Link audit: what it covers, how to run one and what it ends in

A link audit is an inventory of the links that point to your site: which links you have, which you have lost, which point at a page that no longer exists, and which of your pages have no links at all. An SEO link audit ends in a short list of jobs, not a score.

This guide sets out what a link audit covers and where published guides differ on scope, five steps to run one with the free webmaster reports and a backlink tool, a worked example built from one site's own export, and the four lists the audit ends in.

What is a link audit?

The term link audit, or link auditing, is used for three different jobs, and guides differ on which they mean. A backlink audit looks at the links from other sites to yours. An internal link audit looks at the links between your own pages. An outbound link audit looks at the links from your pages to other sites.

The scope differs across published guides. Backlinko defines a backlink audit as analysing all the links pointing to a website. Linki describes the internal version as a structured evaluation of the internal hyperlinks on a website, and Screamingcat describes the outbound version, the links pointing from your domain to another. AYSA's version keeps internal, inbound and outbound records apart.

This page takes the first scope: the links pointing at your site, also called your backlink profile. That is why this kind of link audit also goes by the name link profile audit or backlink profile audit. If the links between your own pages are the job, our guide to internal links covers it. Naming the scope matters because the exports, the steps and the output lists all follow from it.

To run the audit you need a spreadsheet, the two free webmaster tools and, if you have one, a backlink tool. Every step in this guide is built from exports, so you can run the audit again whenever you want a fresh picture and compare two link audits side by side.

How to run a link audit in five steps

Work through the steps in order. Each step ends with something written down, and the closing section sorts those notes into four lists.

1. Gather your backlink data

Start with the two free reports. Google Search Console has a Links report, and its help page describes it as a sample of the links to your site. The tables in the report stop at 1,000 rows, so they may be cut short on larger or more linked-to sites.

The Export button gives up to 100,000 rows in two slices: Latest links, the recently discovered links to your site sorted by discovery date, and More sample links, a sample drawn from the full set of links Search Console knows about. You can download either slice as a CSV file.

The help page adds one caveat worth quoting in full: "The report includes links that Google has found over time. These links may have since been removed, or a page may no longer exist." An exported row is therefore a link the report has seen, not proof the link is still there. Step 2 deals with that gap.

Bing Webmaster Tools has its own report. Bing's Backlinks report lists the domains linking to you, the anchor texts they use and the pages on your site that receive links. Its help page is plain about the limit: "it is not a complete backlinks profile." The same page gives the row caps: the table shows up to 1,500 domains, with up to 10,000 backlinks within each domain, and the Download all button exports the data as a CSV file.

Neither report is complete, and each is a sample drawn by a different search engine, so export both. Put them in one sheet with a column for the source and a column for the date of the export. That merge is our own method, and the date matters because every later step reads the sheet as a picture of one day.

If you use a backlink tool, add its export to the same sheet. The columns to keep are the linking page, the anchor text, the target URL on your site, the link attribute (follow, nofollow, UGC or sponsored) and the dates the tool first and last saw the link. Serpstat's help page, dated 26 April 2026, lists those columns for its own report.

2. Find the links you have lost

Backlink tools keep a list of links they used to see and no longer do. What the word lost means depends on the tool, so read the definition before you read the numbers.

Serpstat marks a link when its crawler visited the source page and did not find the link. It records one of five reasons: the URL was removed, the page returned an error, robots.txt blocked the crawler, the connection failed, or the content was not HTML.

Moz says a link marked as lost means its crawler tried to recrawl the link and could not, and that this does not necessarily mean the link was removed. SE Ranking keeps two ideas apart: a lost link is gone from the source page, while a broken link is still on the source page but points at a page on your site that returns an error.

So the same word covers different events: a link gone from a live page, a page that has gone, a crawl that failed. Read the reason beside each lost link before you count it, and keep the reasons in their own column when you sort the sheet.

The worked example shows why this matters. Bill Hartzer, CEO of Hartzer Consulting, published an audit of his own site on 3 August 2026, built from a Majestic export he downloaded on 2 August 2026. The export held 1,301,839 links from 22,260 referring domains, gathered over about twenty years of publishing, and 645,202 of them were flagged lost.

He sorted the lost links by what the linking page was doing at the moment the link was lost. On 503,390 of them (78.0%) the page loaded and the link was no longer on it. On 124,861 (19.4%) the page now named a different address as its canonical version. On a further 11,739 (1.8%) the page now redirected elsewhere with a 301.

His summary: "97.4% of my lost links were lost while their source page was still perfectly reachable. Four links out of 645,202 were lost to a 404."

That is one site and one tool's classification, and another tool would sort the same events differently. It still shows what to look for in your own sheet: a lost link on a page that still loads is one you can ask the site owner about. Hartzer's own reading is that links like these went because somebody edited the page, a redesign dropped the link or a migration changed the canonical address, while the page itself carried on. Our guide to link reclamation covers how to ask.

