How to Check Your Backlink Profile?

If you are new to SEO, you may not have heard of a backlink profile. Backlinking is an extremely important aspect of website building and including them will help to increase your website’s visibility and overall success.

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What Are Backlinks?

Before we discuss how to check your backlink profile, it’s important that we have a clear definition of what backlinks are. Backlinks are links from one website that link to a page on another website. Backlinks are also referred to as inbound links, incoming links, or one way links. Google and other major search engines typically categorize websites with various backlinks of high value. As a result, pages with a high number of backlinks tend to be placed higher on search engine rankings and thus have more clicks.

What is a Link Profile?

A link profile is an SEO term that refers to the complete collection of external backlinks pointing to a website.

Why Do Backlinks Matter?

Incorporating backlinks into your website building strategy is incredibly important to your website’s success. This is because backlinks are essentially the number of “votes” you receive from other websites. These votes prove to the search engine that your site has value and is being sought after, it’s credible and trustworthy, and deserves to be on search result pages. It’s basically a big sign to Google that your site is worth giving a visibility boost. The more votes your site has, the higher up in the search results your webpages will end up being and the more people will be able to discover your site.

What Makes a Good Backlink?

So, we know backlinks are an essential part of creating a credible and high ranking website, but how exactly do you know that you have a good backlink? Well, for a backlink to actually help your site, there are some criteria that will need to meet.

Domain Authority

First off, the backlink has to come from a site with good domain authority. What do we mean by this? Well, domain authority is when a site is labeled as trustworthy in the eyes of search engines. What makes a site trustworthy? It comes from a site that is reputable. A backlink off of CNN.com will most likely be viewed as a lot more valuable and trustworthy than a backlink from someone’s personal blog. When Google recognizes that a site has authority, it will make sure to boost the site that is linked in the search results and help the site cultivate more organic traffic. It is not easy to get links from sites such as these. However, whenever the opportunity arises, it will be a great help to your site.

Anchor Text

Another trait of a good backlink is a link that contains your desired target word in your anchor text. Anchor text is the visible text that is embedded in your link. Oftentimes, the term “click here” is used, but anchor text is a lot more valuable when it includes key target words. Although it can be beneficial to have backlinks of this caliber, make sure you don’t overdo it. Google has systems in place that prevent backlinks that have exact target words from gaining traction.

Algorithms

In fact, one of their main filters is called Google Penguin which is an algorithm that filters out websites that contain a suspicious amount of backlinks where the exact match anchor text is used. Google noticed that certain sites were abusing backlink building and decided to set up Google Penguin as a means to combat the issue. So, be careful and make sure that your anchor text does not trigger the algorithm and ends up hurting you more than helping you.

Relation

Thirdly, your backlink is valuable when the site that links to your site is related. Google looks for links from sites that have things in common and gives those links a boost. In other words, having a backlink from a site in a similar industry or a webpage pertaining to the same topic gives you a big advantage. For example, if you wrote an article about wedding planning, Google would put much more weight on backlinks from sites pertaining to wedding dresses, bridal showers, and bachelorette parties. If you wrote an article about fast fashion, Google would put weight on backlinks from sites that have to do with child labor, labor laws, and textile pollution. Essentially, backlinks with some sort of relation to your site or webpage are going to boost your site in the search results tremendously.

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Do Follow Links

It is important to be aware of the fact that Google pretty much ignores any link with the “no follow” tag attached to it. Nofollow links are usually blog comments, press releases, and paid advertisements. This means that no follow links do not count when it comes to search engine rankings. With that said, most links on the web are “do follow” links and so you usually do not have to worry about this.

First Time Linkage

When a website first links to you, the results can be phenomenal. However, the more times the same site links to your site, the less powerful the backlinks become. So, after the second, third, forth, for even 100th backlink, you’re not going to get the same boost as you did from the first backlink made from that site. It is much better for your website to receive many backlinks from different sites. The same amount or more backlinks from the same site won’t help you. So, attaining backlinks from various different sites will end up being very helpful to you in the long run.

Now that we have a better understanding of what backlinks are and what sort of backlinks we should aim to have, let’s find out how we can check our backlinks by finding our backlink profile. You can find your backlink profile a number of different ways, as there are countless services available via the internet. However there is one way that is pretty simple.

How to Find Your Backlink Profile

All you have to do is open up your search engine of choice, let’s say you’re using Google. Now, in the search bar, you are going to want to write “link:”. After the semicolon, you would then write the name of your website. For example, if your website was CNN, you would type “link:CNN.com”. After you’ve typed this out, hit search. Once you’ve hit search you will be able to see all of the backlinks to your site that Google has on record. This method will give you a quick rundown of the amount of backlinks your site currently has. However, you’re going to want to run a thorough backlink analysis in order to get the complete scope of how your sites backlinks are faring.

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How to Run A Backlink Profile Analysis

Running a backlink analysis can be broken down in a few easy steps. The first is, you’re going to want to determine which sites you would like to analyze. If you are looking to analyze your own site, make note of who your competitors are. After conducting some keyword research, type out your target keywords into the search bar and take notice of which sites are in the top ranks. This step is important because these are the sites that are successfully outranking you and looking through their backlink profiles will help you to figure out how you can outrank them.

Using Tools

Next, you’re going to want to choose a backlink profile analyzing tool.There are a number of them out there but a few notable ones include BrightEdge Backlink Management, Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz Open site Explorer. These tools are paid; however, they all come with access to a free trial. This gives you the opportunity to try all of them and then figure out which tool best suits your needs. Depending on which tools you decide to use, you will also be able to access a list of sites that are competing for the same organic keywords that you are.

Data Records

Once you have decided on which backlink profile tool you would like to use, type each domain into your tool of choice and start collecting the necessary information. When doing a backlink analysis, there is often a large amount of data to look through. So, it would be in your best interest to keep an organized record of the data so that you can use it to make smart decisions later on. You can easily use a Google Spreadsheet to keep your data neat and organized.

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Metrics

When conducting a backlink profile analysis, you should make note of the following metrics. First of which being the total number of links and unique domains. Comparing this number to that of your competitors will give you an idea if you need to step up your backlink strategy. Next, you’re going to want to look out for referring domains. Knowing what your referring domains are will give you a better sense of which of your backlinks is the most valuable. Lastly, you are going to want to make note of your top pages. These are simply which pages on your site have the most links pointing to them.

Profile Links SEO

Profile links are links that can be placed in your bio on public profile websites. Since these are backlinks from websites with high domain authority, the idea is that they should have a positive affect on your SEO. So, when you are creating profiles, consider adding a link back to your website.

Get a Backlinks Report and Full Link Analysis at SEO Design Chicago

SEO Design Chicago offers link building opportunities for our clients. Our team focuses on creating high quality links to and from our client websites, and analyzing anchor text and the link type. Contact us today to learn more about our link building services!

FAQ:

  • How do I create a backlink profile?
  • Do I use an online tool to create backlinks?
  • How many backlinks do sites in my industry typically have?
  • Can I hire someone to create a backlink profile for me?
  • Where do I check if my backlink profile is live?

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