Cart is empty 
Why bother about backlink auditing? Well, if you want to properly manage your backlinks, assess whether you are getting healthy or broken backlinks, or ready to improve your overall Google ranking then you should care about backlinks.
Hello everyone, welcome to another blog!
Since the beginning of the year, we’ve had lots of questions relating to backlinks. Two of these questions particularly stood out:
Are backlinks needed in 2021 SEO?
How do I perform a thorough backlink audit?
If you belong to the first category asking if backlinks are still important for 2021 SEO, the answer is a resounding YES. Backlinks have always been an important part of SEO and that is not changing anytime soon. As a matter of fact, a new study by Ahrefs stressed that one of the distinguishing factors for page ranking lies in the quantity and quality of backlinks. In essence, top-ranking pages usually have more backlinks.
And that brings us to the next question – how to perform thorough backlink auditing. We put together this article to answer that question in detail. Therefore, we urge you to stay glued till the end. Remember you also get a bonus tip. That’s right! Quickly, for those who are yet to Subscribe, this is the right time to do so. Let’s jump right in!
Start with the complete picture
It goes without saying that you need the complete list of your website’s backlinks to perform a thorough backlink audit. With the complete list, it is easy to identify broken links, missing links, and other harmful links.
This is why experts recommend using external tools for backlink audits. There are a handful of good tools out there. Simply choose one that best fits your needs and ensure it is capable of retrieving a detailed list of your website’s backlinks.
Remove harmful backlinks
Unless you are new to the SEO game, you ought to know the adverse effect of harmful backlinks. In fact, this is the primary reason for performing this audit. You need to be able to identify harmful backlinks and eliminate them right away before they destroy your website ranking some more.
Fortunately, auditing tools are designed to help you fish out potential harmful backlinks so you can easily remove them.
Return missing backlinks
It is totally okay to see some missing backlinks. There are a ton of reasons for this. But instead of panicking, we advise you to assess the missing backlinks to know whether it is worth your time or not. Links from high authority sites are definitely worth the time.
Once you figured that out, try performing a quick analysis to identify the cause of the problem. It could be that the webpage was taken down or restricted. Whatever be the case, you can simply contact the webmasters to restore your backlinks or move them to a new page.
Pay attention to broken backlinks
Broken links are very common on websites. During backlink auditing, it is smart to find these links and fix them right away.
First, identify the links and the cause. Then, you can fix them by redirecting them to a new page or eliminating them entirely.
Fewer no-follow links, more do-follow links
This step is very important in every backlink auditing. Truth is, those no-follow links have zero SEO value. It is more like feeding on a substance that has no nutritional value and expecting to grow. You do not need a doctor to tell you that is a total waste of time.
Through the auditing, be sure to identify potentially helpful no-follow links (that’s those from high authority sites) and convert them to do-follow links by contacting the owners of the website.
Bonus Tip!
It doesn’t end here!
More importantly, you should understand that the auditing journey doesn’t end here. Sure, you have cleaned up your backlinks and they are in optimal health at the moment, however, they won’t remain in this state forever. You need to constantly monitor the health of your backlinks to keep your website ranking well on Google and other organic search engines.
Conclusion
And there you have our list of 5 Pro Tips for Thorough Backlink Auditing. Let us know which of these tips you are trying next. Also, do not forget to like, share, and subscribe to encourage us to produce more great tips like these.