What Is a Backlink Profile?

Whether you sell automotive parts online or provide legal services for corporate clients, traffic is the lifeblood of your website. You can’t convert leads into customers unless you have plenty of visitors. Want your site’s inbound traffic to look like the I-95 at rush hour? A strong backlink profile is your inside track. Step one is learning what a backlink profile is and why you need it.

What Is a Backlink Profile for Your Site?

Your website’s backlink profile is a list of all its inbound links from outside sites. This type of report also looks at quality factors, such as the referring site’s domain authority, credibility, anchor text, and keyword relevance.

Did your survey get a mention in a Forbes article? All that valuable traffic goes on your backlink profile.

Why Does Your Site’s Backlink Profile Matter?

Imagine that you plan on hiring a wedding photographer. Which would you choose: a professional with hundreds of five-star ratings or a newcomer with only a handful of reviews?

When it comes to search rankings, backlinks are like “recommendations” for your website. Google wants to deliver trustworthy information from authoritative sources.

What Does a Strong Backlink Profile Look Like?

Building a stellar backlink profile isn’t like trying to get likes on Facebook. There’s more to success than raw backlink numbers. If you want to look your best for a date with Google, focus your attention on four main factors:

• 1. High-quality backlinks: Inbound traffic from websites that have a good reputation is worth more than dubious links from spammy sites.
• 2. Diverse sources: It’s better to have a couple of backlinks from hundreds of websites than dozens of backlinks from two or three sites.
• 3. A large collection: When you attract backlinks the right way, you gradually build a profile with hundreds of linking domains.
• 4. Relevant backlinks: Your most valuable backlinks come from sites that make sense for your industry, such as The Home Depot linking to your buyer’s guide for wood flooring.

It takes time to check all these boxes, but the investment is worth it. Unlike paid ads, a strong backlink profile keeps supporting your rankings for years.

What Are Some Examples of Excellent Backlink Profiles?

It’s easier to understand how to be a backlink superstar if you look at the reigning champs.

Forbes

• Linking websites: 1.5 million
• Total backlinks: 4.3 million

Forbes is one of the highest-ranked websites on the internet and with good reason. It produces in-depth articles that professionals trust.

Search Engine Journal

• Linking websites: 147,000
• Total backlinks: 10 million

While Search Engine Journal has nowhere near the audience of Forbes, it’s a leader in its own right. Marketing professionals look to it and link to it.

Healthline

• Linking websites: 507,000
• Total backlinks: 30 million

Unlike the Mayo Clinic, Healthline isn’t a hospital. So why does it have such an amazing backlink profile for health topics? Great content. Its blogs are accurate, well-researched, and easy to understand.

Top Driver

• Linking websites: 2,600
• Total backlinks: 70,000

We included this example because it’s closer to the average business. Top Driver’s domain authority of 39 is an achievable goal for small businesses.

The secret to its success? Smart SEO. Despite being a dark horse, Top Driver has over 350 keywords in the top three ranking positions. It gets noticed, and that leads to a ton of backlinks.

How Do You Measure a Backlink Profile?

SEO tools make it easy to analyze all of your inbound links, where they come from, and which pages are bringing in the majority of your traffic. You can use free or paid SEO research tools for this:

• Semrush: Backlink Audit tool
• Moz: Domain Analysis and Link Explorer tools
• Screaming Frog: SEO Spider tool
• Ahrefs: Backlink Checker tool

Once you choose your tool, just paste in your website’s primary domain address and wait a few seconds/minutes. Your backlink profile is closely related to your site’s domain authority. DAs of 40 to 50 are average, 50 to 60 is better, and 60+ is excellent.

What Are the Benefits of Backlinks?

Your backlink profile is one of the three main factors search engines look at when ranking websites. The better the profile, the more likely your content is going to rank in the top search positions.

Backlinks deliver other benefits beyond search rankings. They’re a great source of referral traffic to your website, helping you snag high-value leads. When a well-known publication cites you as an authority, readers leave with a good impression of your brand.

There are no downsides to building a better backlink profile. Better yet, when you do it right, links should trickle in automatically.

How Can You Create a Strong Backlink Profile for SEO?

A good backlink profile is within reach of businesses of any size. Success depends mainly on putting in the effort and not cutting corners.

Grandma’s Secret Recipe

Make a content plan with the goal of attracting links. Our backlink-building pros can help you get started.

Sticky Fingers

We’re not telling you to lift your competitors’ content, but you can absolutely “steal” their backlink profile. See what’s working for them.

Which pieces have high-quality backlinks? How did your competitor earn those links? How can your content do it better?

Content, Content, Content

Give your website the gift of amazing content. The more blog posts you have, the more opportunities to attract clicks and links.

Quality Over Quantity

Create blogs that are worth reading. Design buyer’s guides, helpful articles, and posts that provide definitive answers to your audience’s questions.

Original Research

Create surveys for your customers. Track the responses and use what you learn as statistics in your blog content. Nothing gets backlinks like a perfect statistic.

Extra Flavor in Every Byte

Don’t be average. Spice up your web content with images, videos, step-by-step guides, and infographics.

Tender Loving Care

Protect your fledgling backlinks when you earn them. Whenever you update your website, be very careful not to delete pages that have valuable inbound links.

Learn More About Backlink Profiles

Link-building is easy to learn but tricky to master. Now you know what backlink profiles are, but you still need to put together a plan of action. Get started now and learn which steps to take first. Our team is happy to help.