Understanding backlink profiles and identifying quick wins

SEO has evolved substantially over the past several years. Month after month we’re seeing sweeping changes in the make-up of search results in the form of generative AI, and Google continues to deploy algorithm updates and tweaks to its best practice guidelines, from Helpful Content to E-EAT.

One aspect that has remained at the core of the discipline throughout is link building. Despite the evolutions in Google's understanding of backlinks and the practices of link building itself, it remains the foundation of SEO strategies across the board.

Let’s take a look at its role within modern-day SEO, what link building tactics brands should be undertaking, and some useful tips you may be unaware of.

The role of link building in modern SEO strategies

Google still uses links as one of its main ways to discover websites and subsequently understand their authority and relevance within their niche. Search has most definitely evolved, and there are plenty of considerations, metrics and ranking factors that may contribute to a particular resource, article or blog post positioning itself in the top spots for certain queries. 

Backlinks remain one of the key arbiters of authority, however. A page that is linked to well-known, authoritative websites relevant to its niche or adjacent to it topically will typically perform well. 

There are always outliers, with examples of lesser-known websites with small backlink profiles picking up top-ranking spots by offering unique content on a certain topic or aligning well with search intent, though ultimately a strong and varied backlink profile will be your most reliable foundation.

This can be clearly seen following the trends in how Google is judging websites based on its recent major algorithm updates. The recent spam update, for example, explicitly penalised websites that were syndicating content unrelated to their niche, with Forbes being a famous scalp.

Google is clearly using brand and everything that comes under its umbrella in terms of topical authority and relevance as its identifier here. 

Backlink profiles play a major role in this narrative. Your link-building efforts and how they depict your brand on third-party websites remain paramount, as does syncing with your technical SEO efforts and distributing backlinks to the core pages across your site.

Dissecting your backlink profile

Given the sustained importance of link building in modern-day SEO, a good place for brands to start if they’re looking for opportunities to improve their situation is to examine their backlink profile.

Regardless of what stage a brand is in its journey, it’s worth taking stock and analysing your backlink profile at certain intervals. While the days of toxic backlink profiles and regular disavow file upkeep may be behind us, from a growth perspective there is always opportunity. 

Variety and diversity of referring domains (unique domains that link to your website) are important. Lots of individual backlinks from a small number of unique referring domains may be viewed as lacking in authority, while there are strong correlations between the number of unique referring domains and the potential for greater search traffic.

Many popular SEO tools will utilise their own proprietary metrics to judge link quality. These are typically calculated by the respective quality of the backlink profiles of the websites that are linking to you, and a good link can likely be judged accordingly. 

Ahrefs uses DR (Domain Rating) to define authority and quality here and also provides estimated traffic that this domain may be getting based on its own search ranking performance. SEMRush uses AS (Authority Score) as their equivalent metric within the Backlink Audit section of their tool:

Image: SEMRush

Depending on the tool, there are other metrics to take into account. The number of referring domains, authority score or domain rating, and estimated organic traffic related to a linking domain are the main ones to consider.

Another layer of backlink profile analysis is objectivity, particularly when it comes to assessing the topical relevance of the websites linking to you. Some tools can give you an overview of the breakdown of the industries linking to you the most, which can be a good way to get started. 

Looking at SEMRush once more, we can see a breakdown of the industries linking to the website in question:

You may need to undertake further analysis by exporting a full report of your backlink profile, particularly if your business caters for a niche within the categories. Exporting a full list of backlinks and then getting your SEO team to deploy some Excel wizardry to highlight industry-relevant backlinks (or lack thereof) is a suggested next step here.

Another thing you want to achieve from your link building efforts is a diversity of target landing pages. We’ll get into this in more detail shortly, though there will likely be particular product or service pages that you want users to arrive at, or for Google to discover as well as your homepage. Links pointing to your homepage will likely be the most common, and this isn’t a bad thing when it comes to building brand authority. However, link building can be an incredibly powerful tool when it comes to promoting your affiliated products or services and boosting visibility on your important target non-brand keywords.

What about my competitor’s backlink profile?

Many popular SEO tools have backlink gap analysis features, where you can get a good sense of where your core competitors are on their link building journey and what you might need to pursue in order to gain superiority in certain areas. Tools like this will typically line up prospects that are linking to your competitors but not to you.

Going into more detail, a competitor’s backlink profile can be a great source of opportunity. If you’re vying with a competitor on dominance over a product landing page, for example, punching in their domain and filtering down on a URL basis to get a sense of the amount and type of links pointing to this page can provide powerful insights:

Image: Ahrefs

Searching for specific URL keywords within a competitor’s backlink profile can be a great way to mine link building prospects. URL string keywords such as “podcast”, “interview” or “resources” can be a good way to isolate websites to get your brand featured on.

While backlink profiles are built up over time, there will be periods where a business may ramp up its link building efforts and allocate a budget towards the activity. To get a quick sense of this, many tools offer a time period option which can allow you to view links built or added in recent periods.

For example, Ahrefs has a “New” tab on its backlink master view, as well as a date range option. Toggle “last 30 days” (as shown in the above screenshot) and you’ll get a list of fresh links added in recent times. From this list, are there any links from domains that have clearly come in off the back of a recent digital PR campaign? What is the topic being covered here and are there any trends in the types of websites providing links to this competitor? This will allow you to get a good steer as to the direction of travel of your competitor's link-building habits.

