results pages (SERPs). A good SEO agency in Melbourne makes link audit a crucial part of the link-building strategy.
2. Find Gaps in Links:
Link gaps happen when your website fails to earn backlinks from high-quality websites while your competitors in similar industries earn them well. Finding link gaps can help you to reach out to site owners and request a backlink in favour of some service.
3. Improve Link Profile:
A website possesses a strong link profile when it has quality links from higher Domain Authority (DA) websites, links from sources like blogs, news, social media, and other sources, good balance of Dofollow and Nofollow links, and links from websites with natural anchor text.
How to Do a Link Audit?
Now, let’s begin to examine your website’s backlinks and internal links through the following steps.
1. Gather Backlink Data:
Start by understanding the number and quality of backlinks that point to your website. Some of the SEO tools that you can use are:
● Google Search Console:
The tool finds out the number of backlinks.
● Moz, Ahrefs, SEMRush:
This tool helps you know the quality of backlinks, their domain authority, and the type of anchor text other websites use to link to your website.
After finding the backlink profile, taking the next step to export the file into CSV is crucial. For a more comprehensive use of the tools, finding an SEO agency in Melbourne is best.
2. Evaluate Each Link:
Once you have the backlink profile in place, analysing the quality of the links becomes the next essential step.
● Domain Authority:
Check the DA of the websites linking your business. Higher DA websites help in earning a good reputation.
● Relevance:
Backlinks must come from websites that are in a similar industry as yours.
● Spam Score:
Many tools also assign a spam score to websites. Ensure that the backlinks do not contain any spam score. A spam score indicates that your website is paying to earn backlinks or that it comes from websites that don’t have any value to offer.
● Check for Anchor Text:
It is important to scan the anchor text to see if it contains keywords that are relevant to your industry. If you find any problem, hiring an SEO agency in Melbourne to identify future problems is no harm.
3. Remove Toxic Backlinks:
Once you have identified the hidden problems in your backlinks profile, begin to identify and remove the toxic backlinks. Here is how to do it.
● Hire an SEO Agency:
An SEO expert removes links from websites that exist solely to generate backlinks. These types of websites have no value and can manipulate search engines. In addition, they identify links from private blog networks or irrelevant websites to remove them completely.
● Use Disavow Links:
Google’s Disavow tool can also remove toxic backlinks when crawling your website.
4. Scan Through the Internal Link Structure:
Besides managing your backlink profile, scanning the internal link structure with the help of an SEO agency in Melbourne is crucial too. Here is how it should look like:
● Logical Flow:
Ensure your home page and service pages have the highest internal links, followed by other pages on a website.
● Fix Broken Links:
Find the broken links within the website manually or through tools like Screaming Frog to fix them.
● Use Descriptive Anchor Text:
An anchor text in the internal links should describe the main page or place natural keywords to allow readers or users to navigate the site easily.
Final Words
We hope you find this blog useful. If you have any questions, find an SEO agency in Melbourne to identify and fix link-building issues. Link audits are crucial investments for building trust and enhancing the website experience for users. Take the next step — schedule a consultation with an SEO company in Melbourne today.