In-depth backlinks analysis can not only help you optimize search engine traffic. It can tell you much more interesting information about your site.
John Ball from “Search Engine Journal” points at four main uses of backlink analysis:
1. Competitor Analysis
Competitor analysis can provide you with wide range of useful information. You will learn what keywords are most useful, which pages of competitor’s site are most linked, which content proves to be most effective, which sites are linking to it.
2. Link prospecting
It’s a very important element of link building process. First you should start with queries most important for your clients. Then you’ll need to additionally filter the results, deciding, which of them are most useful, and of the highest quality. Once you’ve done it start building the relation with the website owners (bloggers, publishers) by contacting them. Here are some useful tips on link prospecting.
3. Backlink Audit
This is a very important part of link building. Toxic links can be as harmful to your search engine visibility and business to overshadow all backlink building process. Google may decide to penalize your site or even ban it because of toxic links. Sites that used to be considered high quality at a time, may be treated as spammers by new search engine algorithms.
Some of the linking pages may not respond. Some of the links may point at redesigned or removed parts of your site.
It’s also not recommended to over optimize the backlinks net. While auditing your backlinks, go through all the points we’ve mentioned here.
4. Link Reclamation
The final result of the analysis is link reclamation. You may contact the linking site’s owner to change a wrong URL or inform him about his page not responding. In case you decide it’s not possible or simply not worth it, you can disavow a link, using Google’s dedicated tool.
Remember, according to new search engine standards, it’s often better if some sites aren’t linking to yours.
image by mterraza via sxc.hu
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