How to Do a Link Audit: 7 Steps With Free Tools

A link audit answers one question: are the links pointing at a site helping it, doing nothing, or getting in the way? Agencies usually need that answer at the worst moment, when a new client arrives with a messy history or an existing client's traffic drops. The good news is that most of a link audit can be done with free tools in an afternoon.

This is the process we use, step by step, with what to look for at each stage and what to do with what you find.

What a Link Audit Is

A link audit is a review of a site's backlink profile: which sites link to it, how relevant and trustworthy those sites are, what the links say, which ones have been lost, and how the profile compares with the sites that outrank it. The output is not a spreadsheet of every link. It is a short list of priorities: what to keep, what to fix and what to build next.

When to Run One

• Before a new link campaign, so new links fill real gaps instead of adding volume.
• When you take on a new client, especially one who has bought links before.
• After a traffic drop, once you have ruled out the simpler causes such as pages that stopped being indexed.
• Every few months on accounts where you build links, to catch lost links while they are still covered by a guarantee.

How to Do a Link Audit in 7 Steps

1. Export the links. In Google Search Console, open Links and export the external links. It is free and comes straight from Google, though it is a sample rather than every link. If you have a backlink tool, export from it too and combine the two lists.
2. Work by domain, not by link. Group the list by referring domain. Fifty links from one site are one relationship, not fifty decisions.
3. Check the quality of each domain. For each referring domain, look at three things: does it get real organic traffic, is its topic related to your client's, and do its pages show up on Google (search site: followed by the domain). Sites with no traffic, random topics and pages Google ignores add little.
4. Read the anchor text. Search Console's Top linking text shows the words other sites use to link. A natural profile leans on the brand name and plain URLs. If most anchors are the same commercial keyword, the next links should use the brand name instead.
5. Find lost links and wasted ones. Check the pages that used to link and no longer do. Then open Pages in Search Console, look at Not found (404), and find deleted pages that still have backlinks. Redirect each one to the closest live page so those links count again.
6. Compare with who is outranking you. Take the top three results for the client's main keyword and compare the number of referring domains, and the kind of sites they come from. That gap is the realistic size of the job.
7. Write the priorities. One page for the client: what is healthy, what was lost and fixed, what is missing compared with competitors, and what the next links should target.

What About Toxic Links and the Disavow Tool?

Most link audits turn up some spammy links, and the instinct is to disavow them all. Google's own guidance is that the disavow tool is rarely needed: its systems already ignore most spammy links. Google recommends it mainly when a site has a manual action for unnatural links, or when there are many artificial links that the site itself paid for or arranged. For a typical client, effort spent on lost links, redirects and new relevant links does far more than a long disavow file.

What the Client Should Get at the End

• A plain-English summary of the profile's health
• The lost links and 404 pages that were found, and what was done about them
• The anchor text balance, and what the next anchors should be
• The gap against the sites outranking them
• A short list of target pages for the next links

When new links do get built, check each one as it arrives. Our 9-point checklist for delivered links covers that part, and eight checks before you buy a backlink covers vetting sites before you order.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Search Console enough for a link audit?

It is the best free starting point because the data comes from Google. It shows a sample of links rather than all of them, so for larger sites a backlink tool fills the gaps.

How often should a link audit be done?

Before any new campaign, when you onboard a client, and every few months on accounts where links are being built.

Should I disavow every low-quality link?

Usually not. Google ignores most spammy links on its own. Keep the disavow tool for manual actions or for artificial links the site arranged itself.

If you would rather hand this to someone, we run manual link audits for agencies, delivered as a white-label summary you can send straight to your client.