How often do you audit your backlinks?

[MichaelCorfman]

Earlier today I was reading an article from the SEMrush Blog: Google Penalties Research: Detecting and Dealing with Unnatural Inbound Links.

Personally, I've never conducted an audit of the backlinks to our sites. The closest I have come is looking at Google Search Console at inbound links to sites of mine, and sometimes noticing inbound links created when content was stolen from a site of ours with the result that a large number of inbound links appeared from the site holding the stolen content. In that case I might file a DMCA complaint with Google to get them to remove the stolen content from their search index.

But I know many webmasters pay significant attention to their backlink profile, using a wide variety of tools like ahref, Majestic, MOZ or SEMrush to name a few.

So, for this week's poll I ask how often you audit your backlinks. Besides voting in the poll, please let us know in a post the tools you use, the the actions you take based on information you glean, and your general thoughts about backlink audits.

Michael

[universal4]

Can I add a choice, "Not often enough but plan to do it more often in the future"?

Rick
Universal4

[sly24]

I have just started after attending IGB London in Feb.. its a handful but I know it is worth it.

[Christiaan]

I do the backlink check and cleanup about once every 6 months. I also have backlink notificiations enabled so when I see very bad links in there or get a real attack of "garbage" I do an extra cleanup.

[popopdc]

I audit on the 1st and 15th of each month. If you stay on top of it, it should take 30 minutes maximum each time for a total of 1 hour per month. If you are lazy and fall behind then you can find yourself in a time consuming drain + be faced with penalties, etc. Auditing backlinks is important. You're failing if you're not auditing twice per month.

[tippsecret09]

I do it once a month and think, that will be enough. Above all it is important to check if there are bad backlinks.

[igratnadengi]

checking my BL every 2 weeks

[gil.langelaan]

I do it once per 1 or 2 month and it's enough for now.

[robyroy]

Best tool for personal projects is SC. Once a month i think is enough. I like also Seo Spy Glass, a great tool from link assistant if you want to check witch links can be toxic for your project.

[Christiaan]

Best tool for personal projects is SC. Once a month i think is enough. I like also Seo Spy Glass, a great tool from link assistant if you want to check witch links can be toxic for your project.

Which tool is SC? What does it stand for?

[robyroy]

Which tool is SC? What does it stand for?

My bad SC is Search Console. A toy from Google.

[Christiaan]

My bad SC is Search Console. A toy from Google.

Of course, I didn't make the connection. Usually they use GSC as acronym for this.