Everyone knows the phrase, “Life is a marathon, not a sprint.”
Less people know the famous SEO equivalent: “Link building is a marathon, not a sprint.”
Kidding. We just made that up now—but that makes it no less true. When it comes to link building, it’s almost never about who can build the most links the fastest—it’s about who can organically build the most high-quality, relevant links that actually provide link juice and a subsequent boost in search engine rankings.
But zooming out even further, we can see that that phrase also applies to link building in another way, which is this: The link-building race is a marathon (or maybe an ultramarathon) because it never really ends. This might be the last thing you want to hear, but after you write swathes of guest posts and acquire dozens of niche edits, you’re far from done—in fact, that’s when the real work begins.
This is because Google (and other search engines) don’t rank your website on a link-by-link basis—instead, they look at your backlink profile as a whole, and decide what to do with your website based on what they find there.
That’s why we wrote this article: to provide you with a one-stop shop where you can find everything you need to know, not about building links—heaven knows there’s enough articles on that already—but about effectively managing your backlink profile, so when Google examines your website, it finds a healthy, well-oiled machine: the SEO equivalent of an ultramarathon runner.
Healthy link profiles contain diverse, relevant links, have natural link velocity, and contain a balance of do-follow and no-follow links.
Unhealthy link profiles contain many links from spammy, irrelevant websites, have unnatural link velocity, and often contain too much exact-match anchor text.
Backlink checkers are essential tools for staying on top of your link profile, providing a host of practical tools for monitoring your backlinks and removing unwanted ones.
You’ll need to regularly audit your link profile, correctly interpret fluctuations, and sometimes disavow unwanted links to disassociate them from your website.
To keep your link profile optimized, regularly remove low-quality links, build backlinks through organic methods, and develop a routine for monitoring your link profile.
The first order of business is to take a high-level look at what exactly makes a link profile “healthy” vs. “unhealthy.”
Just like the human body has key indicators like blood pressure, heart rate, and body fat composition, backlink profiles have some general metrics that can lend some good insight as to what’s really going on inside.
Regardless of how they’re actually created, healthy link profiles always bear a resemblance to the link profiles of websites that acquired all their links through organic means—namely, through actually growing their respective businesses and creating content, products and services that people want to link to.
First off, healthy link profiles almost always consist of links from diverse, reputable sources. For example, if you’re running a tech website, this means you’ll want backlinks from technology blogs, industry news sites, and educational institutions—not just generic product review sites.
Healthy link profiles also usually have good link velocity metrics. In other words, the number of backlinks grows naturally as the website grows in popularity—it doesn’t shoot up in random spikes here and there, which can be indicative of spammy, black-hat practices.
Another feature of healthy link profiles is that the backlinks come from relevant sources. For example, if someone is reading an article on outdoor survival skills, and that article contains a backlink to your website, it should direct them to your webpage on camping gear recommendations, not your webpage on home decor tips. The first is much more relevant than the other.
Finally, healthy link profiles contain balanced ratios of do-follow to no-follow links. Do-follow links pass SEO benefits and authority from the linking site to your website, which helps improve your site's search ranking. No-follow links do not pass SEO benefits, but they can drive traffic and diversify your link profile. A healthy ratio of both types appears more natural to search engines and avoids potential penalties associated with link manipulation.
The biggest indicator of unhealthy link profiles is that they’re often dominated by links from spammy or irrelevant sites. In other words, the backlinks drive next to no traffic, or they don’t actually help readers find what they’re looking for—and to Google, this screams “manipulation.”
Unhealthy link profiles usually have unnatural link velocity metrics. Sudden spikes in link acquisition rate, followed by periods of no growth and more random spikes, all indicate spammy link-building practices. At the very least, this type of link velocity activity is very rare for websites that build links ethically and organically over time.
Overuse of exact-match anchor text is an indicator of unhealthy link profiles that many people often overlook. This is because the anchor text for natural backlinks via guest posts or niche edits almost never exactly matches the title of the linked webpage—you need to use some creativity to fit the anchor text within the context of the article or webpage copy. So excessive use of exact-match keywords in anchor text can be seen by search engines as an attempt to manipulate rankings.
