Backlink Audit Service
Clean up toxic links and boost rankings with our backlink audit service.
Backlinks remain one of Google’s strongest ranking signals, but not all links help. Toxic or spammy backlinks can harm your site’s authority and visibility. Adeptus SEO’s backlink audit service identifies, analyses, and recommends disavowal of harmful links, delivering a cleaner, stronger profile for better organic search performance.
What is a backlink audit?
A backlink audit systematically reviews your site’s entire backlink profile using tools like Ahrefs. It categorises links by quality, relevance, and risk:
- High-quality: Relevant, authoritative domains (keep).
- Neutral: Low-impact but harmless (monitor).
- Toxic: Spammy, penalised, low DR, or irrelevant sites (disavow via Google’s Disavow tool).
Once we have identified all the toxic links pointing to our client’s website, we export a completed disavow file ready for submission to Google. We can handle this process end-to-end or our clients can submit the disavow themselves.
Why do a backlink audit?
Over time, sites collect bad links from outdated directories, hacked profiles, nefarious competitors, or black-hat tactics. Risks include:
- Ranking drops: Google penalises unnatural profiles.
- Wasted equity: Poor links dilute authority.
- Competitive disadvantage: Clean backlink profiles outperform cluttered ones.
Recent clients saw 23-97% traffic lifts post-audit (when paired with link building). Regular audits (every 6-12 months) prevent issues and safeguard your website’s backlink profile.
When we undertake our managed link building campaigns for our clients, we always check the website’s backlink profile for toxic links first, as link building is less effective for websites with toxic backlinks pointing to them.
Hit by toxic links? Here’s how I fixed it
I have experienced this myself when I was running Drifted.com back in 2023; all of my key rankings degraded overnight, not just one or two positions, but all of them at once, which is very rare and akin to a Google penalty. When I checked the website’s Google Search Console, I found thousands of toxic backlinks had been pointed at Drifted.
I undertook my own manual backlink audit, filtered out these toxic links into a disavow file and submitted that to Google. Within two weeks, my Google Search Console showed those links had been removed from the website’s backlink profile, and keyword rankings and traffic returned to the expected trends.
This highlighted to me how incredibly important pruning and maintaining a clean backlink profile is to a website that is trying to rank well in Google.
If you are a member of the official Raptive Facebook group, you may have seen me post about this at the time, showing full transparency of my experience and the process that I used on that thread.
Backlink audit case studies
Weight loss website (Dec 2025)
- Issue: Sluggish organic search performance, affected by 937 toxic links from low domain rated (DR), irrelevant spam websites and expired directories.
- Action: Full backlink audit, resulting in a new disavow file.
- Result: Organic rankings +23% on desktop and +5% on mobile (within 2 months when paired with a link building campaign).
Niche recipe website (Feb 2026)
- Issue: 1,360 Low domain rated (DR) and irrelevant spam websites, expired directories and other toxic links.
- Action: Full backlink audit, resulting in a completed disavow file
- Result: The backlink audit was completed, and a six months link building campaign was undertaken, resulting in organic clicks jumping +97%
These cases show our backlink audit service as a high-ROI foundation when used with our managed link building campaigns.
How our backlink audit process works
- Analysis (2-3 days): Full analysis of the website’s backlink profile.
- Report: Video walkthrough of final audit spreadsheet.
- Implementation: Supply of updated disavow file, or we can submit the disavow file on your behalf (requires Google Search Console access)
- Bonus: The entire backlink audit service is delivered remotely.
Frequently asked questions
This section is designed to answer any questions that you might have about our backlink audit service.
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