Backlinks are one of the top factors that govern our position in the SERPs. Other than building new quality links pointing to our site, it pays to audit the status of our existing links. An important element of any successful link building strategy is to analyze the website’s link profile.

Are all the links pointing to our site high-quality and relevant? Are there any issues that need fixing? Auditing our site’s link profile helps us improve it. A site with a better link profile has greater chances to rank in search engines, provided all the other ranking factors are optimized too.

What is a backlink analysis?

A backlink analysis is the comprehensive audit of the number and quality of our website’s backlinks. The output of the process is a better understanding of our site’s link profile and an identification of the factors that can be improved to raise the site’s ranking in search results.

By comparing the backlink audit of our domain against our competitors’ domains, we can also assess where we stand in our industry. Moreover, we can get a closer look into our competitors’ link building strategy and use the tactics that are working for them to improve our own link profile.

Important elements of backlink analysis

Backlink analysis gives insights into a number of elements of our website’s link profile. Different tools can offer a slightly different set of information. But the key pieces of information to track with any backlink audit include:

Total number of links

The total number of links that are pointing to our site is a vital thing to find out with backlink analysis. If there are very few backlinks, which is typically the case with new websites, that’s probably the reason why our site isn’t ranking. We need to use the tactics discussed in the previous lessons to acquire more links.

This metric appears in all backlink analysis tools, discussed below. We just have to find the number in the backlink analysis report for our domain and then look for ways to improve it.

Here’s where we’ll find the total number of links in Semrush’s Backlink Analytics tool:

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