27% of SEOs Say They’ve Never Done a Link Audit [POLL]

A backlink audit is helpful in many ways. It’s usually the first step to take if you want to:

• Improve your link building strategy.
• Recover from a manual action (or algorithmic downgrade).
• Analyze your competition.

Ensuring that you have a high-quality and natural link profile is paramount. That’s why it’s a good practice to check your links regularly.

So, when’s the last time you conducted a link audit on your website?

We asked this question to the Search Engine Journal Twitter community. Here’s what we found out.

When Is the Last Time You Conducted a Link Audit on Your Website?

Here are the results from this #SEJSurveySays poll question.

According to a survey of SEJ’s Twitter audience:

• 47 percent said they conducted a link audit in the last 30 days.
• 16 percent said they had audited their links within the last 6 months.
• 10 percent said they did a link audit in the past year.

However, the most shocking result was this: 27 percent of SEOs have never conducted a link audit on their website.

Link Audits Are Important

If you’re among the SEO professionals who religiously check on your website’s link presence, keep it up! Link audits should definitely be a part of your regular SEO process.

But if you’re one of the few who has never, ever done a link audit on your (or your client’s) site, it’s high time to rethink your methods. Not paying attention to your own links means you’re also missing a key piece of the SEO puzzle.

Links matter – a lot. It’s an important search ranking factor that can make or break your chances of ranking well in the SERPs.

If you don’t know what kind of links you’re getting, where they’re coming from, and how you got them, you won’t be able to develop and implement a successful link building and SEO strategy.

Be proactive and conduct a link audit on your website today!

More Insights on Link Audits

Looking to gain more understanding on how and why you should audit your website’s links? Check out this list of articles from our SEJ contributors:

• Too Many Links: Strategies for Disavow & Cleanup
• The Illustrated Guide to Link Building
• The Many Uses of Backlink Analysis
• When Link Audits Become SEO Audits: 6 Ways an Inbound Link Analysis Can Uncover Technical SEO Problems

Have Your Say

When was your last link audit conducted? Tag us on social media to let us know.

Be sure to have your say in the next survey – check out the #SEJSurveySays hashtag on Twitter for future polls and data.

Image Credits
Chart by Shayne Zalameda