Am external link (backlinks) audit for Design Your Own Blog, summarising the backlink presence of the website and outlining some of the more positive link work.

1. SEO External
Link Audit
by James Allen
 http://designyourownblog.com

2. Backlink Profile Analysis
Crawl Data & Insights
Links Overview

3. Backlink Crawl & Brief Summary
When crawling backlink databases, we found:
• 88,172 backlinks
• …of which 60,758 are still live (after re-crawling)
• Some of the ‘dead’ links may be due to linking sites changing their
architecture and backlink tools failing to update their link databases quickly.
Some links are also ‘transient’
• Almost 70% of backlinks which we could find were still live! This is really
good going, many sites don’t make it to 50% of their discoverable backlinks
remaining live
• Overall the backlink profile is in relatively good health. There is room
however, for further link building and anchor-text optimisation opportunities!
Links Overview

4. Live Links by Linking Domain
Links Overview
23% of all backlinks (14,006 links) come from
Boostblogtraffic.com, or “SmartBlogger” as it is
now known (they have re-branded, you get fired
through a 301 redirect).
Although this is a HUGE volume of links to take in
from one domain, a no-follow tag has been
added. This will prevent some SEO benefit, but
will also prevent an SEO-related links penalty. In
this situation, this was a really good choice so
well done there!
Most of the links come from comments left on
the site by Marianne, the anchor text for her
username forms the backlink. The comment was
genuine (Marianne has been reading posts, then
replying!) so there’s little to no chance of
comment-spam link flags going up on Google.
This is really great to see as a while ago, many
SEOs incorrectly labelled blog commenting a
spam tactic. Whilst it is (highly) susceptible to
spam, not every blog-comment link could or
should be classed as spam. Keep reading and
writing, keep doing what you’re doing here!
Pro Tip: On some of the blogs you comment on, register your
username as “Design Your Own Blog” which is your brand-name.
This will gain you more SEO-authority for those queries.
DON’T go crazy and change your username on all the sites you’ve
been posting on so far. Just mix it up a bit in the future…

5. Live Links by Top Linked Content
Links Overview
32% of all backlinks (19,546 links) hit the
homepage. This is pretty typical, a homepage is
the shortest, least complex variant of a domain’s
potential web-page and because many webmasters
link ‘lazily’ (to the site, not the specific resource);
most links are usually homepage links!
The second largest segment of backlinks goes to a
‘mistype’ of the homepage’s address. In these
modern times, many still aren’t aware that the
“www.” portion of a URL isn’t usually required any
more. Some sites don’t use this by default, in order
to get shorter, more truncated URLs with higher
overall potency. That’s exactly what’s happened
here!
Either webmasters have accidentally put “www”
in the link or the site used to be based on “www”
and has since moved over, losing the W’s
Did you know that links lose a bit of authority as
the flow through a 301 redirect? Why not contact
webmasters who have erroneously put “www” in
their link-coding and ask them to remove that?
That would gain extra SEO authority for no real
extra effort!

6. Live Links by Anchor Text
Links Overview
44% of all backlinks (26,942 links) use the anchor
text of “Marianne”. Usually if we saw such a huge
usage of one single word as anchor text in the
backlink profile, we’d flag it immediately as a high
risk for gaining a Google Penguin penalty.
That’s not the case here though!
The anchor text is non-commercial (e.g: “car
insurance” would be commercial, exact-match
anchor text). The anchor text also comes from UGC
(user generated content) in the form of comments
genuinely left by Marianne on other blogs.
Most of the comments seem at least to reference
the topic of the original post on the external site,
so we’re saying this isn’t a bit risk. A lot of those
links are also no-followed which is handy!
We also scan for typical spam comments, we’re
sure you know them as a blogger: “Hi! Wow, really
insightful post. Thank you so much for this I will
read it every day!” etc, etc.
We found hardly any to NO spam-level comments
left by Marianne, so again – keep commenting.
Keep reading and writing, that’s great stuff

