Link ledger · risk review
Backlink Audit Services That Tell You Which Links Are Actually Working
Most link profiles are not ruined by one bad campaign. They drift: an old directory here, a guest post network there, a widget on a sitewide footer, three redirects nobody removed. Our backlink audit services put every source in one ledger, score it, and decide what to do with it.
- Full backlink export, deduplicated, with domain-level history
- Toxicity scoring by footprint, not a single third-party number
- Anchor text distribution and over-optimisation check
- Lost-link and redirect-chain recovery list
- Written disposition: keep, contact, nofollow, or disavow
Typical turnaround: 7–10 business days for up to 5,000 referring domains.
| Source | Band | Status | Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| industry-assoc.org | 62–74 | healthy | keep |
| supplier-directory.co | 31–44 | paid | mark |
| seo-network-48.net | 4–12 | toxic | disavow |
| widget-host-cdn.com | 20–30 | sitewide | contact |
| old-agency-posts.net | 8–18 | lost | log |
| expired-redirect.io | 40–55 | chain | monitor |
Why profiles rot
A link profile fails quietly, then all at once
There is rarely a single dramatic penalty. What we usually find is a slow accumulation: a handful of paid placements, an inherited guest-post batch from a previous agency, a template with a footer credit on 400 sites, and anchors pushed too far toward money terms. Individually tolerable, collectively a drag on every page on the domain.
Toxic links
high riskNetwork footprints: identical footers, spun hostnames, unrelated topics, hundreds of outbound links per page, content with no authors. These pass nothing useful and can drag relevance down.
We separate genuinely manipulative links from merely weak ones, then check whether the same pattern appears in competitor profiles before treating it as an attack.
Lost links
recoverableA page that used to rank moved, a partner redesigned, a directory dropped a listing. The link is gone and nobody noticed because the report only ever showed totals.
We reconcile against three crawls, flag every lost link worth chasing, and hand over the contact route: the editor, the form, or the redirect target.
Redirect chains and 404s
technicalA linked URL that 302s to a 301 that lands on a soft 404 carries almost nothing. Chains also slow the crawl and muddy which page should rank.
The audit maps every chain into one hop, restores the missing page when it had value, and redirects the rest to the closest live equivalent.
Unmarked paid and sponsored
policyBought placements and affiliate links should carry the right attributes. Unmarked, they look like manipulation and put the buyer at risk rather than the publisher.
We flag anything that reads like a paid placement and give the client a plain-language decision: mark it, keep it early in the article, or drop it.
Disposition
Four outcomes, one decision per link
A ledger is only useful if it ends in an action. Every row gets exactly one of these four outcomes, with the reason written next to it so a year later nobody has to guess.
Keep and leave alone
Editorial links from relevant sites, association memberships, genuine press mentions, supplier pages. No outreach needed.
Condition: real audience, real page, topical match.Ask the publisher to change it
Right site, wrong anchor or wrong destination. One polite email citing the specific paragraph usually beats a template blast.
Condition: site is legitimate and the editor is reachable.Mark it where you control the markup
Widgets, partner badges, customer logos and sponsored placements that you can annotate yourself. Faster than removal and cleaner than silence.
Condition: the link lives on a property you can edit.Disavow, as a last resort
Only after removal fails and the link is clearly manipulative. Batched, dated, and reversible, because a careless file can remove links you wanted.
Condition: manual action, or a proven negative pattern.What a disavow file is not for
It is not a cleanup tool for low-authority links, and it is not a fix for thin content or bad internal linking. Disavowing every link under a certain score is the most common way sites damage themselves. If the file would remove more than a small fraction of referring domains, the diagnosis is probably wrong.
Anchor distribution
If every anchor is a money term, that is the story
Search engines read anchor text as a description of the destination. A natural profile is messy: brand names, bare URLs, “read more”, a few partial matches, and a small share of exact commercial phrases. When exact-match anchors climb past roughly one in five, the profile stops looking earned and the affected pages stall.
We chart the distribution across the whole domain and per landing page, then compare it with two or three direct competitors. The fix is rarely deletion. It is dilution through new, natural mentions, and rewording the anchors you can still influence.
Illustrative distribution from a healthy B2B profile. Exact match above 20% is where we start asking questions.
Also on the ledger
Five more things we check while we are in there
- Link velocity. A spike of 300 domains in one week, all with the same template, is a pattern worth flagging even when each link is individually fine.
- Topical relevance. Links from unrelated niches are not toxic, but they do little. We separate “useless” from “harmful” so the report does not cry wolf.
