Two things need to happen before you build a single new backlink. First, you need to know what’s actually pointing to your site right now, including the links quietly working against you that nobody’s ever looked at. Second, you need to know what’s pointing to whoever’s beating you, because that tells you exactly what closing the gap actually requires.
Skip either step and link building becomes guesswork. You end up building links without knowing whether your foundation is already compromised, or chasing opportunities that don’t actually move you closer to outranking anyone specific.
This is the process for doing both properly; a full audit of your own profile, followed by a structured analysis of your competitors’, with a clear list of what to do once you’ve got the data.
Auditing Your Own Backlink Profile
Pull Your Full Backlink Data
Start with Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, which is free once you verify ownership of your site. Enter your domain and you get a complete list of every backlink pointing to you, sorted by referring domain authority, along with the anchor text used and the specific page each link points to.
If you have access to a paid tool like Ahrefs or Semrush, use that instead for a more complete picture — the free webmaster tools versions are useful but limited compared to the full platform.
Export everything into a spreadsheet. You’re going to need to sort and filter this data more than any single dashboard view allows.
Check Your Overall Numbers First
Before diving into individual links, note your baseline numbers: total referring domains (not total links — one site linking to you fifty times counts as one referring domain and matters far less than fifty separate sites linking once each), your Domain Authority or Domain Rating score, and your average spam score across the profile.
Write these down. You’ll want to compare them against your competitors in part two, and you’ll want to track them over time as you do more link building work.
Identify Toxic and Spammy Links
Sort your export by spam score or toxicity rating, depending on which tool you’re using. Look specifically for:
- Links from sites with no real content, existing seemingly only to host outbound links
- Large batches of links that all appeared around the same date, especially if you didn’t run any campaign at that time
- Links from clearly irrelevant sites — foreign-language domains with no connection to your industry, adult content sites, gambling sites, anything with no plausible reason to reference your business
- Repeated exact-match anchor text patterns across many low-quality domains
If you inherited these from a previous agency or an old campaign, this is expected. Most established sites have accumulated some amount of this over the years. What matters is the proportion — a handful of low-quality links in an otherwise healthy profile is normal and not worth acting on. A large cluster is worth addressing.
Check Your Anchor Text Distribution
Group your links by anchor text and look at the percentages. A healthy profile has variety — a mix of branded anchors (your business name), generic anchors (“click here,” “this website,” “learn more”), naked URLs, and some keyword-based anchors, with no single phrase dominating an unnaturally large share of the total.
If a large percentage of your links use the exact same keyword-rich anchor text, that’s a red flag regardless of whether the linking sites themselves look legitimate — it’s a pattern that reads as manufactured even when the individual links aren’t spammy.
Check Where Your Links Actually Point
Look at the distribution of destination pages. Many backlink profiles are homepage-heavy by default, simply because the homepage is the easiest thing to link to and the most commonly referenced. But your service pages, location pages, and content pages benefit directly from links pointing specifically to them.
Note which of your important pages have few or no backlinks pointing directly to them. These are candidates for targeted link building going forward, separate from whatever general authority-building work you’re doing.
Decide What Needs a Disavow
If you’ve identified a genuine cluster of toxic links — not just a handful, but a pattern significant enough to plausibly be affecting your site — compile those specific domains into a disavow file and submit it through Google Search Console. This tells Google to ignore those links when evaluating your site.
Don’t disavow aggressively or preemptively. A small number of low-quality links sitting in an otherwise healthy profile is normal and doesn’t need action. Disavowing is for genuine, identifiable patterns of manipulation — not a general cleanup exercise applied to anything below a certain authority score.
Analyzing Your Competitors’ Backlinks
Pick the Right Competitors
Choose two or three businesses that are genuinely outranking you for the specific searches that matter most to your business, not the biggest names in your industry nationally, but the ones actually beating you in the searches you care about. A national brand with enormous authority isn’t a useful comparison if you’re a local business competing for local search terms; a local competitor with a similarly sized operation is far more useful.
Pull Their Backlink Profiles
Run the same export process from part one on each competitor’s domain. You won’t have free access to this the way you do for your own site, this requires a paid tool like Ahrefs or Semrush, since Webmaster Tools only shows you data for domains you’ve verified ownership of.
Compare the Baseline Numbers
Look at their total referring domains, Domain Authority, and general profile health against your own numbers from part one. This tells you the actual size of the gap you’re working to close – not a vague sense that they’re “probably ahead,” but a specific number.
Find the Overlap and the Gaps
This is the most valuable part of the exercise. Look specifically for:
- Links shared across multiple competitors that you don’t have: If two or three of your competitors are all listed on the same directory or mentioned by the same publication, that source has clearly demonstrated it’s willing to feature businesses like yours making it a realistic, high-probability target.
- High-authority links unique to one competitor: These reveal what that specific competitor has been doing that the others haven’t, maybe consistent guest posting, an active local PR strategy, or genuine community involvement generating organic press mentions.
- The types of sources dominating their profiles: Is it mostly local directories? Industry publications? Press mentions? News coverage? This tells you which link building method has actually been working in your specific market rather than guessing generically.
Build Your Target List
Take everything from the overlap and gap analysis and turn it into an actual, prioritized outreach list, not just a spreadsheet of domains, but specific action items. This directory needs a submission. This publication is worth pitching a story to. This organization is worth reaching out to about membership.
Prioritize the shared links first, since they represent the highest-probability opportunities, sources that have already said yes to businesses like yours more than once.
Putting Both Halves Together
The audit tells you whether your foundation is solid or compromised. The competitor analysis tells you specifically what closing the gap requires, rather than guessing generically at what “more backlinks” might mean.
Do the audit first. There’s limited value in building new links on top of a profile that’s actively being held back by a cluster of toxic ones – fix that first, or at minimum know about it, before layering new work on top.
Then use the competitor analysis to build a specific, realistic outreach plan rather than a generic list of link building tactics applied without any particular target in mind. A plumber in Phoenix chasing links that worked for a competing plumber in Phoenix is working with real, proven data. A plumber in Phoenix chasing generic “SEO backlink” advice written for no specific industry is working with a guess.
If you want this done properly — a full audit of your existing profile plus a competitor gap analysis specific to your market — Ranqeo’s off-page SEO services start with exactly this before any new link building begins.
Get your free SEO audit from Ranqeo.
Frequently Asked Questions
How often should I audit my backlink profile?
At least once a year, and immediately after taking over a site with an unclear SEO history or after noticing an unexplained ranking drop. Ongoing link building work should include periodic spot-checks rather than waiting for a full annual audit to catch problems.
Do I need a paid tool to do a competitor backlink analysis?
For your own site, Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is free and sufficient for a basic audit. For competitor analysis, you’ll need a paid tool like Ahrefs or Semrush, since free tools only give you data for domains you’ve verified ownership of.
What’s a reasonable spam score to be concerned about?
There’s no universal number, since different tools calculate this differently. What matters more than any single score is the proportion of your profile that looks toxic and whether there’s a clear, identifiable pattern – a cluster of links from the same source type appearing around the same time – rather than isolated low-quality links scattered naturally through an otherwise normal profile.
Should I disavow every low-authority link I find?
No. Low authority alone isn’t the same as toxic. Plenty of legitimate, low-authority sites exist and link to businesses genuinely. Disavowing should be reserved for links that show clear signs of manipulation or spam, not simply anything below a certain authority threshold.
How many competitors should I analyze?
Two or three is usually enough to spot meaningful patterns without the analysis becoming unwieldy. Choose the ones genuinely outranking you for your specific priority searches, not the largest or most well-known names in your broader industry.