Launching a Digital PR campaign without a backlink audit is a bit like setting off on a road trip without checking the map. You’ll probably end up somewhere. It just might not be where you needed to go.
Here at Dark Horse, every Digital PR strategy we build starts in the same place: a proper look under the bonnet at what’s already pointing to your site. Who’s linking, what they’re linking to, what the competition has that you don’t, and what could be dragging you down.
We’ve put together this backlink audit guide to walk you through exactly how we do it. Step by step, so you can try it for yourself if you’re still thinking about bringing the experts in.
In this article:
- What is a backlink?
- What is a backlink audit?
- Why a backlink audit matters before any Digital PR activity
- How to conduct a backlink analysis, step by step
- Turning your audit into a Digital PR strategy
- Your backlink audit checklist
What is a backlink?
Let’s start with the basics. A backlink is simply a link from one website to another. If a national newspaper writes about your client’s latest study and links back to their site, that’s a backlink. Lovely stuff.
Think of each link as a vote of confidence. When a trusted, relevant website links to you, it’s telling Google, “this lot know what they’re talking about.” The more quality votes you have, the more authority your site builds, and the better your chances of ranking for the terms that actually matter.
That’s why backlinks in SEO are still such a big deal. Google has tweaked its algorithm more times than we’ve had hot dinners, but links remain one of the strongest signals it uses to judge whether a site deserves to rank.
But here’s the catch… not all backlinks are created equal. One link from a respected, relevant publication can be worth more than a hundred from spammy directories nobody has visited since 2009. Quality beats quantity. Every single time.
What is a backlink audit?
So, what is a backlink audit? In a nutshell, it’s a health check of every link pointing at your website.
An SEO backlink audit looks at who’s linking to you, how authoritative and relevant those sites are, which pages are attracting links, what anchor text is being used, and whether anything dodgy is lurking in there. It also means sizing yourself up against the competition to see where the gaps are.
You might hear this also called an SEO link audit, a link audit, or a backlink analysis. Technically, the analysis is the digging and the audit is the bigger picture of what you do with what you find – but we won’t get too precious about it. They all boil down to the same thing: knowing exactly where you stand before you start building.
Why a backlink audit matters before any Digital PR activity
Digital PR takes time, creativity and a fair bit of graft. Pitching journalists isn’t cheap, and neither is a big data-led campaign. So it makes sense to point all that effort in the right direction from day one.
Here’s why we never skip the backlink audit:
- It gives you a benchmark. You can’t prove a campaign moved the needle if you don’t know where the needle started. Your audit sets the baseline for referring domains, authority and link quality, so you can report on real progress.
- It shows you where the gaps are. Comparing your profile with that of your competitors reveals the publications, topics and types of sites linking to them but not to you. Those gaps become your target list.
- It tells you which pages need the love. Maybe your homepage is hoovering up every link while your money-making service pages are sat there with zilch. An audit spots that, so your campaigns can push authority where it’ll actually make a difference.
- It flags the bad stuff. Spammy, irrelevant or manipulative links can hold a site back. Better to find them now than build shiny new links on shaky foundations.
- It shapes your creative. Knowing which content has already earned links (and which angles journalists bit on) gives you a head start when brainstorming the next campaign.
Put simply, a backlink audit turns Digital PR from “let’s see what sticks” into a strategy with a purpose. And that’s how the Davids take on the Goliaths.
How to conduct a backlink analysis: step by step
Right, sleeves up. Here’s how we run a link audit for SEO and Digital PR, broken down into bite-sized steps.
Step 1: Pick your tools
You’ll need at least one backlink tool. Ahrefs, Semrush, Majestic and Moz are the big hitters, and each has its own authority metric (Domain Rating, Authority Score, Trust Flow and Domain Authority respectively).
Pair whichever you choose with Google Search Console. Its Links report shows the links Google itself has found, so it’s a handy sense-check. No single tool catches everything, so if you’ve got access to more than one, use it.
Step 2: Pull your full backlink profile
Pop your domain into your tool of choice and export everything – backlinks, referring domains, anchor text and top linked pages. Do the same from Search Console.
Combine it all into one spreadsheet and remove duplicates. It’s not the most glamorous part of the job, but trust us, future you will be grateful.
Step 3: Get your headline numbers
Before you go line by line, note down the big-picture stats:
- Total referring domains (more useful than total backlinks, as one site can link hundreds of times)
- Domain authority score
- Ratio of followed to no-followed links
- How your referring domains have grown or dropped over the past 12 months
These become your benchmark. Screenshot them, date them, keep them safe.
Step 4: Assess link quality
Now for the detective work. For each referring domain, ask:
- Is it relevant? A link from a respected industry title or national news site beats a random blog with nothing to do with your sector.