- Destination spread. Every link pointing at the homepage is a missed opportunity. Category and product pages should carry their share.
- Language and geography. Links from markets you do not sell to still count, but they should not dominate if you are targeting the UK or Germany.
- Sitewide and footer credits. One template can generate thousands of identical links. Usually harmless, occasionally the whole problem.
Not sure whether you have a link problem or a content problem?
Send the domain. We will tell you which one it is before you buy anything, and what the first three fixes would be.
Method
How the audit runs, week by week
Four working blocks. You see the ledger after block two, not at the end, so decisions can start early.
Build the ledger
Export from two link indexes plus Search Console and server logs, then deduplicate. Logs catch links the crawlers miss and reveal when they were first seen.
Score by footprint
Authority band, topical match, anchor type, page-level outbound count, host history. Machine scoring first, human review on the top and bottom 10%.
Assign disposition
Every domain gets one of four outcomes and a sentence of reasoning. You approve the disavow list before anything is submitted.
Feed the rebuild
The gap analysis turns into a target list for Link Building Services: which page needs links, what type, and what anchor mix keeps the profile natural.
Where a penalty is already in place, the audit is only half the job. The technical and content side is handled through SEO Audit Services, and the two reports are built to sit side by side rather than repeat each other.
Ledger outcomes
Three profiles, three different problems
612 → 58
Toxic domains removed from the index after disavow and 40 takedown requests. Organic inquiries 5 → 23/mo over six months.
41 recovered
Lost editorial links restored after a site migration flattened four hub pages into redirects.
+27%
Referring domains from relevant industry publications after anchor dilution and a targeted digital PR push.
Figures are paraphrased from client reporting. They describe what happened on those accounts, not a forecast for yours.
Scope
Pick the depth you need
Pricing depends on the number of referring domains, the number of markets and whether a penalty is involved. We quote in writing after a look at the export.
Ledger review
- Deduplicated backlink export
- Risk bands and anchor distribution
- Lost-link and redirect list
- Disposition sheet, one line per domain
Audit and clean-up
- Everything in the ledger review
- Outreach templates and takedown handling
- Disavow file drafted and submitted
- Re-crawl at 30 and 90 days
Profile programme
- Quarterly re-audit of the full profile
- Ongoing link acquisition against the gap list
- Anchor mix monitoring per landing page
- Competitor link movement alerts
Questions
Before you hand over the export
How do you decide a link is toxic?
By footprint, not one score. We look at the host's outbound pattern, topical fit, content quality, history and whether the same footprint appears across many linking domains. A weak link and a manipulative one are different diagnoses with different actions.
Will disavowing links hurt my rankings?
It can, if you disavow links that were helping. That is why every batch is reviewed, dated and reversible, and why we usually start with the smallest set that matches a clear pattern. Most sites need a much shorter file than they expect.
Can you remove links instead of disavowing them?
We can try. Removal is cleaner because it takes the page out of the equation, but response rates vary. We send specific, polite requests, escalate once, document everything, then disavow what remains.
How often should a profile be audited?
Once a year for a stable site, quarterly if you are actively building links or running digital PR. An audit after any domain migration or agency change is not optional.
Do you build links as part of this?
The audit produces the target list, and yes, we can execute it. What we do not do is buy links from networks, generate PBNs or automate guest posts. If the plan needs those, we are the wrong supplier.
What do we receive at the end?
A spreadsheet ledger with one row per domain, a PDF of findings, the anchor and destination charts, the disavow file if one is warranted, and a 45-minute walkthrough. Your team owns every file.
Our competitor has 40,000 referring domains. Should we worry?
Rarely. Volume without relevance is noise, and large counts often include the same network links you would never want. We compare the top 200 domains that carry real traffic, not the headline number.
Can you audit a site in a regulated industry?
Yes. For finance, health and legal clients we work strictly on marketing and search visibility, avoid claims the compliance team has not approved, and keep link sources away from anything that would create an endorsement problem.
Who reads the ledger
A three-person review panel: a technical SEO who has cleaned up after two migrations, a digital PR lead who has pitched the takedowns, and a strategist who has to explain the file to a board. Every disavow decision needs two of the three to agree, which keeps the file short and defensible.
- 11 years of search work, with link forensics on industrial and B2B accounts since 2016
- Audits delivered in English and German, with market-specific source lists
- No black-hat acquisition: no paid networks, no PBNs, no automated placements
- Every recommendation tied to a URL, a date and a measurable outcome