One more figure, from a larger dataset with its own definition. Ahrefs reported in a study updated on 2 February 2024 that 66.5% of the links pointing to the 2,062,173 websites it sampled had rotted since January 2013. That figure comes from that tool's own index and its own definition of a rotted link, so it is not a rate for your site or for any other tool's data. The number that counts is the one in your own sheet, read reason by reason.

3. Find links that point at dead pages

Step 2 covers links that have gone. This step covers the other half: the link is still there, but the page on your site has gone. Sort your sheet by target URL and check the HTTP status each target returns.

Without a backlink tool, work down the column and check each address in your browser's developer tools or with a crawler; the status code is the answer the server gives when the page is asked for. A backlink tool's broken backlinks report does the same job: Ahrefs has one, and SE Ranking marks each target URL that returns an error. A target that returns 404 is a page a link still points at and nobody can reach. Run this step after any redesign or change of addresses, because links to the old addresses stay where they were.

Where a newer page has replaced the dead one, the fix is a redirect to that newer page. The HTTP standard, RFC 9110, published June 2022, defines the 301 status code: "The 301 (Moved Permanently) status code indicates that the target resource has been assigned a new permanent URI and any future references to this resource ought to use one of the enclosed URIs." In plain terms, a 301 sends the visitor, and anything following the link, to the live page.

Our guide to HTTP status codes explains the codes you will meet while checking targets.

Hartzer reads one pattern on his own site this way: "Three of my commercial service pages have collectively lost 20,748 links, which usually means a URL changed and nobody put the redirect in."

We run the same test from the other side. Before a placement goes out we check the HTTP status code the client's target URL returns, so the link does not point at a dead page or a redirect chain.

4. Check anchor text and top linked pages

Google Search Console's Links report has two tables for this step. Top linking text groups the text used in links to your site by exact match, ignoring letter case, and shows links with no text as (empty). Top linked pages lists your pages with the largest number of links from other sites, grouped by canonical URL. Bing's report has an anchor texts view and a pages view as well, so the same two readings come from the second free source.

Read two things from these tables. First, whether the anchor text describes the page it points at: a reader should be able to tell what is on the page from the text of the link. Second, which pages hold the links, and whether those are the pages the site is built around.

Then compare the top linked pages table with your full list of URLs, which you can take from your sitemap. The pages on your list that do not appear in the table are the pages with no links in the report. The table stops at 1,000 rows and the report is a sample, so check a missing page against your backlink tool export before you count it. This comparison is our own method, and it is the step that turns the audit from a list of what you have into a list of what is missing.

5. Compare referring domains over time and against competitors

Backlink tools can show how your links change over time. Serpstat draws active and lost links on one graph, SE Ranking reports the total number of referring domains and how it moves, and Semrush lets you set the period for its new and lost lists. Note the months where the line drops, then go back to step 2 and read what was lost in those months.

Then compare with competitors. Bing's report does this free: it compares your backlinks with those of up to two other sites, and it can show the domains that link to them and not to you. That set of domains, drawn from the top referring domains of the sites compared, is the gap a new-links plan works from. Our guides to checking a competitor's backlinks and backlink gap analysis walk through both jobs.

What a link audit ends in

The notes from the five steps sort into four lists.

• Links to ask about. Lost links where the linking page is still live, from step 2. The page is still there, so you can ask the site owner about the link.
• Redirects to add. Dead target pages that links still point at, from step 3. For each one that a newer page has replaced, add a 301 to that page.
• Pages with no links. The pages your sitemap lists that the top linked pages table does not, from step 4.
• Gaps to close with new links. Domains that link to competitors and not to you, from step 5, plus the pages from the third list that you want links to.

The fourth list is where we come in. We place Curated Links, links added to articles that are already published, and Guest Posts, new articles published on real, independently owned websites in your niche. You choose the target pages and the anchors.

After publication we check that the page is live, that the link is in the body copy, that the anchor and target URL match the order and that the page is indexable. Only then is the URL reported to the dashboard. You can read the full standard on our quality assurance page. If a delivered link is removed or its page is taken down within 12 months, we replace it like for like under our 12-month replacement cover.

Frequently asked questions

What is a link audit in SEO?

A link audit is an inventory of the links pointing to your site: the links you have, the links you have lost, the links that point at dead pages and the pages with no links. It ends in a short list of jobs rather than a score.

How do you do a link audit?

Export the links reports from Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools and put them in one sheet, then add a backlink tool's export if you have one. Work through the lost links, the dead target pages, the anchor text and top linked pages, and the referring domains compared with competitors. Each step produces one list, and the four lists are the output of the audit.

Which tools do you need for a link audit?

Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools and a spreadsheet are enough to start. Neither free report is complete, so a backlink tool earns its place by adding the lost-link reasons and the dates each link was first and last seen.

What is a lost link?

A lost link is one a tool used to see and no longer does. Tools define it differently, so read the reason given: the link was removed from a live page, the page was removed, or the tool could not crawl it. The reason decides whether there is anything to ask about.

What is the difference between a link audit and a backlink audit?

A backlink audit covers the links from other sites to yours. Link audit is also used for audits of the internal links between your own pages and the outbound links from your pages to other sites, and some guides keep all three apart. This guide uses link audit in the backlink sense.