How (and Why) to Check for Bum Backlinks to Your Website

Backlinks can be worth their weight in gold as part of a broader SEO campaign. You find high-quality source sites for your backlinks; you persuade them to link to your site and your SEO profile benefits accordingly.

Or at least, that’s how things might work in a perfect world.

In reality, the benefits afforded by some backlinks can be temporary at best.  What was once a high-quality backlink to your website could, for any number of reasons, be subsequently rendered quite the opposite.

Each time Google shifts its goalposts, the value of any and every backlink could be called into question. When backlinks go bad, they can drag down your SEO profile in a big way.

Just as a high-authority backlink can work wonders for SEO, bum backlinks can have the exact opposite effect. But how can you be sure that the backlinks you earned weeks, months or years ago are still working in your favour?

If there are any sketchy backlinks that may be dragging you down, how can you find them and get rid of them ASAP?

Checking For and Removing Toxic Backlinks

One option is to study Google Analytics at length, in order to manually track down every link to your site and assess its value yourself. Assuming you have more than a handful of links pointing to your site, this simply is not a realistic option.

Instead, it is far quicker and easier to arm yourself with special tracking tool to handle the logistics on your behalf. One example of which is WebCEO Toxic Link Checker – arguably the most powerful and comprehensive tool in its segment right now.

With a link checking tool like this, you will be able to see every single link pointing to your pages at a glance. Your entire backlink profile is presented clearly and in an easy-to-understand visual format, with detailed insights into the quality of each specific link.

You can then use a variety of metrics to determine which links are working for your SEO profile, including but not limited to anchor texts, Domain Trust Flow, Domain Citation Flow, Alexa Traffic Rank and more.

Best of all, WebCEO takes all the complications out of the process of getting rid of potentially toxic backlinks. It is as simple as selecting the links you want to eliminate and the software gets the job done for you within a few clicks.

Monitoring For Future Toxic Backlinks

Keeping an eye out for harmful backlinks going forwards is just as important as eliminating those that are already dragging down your SEO profile. With tools like these, you can set up automated scanning and alerts to ensure you know when and where any page on the web is linking to one of your pages.

At which point, you will be able to conduct the same analysis of its value and authority, in order to determine whether or not to keep it.

WebCEO is not the only backlink scanning tool available, but is by far the best in its class. Alternatively, you could always contact an experienced SEO agency with a request to conduct a complete backlink audit for your site on your behalf.