Based on the above, we can build out a consolidated checklist of key indicators for analyzing your link profile.
Here’s what your link profile needs to have.
Diversity in link sources: This prevents over-reliance on a single source, reducing risk and appearing more natural to search engines. To monitor this, keep an eye on the number of unique domains (not links, but domains) linking to your site, as well as the distribution of links across different domain types (like blogs, news sites, directories, and more).
Relevance of linking domains: Links from relevant domains are more valuable and signal to search engines that your content is credible and actually valuable to readers. To stay on top of this, monitor the relevance score of linking domains to your industry or subject matter.
Balance of do-follow and no-follow links: A natural-looking link profile should include both do-follow and no-follow links, as a skewed ratio can make Google… tweak out, for lack of a better phrase. To monitor this, track your website’s ratio of do-follow to no-follow links, as well as trends in the acquisition speed of each type over time.
Anchor text distribution: Like we mentioned earlier, diverse anchor text indicates natural, organic link building, and helps prevent penalties for anchor text over-optimization. The key metric to monitor here is the percentage distribution of exact-match, partial-match, branded, and generic anchor texts. You might also want to set up alerts that notify you of any sudden changes in anchor text patterns.
In the last section, we talked about monitoring a whole host of link-building metrics, and even setting up alerts to notify you of unwanted changes to your link profile. If you’re wondering how on earth you’re supposed to do that, we’ve got you covered. We said this was a one-stop shop, remember?
Link-building tools, also known as backlink checkers, were literally invented for the purpose of helping website owners monitor their backlink profiles and easily, practically take action to remove the bad links and emphasize the good ones.
Unless you’re outsourcing your link building to a professional agency like Profit Engine, using a backlink checker is simply a must, as you’ll be able to view all of your website’s most important backlink information from a single, unified dashboard.
Let's tailor your roadmap to success.
With extensive expertise in enhancing SERP ranking performance, we understand what truly works. Let us save you from wasting resources on ineffective strategies. A quick call with us with the option of an AI-Driven Strategy Blueprint might be all you need to attain the edge over your competition.
BOOKÂ AÂ CALL
Without going too deep and getting lost in the weeds, here’s a quick snapshot of what link-building tools can do for you.
Automatic analysis of the quantity, quality, and relevance of all incoming links;
Notifications that update you about any newly built links, as well as recently lost ones;
Alerts for any potential black-hat SEO tactics that may have been employed without your knowledge;
Competitive analysis that automatically compares your full link profile with those of your closest competitors, illuminating any gaps that need to be closed.
Disclaimer: We already wrote a full article on our top 5 backlink checkers of 2024—so if you want to get gritty with it, you can find everything you need to know in that article.
For now, we’ll just give you some highlights.
Semrush is our favorite overall backlink checker, with a focus on providing users with a full SEO toolkit. Semrush is also self-declared as having the world’s fastest backlink crawler.
Ahrefs is the most reliable backlink checker, with over 64% of SEO professionals preferring it over the alternatives.
Majestic is our favorite specialized backlink checker. It’s geared solely towards backlink analysis, and the company even invented the popular Trust Flow and Citation Flow metrics.
Google Search Console is an excellent free backlink checker, which directly shows how Google views your site's links. Since we’re dealing with an internet dominated by Google, this is all but essential for monitoring your site's search performance.
And now for one quick bit of shameless self-promotion: Our team at Profit Engine can equip you with everything these backlink checkers provide, and actually create the content and build the links for you at the same time. If you’re looking for a more hands-off solution, we’ve got you.
If all that information felt a bit like reading a textbook, we’re sorry. Now it’s time to move on to some practicalities.
The most important first step to actually maintaining a healthy backlink profile is to regularly monitor and audit it.
This will allow you to see how effective your current link building strategy actually is in real-time, making changes as they’re required and before things go really wrong. It will also help you detect potential risks before they impact your site's ranking or cause penalties, and maintain the overall credibility and authority of your website by ensuring most of your links are high-quality and relevant.