Quick-win link building tactics

Once you know the areas for growth within your own (and your competitors’) backlink profiles, there are some potential quick-win tactics you can leverage. These are particularly relevant for brands with established backlink profiles, though they shouldn’t be ignored regardless of where you are in your SEO growth journey.

Unlinked brand mentions

A commonly overlooked link building tactic is doing frequent spot-checks of unlinked brand mentions or mentions of notable people associated with a brand. Whether you’re a large global enterprise brand that does frequent press releases on third-party publications, or a smaller, hobby e-commerce site that has a footprint and steady presence nationally, uncovering these powerful gems can be done relatively quickly with the right tooling and expertise.

As the name suggests, these are instances where your brand, hallmark products and services or even employees may have been mentioned in an article on the web, albeit without linking anywhere. A quick outreach email to a journalist or publication in question can fix that, earning your website a potentially valuable link with little effort or cost. This technique is most successful when you use a branded email account for outreach, rather than a generic or personal email account.

Dofollow and nofollow backlinks

Similarly, many tools will be able to tell you whether a backlink is “dofollow” (which passes PageRank signals, thus impacting search rankings) or “nofollow” (which tells crawlers not to pass PageRank). In an ideal world, we want all of our backlinks to be dofollow. However, this isn’t always the case. There may be editorial policies in place that dictate all links to external sites should be nofollow, for example. but if you feel you’re in a comfortable position to do so, and have a good relationship with a website stakeholder or journalist, then asking them to switch the link from nofollow to dofollow can be another quick-win tactic. 

Broken or redirecting backlinks

Most of the aforementioned tools will flag instances of legacy backlinks from third-party websites that are linking to old destination URLs that return a 404 status code. In these instances, the potential authority from these backlinks is being lost. Websites change over time, and the web is full of out-of-date links. Again, it’s a low-effort high-reward activity to reach out to these sources with a friendly note. You can ask the publication or writer to update the link so it points to the most relevant URL, or to 301 redirect those URLs in order to retain the link authority.

Anchor text diversity

A big part of links is the nature of the anchor text used. Anchor text is the text on which hyperlinks are placed and they can be quite powerful if they’re used correctly. For example, a backlink from an authoritative article by The Guardian on wild swimming gear that uses the anchor text “check out their range of men’s cold water swimwear” can have a significant impact. This is likely to be just the type of keyword the recipient website is hoping to improve ranking performance on.

A typical pitfall when it comes to anchor text is a lack of diversity. For example, keywords may be used repeatedly, which appears unnatural, or the text may say “read more” or “click here”, which doesn’t do a lot for Google or the user contextually.

Going back to tools such as SEMRush and Ahrefs, link building analysis overviews will provide some details on the most commonly used anchor text by sites linking to you. They will also display individual anchor texts used in each backlink:

Image: SEMRush

Exporting this list to an Excel file and getting your SEO team to run some formulas to ascertain recurring instances of suboptimal anchor texts can be a great place to start.

Is there an argument to reach out to a publication to provide a steer on what might be a more useful anchor text to deploy for their readers? (And, as a result, your search rankings.)

Regardless, ensure anchor text diversity in your keyword usage when conducting your backlink efforts. This also relates heavily to other link building tactics.

Being selective in your target pages

You should arrive at a place in your link building strategy where you have a target list of pages you want to build links to and subsequently improve the traffic and search rankings of. Naturally, the bulk of your links will go to your homepage. This is fine, as third-party branded mentions will typically do this. The goal of a good link building campaign should be finely targeted, however, and you should run some analysis on some desired keyword rankings and specific pages you’d like to move the needle on.

Looking at your analytics:

• What are your high-converting pages?

• What are their average order values?

• How do these pages perform in organic search?

• Where do their associated non-branded keyword rankings sit?

• Are there any key product or category pages that need a boost?

Always assess the competitor landscape and compare the respective backlink profiles of equivalent competitor pages and whether you think you can usurp them.

Moving outside of your brand’s homepage and delving into high commercial value PDPs, for example, will give you that initial edge. 

How do I measure success in link building?

Targeting unique referring domains with strong and authoritative backlink profiles is an indicator of what “good” looks like when link building.

There are additional success metrics your SEO team can look at, such as calculating costs per link, based on the average time it takes to acquire one link, and the costs associated with this. If, across the course of a day, your team is sending 50 outreach emails and the result is three high-quality links, this can be calculated based on the team’s costs in creating and promoting the link assets, and the estimated value of such placements in terms of potential referring traffic and conversion rates.

Ultimately, you should judge your success on sustained rankings movements in your target keywords and how this is performing in terms of traffic and conversions. If you start your campaign targeting a keyword (such as “cold water swimming hats”) that is in position 15 on Google and, assuming you’ve done all the right number crunching and competitor analysis to get the page into the top three or five positions, then this should be the main KPI. Generally, link building efforts should be attributed to stable keyword ranking improvements over time and not short-term fluctuations.

Link building remains as relevant as ever in 2025

SEO tactics will continue to evolve, though Google is clearly moving into a position where being a trusted, authoritative voice on a particular topic is paramount. This is becoming even more obvious as it develops its generative AI answers and fine-tunes its results to display the most relevant and trustworthy sources. Having a relevant, strong and diverse backlink profile is the cornerstone of this.

About the author

James Cook has been working in SEO for the past 10 years, having started his career at Vouchercloud. James is our Link Building Strategy Consultant and leads strategy and research for our clients.

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