- Is it authoritative? Check its authority score and whether it gets real organic traffic. A high score with zero traffic is a red flag.
- Is it a real site? Look out for link farms, scraped content and pages packed with unrelated outbound links.
- Where is the link placed? A link in the body of an editorial article carries far more weight than one tucked away in a footer or sidebar.
We like to tag each domain as good, neutral or toxic. It makes the next steps much quicker.
Step 5: Check your anchor text
Anchor text is the clickable text of a link. A natural profile is mostly made up of branded anchor text (e.g. ‘Dark Horse’), naked URLs (‘www.darkhorse.co’) and generic phrases (‘click here’, ‘this study’ etc.).
If you spot a suspicious number of exact-match keyword anchors, like ‘best PPC agency Manchester’ over and over, that can look manipulative to Google. Make a note – it may point to some old-school link building from years gone by.
Step 6: See which pages are earning links
Sort your top linked pages report. You’ll usually find the homepage and a handful of blog posts doing all the heavy lifting.
Ask yourself: which pages need more authority to rank? Category pages, service pages and product pages are often link-starved. Note them down – these are the pages your Digital PR should help, through internal linking from campaign pages or by linking to them directly in press releases where it makes sense to do so.
Step 7: Find your lost and broken links
Check for links you’ve lost recently and links pointing at pages that now return a 404. These are quick wins.
For links pointing to 404 pages, set up a 301 redirect for each one to the most relevant live page. For lost links from good sites, a friendly email to the journalist or site owner can often win them back.
The same goes for unlinked brand mentions. If a publication has mentioned you without linking, a polite nudge works wonders.
Step 8: Size up the competition
This is where a backlink audit really earns its keep for Digital PR. Pick three to five competitors – ideally the sites outranking you for your priority keywords, not just the ones you or your client think of as rivals.
Run a link gap (or link intersect) analysis to find domains linking to them but not to you. Then dig into what those competitors did to earn the links: data studies, expert comment, reactive PR, tools, guides? That’s your intel for the creative brainstorm.
Step 9: Deal with toxic links
If you’ve found genuinely harmful links, try contacting the site owner to ask for removal first.
However, Google has said it’s pretty good at ignoring spammy links on its own, so most sites don’t need to disavow anything. The best approach is usually to ‘crowd out’ these poor quality links over time, with an effective Digital PR strategy.
Step 10: Write up your findings
Pull it all together into a short report: your benchmark numbers, strengths, weaknesses, competitor gaps, priority pages and any clean-up needed. This is the document your Digital PR strategy is built on.
Turning your backlink audit into a Digital PR strategy
An audit sitting in a Google Drive folder gathering dust helps no one. Here’s how we turn the findings into a plan:
- Build your dream target publication list from the competitor gap analysis. If every rival has been featured in a certain trade title or regional paper for example, then that’s where you might be aiming – but remember not every domain will be relevant for your site. It’s important to only focus on the ones that have value to your client.
- Choose campaign themes based on what’s already earned links in your niche. If data studies are landing well for competitors, that’s a strong hint journalists in your space love a good stat. Meanwhile, if experts are lapping up the coverage, this might become a bigger part of your strategy.
- Pick the pages to boost. Plan each campaign so its authority flows to the link-starved pages you identified, whether through the campaign landing page itself or smart internal linking.
- Set realistic KPIs. Use your benchmark to set targets for referring domains, authority and relevant coverage. Links are expected – but tie them back to rankings, traffic and revenue too.
- Re-audit regularly. We’d recommend a full backlink audit every six to 12 months, with a lighter monthly check-in. That way you can track what your Digital PR is actually achieving.
Your backlink audit checklist
For the skim-readers among us (no judgement), here’s the whole thing in one handy backlink audit checklist:
- Choose your backlink tool(s) and connect Google Search Console
- Export your full backlink profile and remove duplicates
- Record benchmark stats: referring domains, authority score, follow/no-follow split, 12-month trend
- Tag each referring domain as good, neutral or toxic
- Check relevance, authority, traffic and link placement
- Review anchor text for over-optimised keyword anchors
- Identify your most-linked pages and your link-starved priority pages
- Find lost and broken links, and redirect or reclaim them
- Chase unlinked brand mentions
- Run a link gap analysis against three to five search competitors
- Note which content and campaign types earned competitors’ links
- Write up findings and set your Digital PR KPIs
- Book in your next audit
Ready to start building?
A backlink audit isn’t the flashiest part of Digital PR. Nobody’s popping champagne over a spreadsheet of referring domains. But it’s the bit that makes everything after it work harder… and it’s often the difference between coverage that looks nice in a report and coverage that actually moves the needle.
Want us to take a look at yours? Our Digital PR team would love to dig in. Get in touch – we don’t bite.