Best to start now! Assuming you already use a backlink checker, here’s a step-by-step process you can use right this instant to audit your link profile.
Gather your backlink data: Use tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, Majestic, Google Search Console, or Profit Engine to collect link data.
Assess the quality of each link: Evaluate each link for relevance, domain authority, and any potential spam signals. This will take a while—*shrug emoji.*
Identify and categorize links: Sort all of your links into categories, such as “high-quality,” “low-quality,” or “toxic.”
Determine action items: Decide whether to keep, remove, or disavow each link, based on the category you put it in.
Make changes: Contact website owners to remove unwanted links. If that doesn't go well, prepare a disavow file for submission to Google—more on the “disavow” process in a bit.
Document changes: Keep records of actions taken so other members of your team can stay in the loop.
Here’s a frustrating situation many of our clients run into before they work with us. They open up their backlink checker and are confronted with a link profile that looks radically different than the one they were looking at last week—and when we say radically different, we don’t always mean in the good way.
It’s not a matter of “if” this will happen to you—it’s “when.”
When this happens, there are usually a few common culprits. Here’s a list of these annoying little guys, and how you should proceed so you can get your link profile back on track.
Sudden increase in links: Possible causes could include the effects of a viral content piece (in which case the sudden increase is actually good), participation in a link scheme, or spam attacks targeting your site. To fix things, use your backlink checker to verify the quality and relevance of the new links, and then disavow any spammy or low-quality links.
Significant loss of links: This could be caused by things like site redesigns, expired domains, or a cleanup of old content by certain sites that link to your content. We recommend investigating the lost links for patterns (such as those lost from specific domains or pages), and potentially even reaching out to the webmasters themselves to see if the links were removed accidentally.
Links from new or unfamiliar domains: Reasons for this might include being featured in news articles (which is usually excellent news), or being mistakenly linked to due to a typo from an intern somewhere. To remedy this, conduct a thorough review to see if the new domains actually meant to link to you. If they did, it’s a happy day! If not, remove or disavow the links.
We already mentioned this, but backlink checkers provide notifications and alert features for a reason. Use them, and you’ll be surprised by link profile fluctuations less often, and much better able to fix them before any penalties are incurred.
Okay, so your recent spike in link velocity wasn’t because your TikTok post went viral—and when you examine the new links, you see they’re coming from sketchy websites and they display every sign of being spammy.
“Disavowing” a link is when you tell Google to ignore the link when assessing your site's ranking. It essentially wipes the link off of Google’s record of your site.
Here’s how to make that happen.
Attempt to remove manually: Before resorting to the disavow feature, it’s usually best to contact the webmaster of the linking site directly to request removal. Among other reasons, this is because you actually might be wrong about some of the new links—maybe you thought they were spammy, but they’re actually helping your site.
Prepare a disavow file: If the webmaster doesn’t respond or refuses to remove the links, get ready to disavow. List all toxic backlinks in a .txt file, formatted according to Google’s specifications, or those of your preferred backlink checker.
Submit the disavow file: Use the disavow tool in Google Search Console, or submit your file directly through your current backlink checker (assuming it offers a disavow feature).
Monitor the impact: Keep an eye on your site’s search performance and link profile after disavowing to ensure that everything went according to plan.
This article is a whopper, so let’s do a quick recap. So far, we’ve covered:
What makes a link profile healthy vs. unhealthy;
Why backlink checkers are essential for maintaining a healthy link profile;
How to audit your link profile and remove harmful links.
To wrap up, we’re going to zoom out and focus on some higher-level best practices for optimizing your link profile.
These aren’t going to be specific, how-to items—these are the things you’ll want to write on a Post-it note and stick to your office wall, to keep in mind on a daily basis as you progress along the never-ending SEO and link-building journey.
Yeah, this is what we just covered. But we wanted to mention it again because it’s not a random thing that you’ll have to do every once in a blue moon—it’s something you should be doing on a regular basis.