7. All Links: Live vs Dead
Links Overview
Almost 70% of backlinks (60,758
links) which we uncovered using
various historic backlink indexes,
were still live when we re-ran
them through SB Link Checker and
Screaming Frog.
This is really great news! Most
sites have a much larger
proportion of dead links as shady
link-networks which they have
abused go down, taking the links
with them (without even telling
their clients!)
Most links are clean, most links
are alive and well
Pro Tip: You can browse through a list of your dead links
(contained in the separately attached spreadsheet) if you feel like
contacting any webmasters, asking why links have been removed
or why their sites have gone down. This can result in the free re-
acquiring of previously held backlinks

8. Live Links by Link Type
Links Overview
Most links are no-followed. This matches up with
our assertion that the bulk of links built to
Designyourownblog.com were built by Marianne
using blog commented to leverage web-traffic; and
also to help out those sites and communities by
leaving insightful information for them to read over
The no-followed links can’t cause any problems in
terms of Google Penguin link-penalties, so that’s
really great.
Image links make up 23% of all live links and just
like no-followed links, these are extremely unlikely
to pass any link penalties. That’s fantastic!
Finally: Only 22% of backlinks are plain text links.
With such a safe and secure backlink profile, you
can probably afford to go after a few more of these
with brand (“design your own blog”) or other
relevant anchor text. Don’t go mad as exact-match
anchor text is seen as a form of ranking
manipulation by Google. A few quality links here
and there with relevant anchor text though?
There’s room to push the boat out a bit further
here…

9. Live Links by Safety Check Flags
Links Overview
58% of backlinks have not triggered any
warning flag whatsoever, that’s great news!
The orange and red segments come from links
which are viewed to be over-numerous either
in terms of the domain they come from or
their anchor-text usage.
As we have previously discussed however;
the most used anchor text is actually the site
owner’s name (no one is getting a penalty for
that!) and the domains which link thousands
of times mostly nofollow those links, which
are mostly comments left on other sites by
Marianne.
Because of this, we’re saying that in this
situation none of these links are both awful
and frequent enough to warrant action by
Google. If you want to browse this data in
more detail, open the attached spreadsheet
and look at Column T “Link Safety Check”. The
yellow and red segments may be worth a look
in the big, main table

10. Good Link Examples
Get more links like…
Link Examples

11. Examples of Good Backlinks
Link Examples
This link is nice because the site
hosting the link
(maybebabybrothers.com) has a solid
citation flow (32) and 148 referring
domains, 142 of which are linking to
their homepage.
The link is not no-followed, so some
SEO authority is flowing through the
link image. Because the link is an
image (not exact-match anchor text)
it’s low risk.
This site gets a lot of visitors and
backlink attention (10,174 backlinks to
their root domain according to
Majestic SEO). The link is likely to be
yielding a bit of traffic in addition to
some small amount of SEO equity.
The site’s design is nice, it would be
unlikely to be triggering spam flags
from Google. Great link!

12. Examples of Good Backlinks
Link Examples
This link is nice because the site
hosting the link (onblastblog.com) has
a solid citation flow (32) and 1,100
referring domains, 29 of which are
linking to this specific blog post.
The link is not no-followed, so some
SEO authority is flowing through the
backlink. Exact-match anchor text is
not used, thus keeping the link safe.
This site gets a lot of visitors and
backlink attention (27,327 backlinks to
their root domain according to
Majestic SEO). The link is likely to be
yielding a bit of traffic in addition to
some small amount of SEO equity.
The site’s design is solid, it would be
unlikely to be triggering spam flags
from Google. Great link!

13. Examples of Good Backlinks
Link Examples
This link is nice because the site
hosting the link (madlemmings.com)
has a solid citation flow (28) and 813
referring domains, 27 of which are
linking to this specific blog post.
The link is not no-followed, so some
SEO authority is flowing through the
backlink. Exact-match anchor text is
not used, thus keeping the link safe.
That being said; this post uses some
very relevant anchor text (this is
good)!
This site gets a lot of visitors and
backlink attention (116,847 backlinks
to their root domain according to
Majestic SEO). The link is likely to be
yielding an amount of traffic in
addition to a solid amount of SEO
equity.
The site’s design is polished, it would
be unlikely to be triggering spam flags
from Google. Great link!

14. Questions!?
email:
jamesrichardallen@gmail.com