How often do you think about the status of your current backlinks?
I’d wager rarely, if ever. If that’s true, don’t worry. You’re not alone, most marketers don’t do it.
The reason is simple:
They are constantly told by experts that more and better backlinks are the “golden goose” of SEO. And they are 100% right, backlinks play a huge role in Google’s SEO algorithm .
But every once in a while, one of those “golden eggs” goes bad, and marketers don’t notice.
Why? Because they are too invested in getting new backlinks to look at the ones they already have.
But today all that changed.
In this post, I’ll show you a simple way to take stock of your backlink history and use that information to improve your rankings in the SERPs.
Your Site’s Backlinks Have History
Unless you are completely new to internet marketing, you have backlinks in your portfolio that are not in the same status as when you first acquired them.
How is that possible, you ask?
Because that’s the nature of backlinks. They change.
Think about it, have you ever noticed an list to data unexplained drop in your total backlinks? Or noticed a follow link that is now suddenly nofollow ?
This change occurs because the status of one (or more) of your backlinks has changed.
In most cases, these changes are not as severe as the previous examples. However, they do happen, and they happen more often than you might think.
Why Backlink History Matters
There is never a situation where a change in backlink status does not affect your backlink portfolio.
Never.
Sometimes change is good. Sometimes it’s bad. And sometimes it’s insignificant.
But change still happens. And every change has a cause and effect.
Knowing what those changes are and why they happen will better help you strategize and prepare your backlink building strategy in the future.
This is a simple example to illustrate this point.
Let’s assume you have six backlinks coming from the same domain. And this domain has been a fairly regular source of backlinks for your site.
After looking at your backlink history, you realize that every single one of those links is now listed as nofollow.
After doing a little research and corresponding with the site, you discover that the site has switched from a follow link configuration to a nofollow link configuration.
As a result, you are no longer specifically targeting these domains to build dofollow backlinks.
Now, if you don’t focus on checking your backlink history, it’s very possible that you may never notice this change.
You will continue operations as normal, and create a clear and concise message your site will continue to receive zero “link juice” from this site and will most likely eventually see the results reflected in your rankings.
That’s why backlink history is important.
This gives you direct insight into what is happening with each of your backlinks so you can make the necessary decisions that will ultimately help your SEO.
Simply put, if you want to maximize the effectiveness of your backlink strategy, you need to regularly review your backlink history.
And in the next section, I’ll show you the easiest way to do that.
How to Track Important Changes to Your Backlink History
There are two ways to monitor your site’s backlink history.
Option 1 is to do it yourself.
This may work in the early stages cell phone number of your site’s existence—when you’re getting your first few backlinks.
But it’s not sustainable once you’ve accumulated hundreds of backlinks. In fact, it then becomes nearly impossible to keep track of them all on your own.
The second option is to let a software do it for you.
This is the best way to do it if you want to save a lot of time and effort.