Just like fruit trees regularly produce dead, unproductive branches that need to be removed, your website will regularly acquire low-quality links that hurt your link profile. Removing them as soon as possible is essential for keeping Google happy with your website.
At Profit Engine, we acquire backlinks for our clients primarily through guest posts, niche edits, and HARO link building. All of these methods are time-consuming and involve some type of manual outreach and content creation.
So why do we prioritize these methods?
Because they produce the most authoritative and relevant links that you can get—and it’s not even close.
Organic link building like this kills two birds with one stone: It enhances your link profile for Google, and seriously increases referral traffic, which results in more popularity for your site and more potential customers for your business.
We wrote detailed guides on each of these methods: guest posts, niche edits (which include broken link building), and HARO submissions.
If you don’t have time right now to dive into each of those, here are some tactics that are common to all of those methods.
Identify potential link partners: Look for non-competitive sites in your industry that share a target audience and could benefit from your content.
Create link-worthy content: Develop content that is informative, unique, and engaging enough to naturally attract backlinks. If real people actually want to link to your content, you’ll have an automatic edge over your competition.
Craft personalized outreach messages: Send personalized emails to potential link partners, highlighting the mutual benefits of linking and eliminating hidden costs.
Follow up: This is a big one! Continue communications in order to build long-term relationships with popular influencers and site owners in your niche.
Proactively manage your link profile by predicting potential problems before they negatively impact your rankings.
For example, if you notice a gradual increase in links from irrelevant foreign domains, you might use your backlink checker to preemptively disavow whole swathes of these to avoid the impending penalties associated with unnatural links.
The benefits here are obvious: The sooner you solve problems with your link profile, the less time Google will have to demote your site. Solve these problems before they even occur for the best results.
You won’t get fitter if you only exercise on special occasions, and your link profile won’t stay healthy if you only check on it when the mood strikes you. If you need to, literally set appointments on your calendar application to remind yourself to conduct a link profile audit.
Like many other business tasks, you’ll find that if you make a conscious effort to review your backlink profile often, you’ll spend less time on each review. Since there will have been less time for things to go wrong, there will naturally be less to fix.
Effectively managing your backlink profile is crucial for maintaining and enhancing your website's SEO performance.
To maintain a robust link profile, you’ll need to conduct regular audits to help identify and remove low-quality links—and on the flipside, you’ll have to employ proactive strategies for building healthy backlinks in the first place.
Backlink checker tools like Semrush and Ahrefs are pretty much totally necessary for monitoring changes and responding quickly to any negative trends that develop.
Adhere to a regular monitoring schedule, do your best to forecast potential issues, and you’ll be able to keep your link profile both competitive and compliant—both of which are wins in Google’s book.
Don’t be discouraged if things are taking longer than you thought. Remember, backlink management is a marathon, not a sprint.
That said, if you don’t feel like you have a marathon in you, book a free strategy call with us at Profit Engine.
We’ll take the entire link-building process off of your plate, allowing you to focus on doing what you do best—which is probably not link building.
What is a link profile?
Your link profile is the collection of all the backlinks that point to your website. It includes a bunch of different metrics, like the quality of the links, the diversity of the linking domains, and the balance of do-follow and no-follow links. The status of your link profile is a huge factor in determining where Google places your site in the search rankings.
Is it easy to manage a link profile?
Managing a link profile is not easy—but it’s not overly difficult either. The most important thing to remember is that backlink management is a marathon, not a sprint. If you approach it thinking you’ll solve everything in a few days, you will be discouraged. If you approach it with the correct, ever-learning mindset, you’ll find it’s totally doable.
What makes a high-quality backlink?
Backlinks are usually characterized as “high-quality” if they come from an authoritative website, if the content they link to is relevant, and if the website visitors actually find the content genuinely helpful.
An industry-leading AI link building strategy.
After years of experience growing brands just like yours, we know what gets results and what doesn’t. We’ll stop you from spending too much time, resources and money on backlinks that don’t help. We’ll stop you from building links on harmful or useless websites. We’ll use our AI Link Strategy to analyze your competition and give you a personalized action plan.
Find out more
