Backlink audits that strengthen the authority you’ve already earned
Most established sites are wasting authority they already own: strong links pointing at pages that no longer exist, and linked pages that do nothing with the visitors they attract. Our backlink audit finds both and puts that equity back to work.
Websites are sitting on backlink authority they’ve never utilised
We don’t do digital PR or paid link building – both often come with a lot of promises but questionable results for a high budget. We prefer to work on the profile your site has already earned, because in almost every audit we run, part of it is sitting idle.
The most common finding is a set of links from national and international publications, earned years ago, pointing at pages removed in a past restructure and now returning a 404. We map every broken target and recommend the fix, usually a 301 redirect to the closest priority page or restoring the content that earned the link. Our developers then put those fixes live.
What a backlink audit covers
A full review of the profile your site has already built, with a specific recommendation against every issue we find. The audit includes:
Backlinking audit
We assess the quality and relevance of inbound links.
This helps us identify potential issues (e.g. low-quality or spammy backlinks) which can harm your SEO performance, and uncovers threats and opportunities to improve your website’s trust and authority.
Disavow file management
Where a site has a manual action for unnatural links, or a history of paid links or link schemes, we get as many removed as possible and prepare a disavow file for the rest.
Google already ignores most low-quality links, so we don’t disavow on a tool’s “toxic” score alone.
Competitor analysis
We analyse your competitors’ backlink profiles to understand their link sources, the content attracting those links, and the strategies they use.
By benchmarking your backlink profile against competitors, we can highlight gaps and suggest opportunities to enhance your own.
Broken link opportunities
We identify broken or lost links (links that used to point to your site or your competitors but are now 404 errors).
We can then reach out to site owners to replace these broken links with relevant content from your site.
Technical SEO services
Our strength lies in navigating the complexities, and changes, of SEO – driving organic growth and visibility for clients.
SoBold specialises in creating engaging, informative content that resonates with a client's audience and meets search engine guidelines, driving organic traffic and establishing visibility.
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SoBold's SEO services deliver tangible conversion and commercial results. This means prioritising high-impact work, rather than low-effort tasks that offer minimal benefit.
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Search is changing. Google's AI mode and overviews, ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity and a whole host of other AI platforms are reshaping how users search. At SoBold, we help your brand stay visible in the growing world of zero-click search.
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Backlink audit FAQs
Get in touch with Will for more answers.
Rarely on their own. “Toxic” is a score from SEO tools, and Google says most sites will never need to disavow because it can assess which links to trust. The links that carry real risk are paid links and link schemes, often left behind by a previous agency’s link building, which can lead to a manual action, and those are where our clean-up work focuses.
Each broken target gets a recommended fix, usually a 301 redirect to the closest priority page or restoring the content that earned the link, and our developers put those fixes live. Where paid or manipulative links need cleaning up, we request removals and prepare a disavow file for anything that can’t be removed.
We recommend a backlink audit at least once a year, or after any major migration, rebrand or sudden ranking change, which is when strong links most often end up pointing at pages that no longer exist.
Yes. Migrations are the most common reason earned links stop passing value, because old URLs get removed or redirected to the homepage. We match the site’s backlinks against its redirect map, flag every linked URL that now returns a 404 or a weak redirect, and point each one at the closest equivalent page.
Backlink audits are scoped in days, in the same way as our SEO retainers. The size of the existing backlink profile, the number of sites in a portfolio and the markets in scope set the time needed, and implementing the recommendations is scoped separately because it depends on how many fixes the audit finds. Audits can run as a standalone project or within a monthly SEO retainer, where they’re scheduled around the site’s other priorities.
We work across several sources, because no single tool sees a site’s full backlink profile. Search Console shows a sample of the links Google has found, Semrush fills in the wider profile and competitor comparisons, and Screaming Frog checks the status of every linked URL on the site, so we can see which links land on a live page, a redirect or a 404.
Work with our team to build and scale your bespoke requirements.
Once you submit the form one of our team will contact you to set up a meeting to clarify your requirements and build a quote.
Working with leading b2b clients
