Backlink Audit Tool

What backlink auditing actually involves

Backlinks rot. Pages get removed, domains expire, referring sites get redesigned and the link slot disappears, the linking page itself returns a 404. A backlink portfolio that looked solid six months ago is usually 10-20% dead today — and Google has stopped passing equity through every one of those dead references.

A backlink audit tool checks each link in your portfolio for live status. Healthy 200s pass. Redirects get followed to the final destination so you can confirm the link still ends where it should. 404s and 410s are flagged for outreach (request a replacement) or reclamation (rebuild the lost link elsewhere).

How to actually run a backlink audit

Pull a backlink export from your usual source — Ahrefs Site Explorer, Semrush Backlink Analytics, Majestic, Moz Link Explorer, or Google Search Console's top-linking-sites report. Most exports have at least one column with the source URL of each backlink.

Drop the CSV in. We detect the URL column automatically and ignore the metadata columns (anchor text, DR, traffic). Submit the job, watch the progress, and download the result CSV when it's done. Each row gets its current status, the redirect chain (if any), and the final URL.

Filter the result table by status group (broken / redirects / healthy) to focus on what needs action. For a typical agency workflow, the "broken" set goes to the outreach team and the "redirect chain" set gets reviewed for SEO-loss (long chains lose equity).

• Bulk-checks up to 75,000 backlinks per job — handles the largest portfolios
• Follows redirect chains end-to-end (up to 10 hops) and reports the final URL
• Hard 404 vs soft 404 distinction — catches 200-OK pages that should be 404
• Filter results by status group, status code, domain, or substring
• CSV export with every column you'd need for a client deliverable
• Proxy rotation handles target sites that block bot traffic

Common backlink audit use cases

Monthly portfolio health check — running the same backlink list each month, comparing this run vs last, focusing on links that newly broke.

Post-Penguin / disavow review — auditing the full backlink set after an algorithm update to catch toxic links and dead targets that no longer help.

Competitor analysis — pull a competitor's backlink profile, check which of their links are dead, find replaceable opportunities your own outreach team can pursue.

Link-reclamation outreach prep — feeding a list of dead inbound links into the audit, getting a clean "outreach target" CSV with the broken referring URL, the current status, and the original anchor (if your source has it).

Scale and pricing for portfolio audits

Backlink portfolios scale. A small business might have 200 backlinks. An established brand has 50,000+. Audit tools that charge by site or seat penalise scale; we charge by URL checked, so the cost scales with the actual work. 10,000 backlinks costs $9.99 (one-time pack) or $9/mo via Starter (15,000/mo pool).

For agencies running this audit across 10+ client portfolios per month, the Pro ($29/mo, 50,000) or Agency ($99/mo, 200,000) tiers make the per-audit cost essentially free. No per-client charge, no per-export charge.