From irrelevant, off-topic backlinks to cookie-cutter anchor text, there are more than a few clues hidden in your backlink profile that something spammy is going on. Alone they might not be something to worry about, but in conjunction, common red flags can spell trouble when you're performing an audit on your backlink profile. In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Kameron Jenkins shares her best advice from years working with clients on what to watch out for in a link profile audit.
Video Transcription
Hey, guys. Welcome to this week's edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Kameron Jenkins, and I work here at Moz. Today we're going to be talking about auditing your backlink profile, why you might want to do it, when you should do it, and then how to do it. So let's just dive right in.
It might be kind of confusing to be talking about auditing your backlink profile. When I say auditing your backlink profile, I'm specifically talking about trying to diagnose if there's anything funky or manipulative going on. There's been quite a bit of debate among SEOs, so in a post-Penguin 4.0 world, we all wonder if Google can ignore spammy backlinks and low-quality backlinks, why would we also need to disavow, which essentially tells Google the same thing: "Just ignore these links."
I posed three reasons why we might still want to consider this in some situations.
Why should you audit your backlink profile?
Disavow is still offered
Disavow is still an option — you can go to and submit a disavow file right now if you wanted to.