How to Build a Backlink Profile That Gets Real Results in 2025

Building backlinks is a core pillar of search engine optimisation. On the surface, the process is straightforward: learn about link-building strategies and implement them to gain links.

However, once your site has hundreds of backlinks, strategic backlink profile management becomes crucial.

This guide dives deeper into what a backlink profile is, what an ideal one looks like, and how you can improve it.

What Is a Backlink Profile?

Your website’s backlink profile is the collection of all inbound links pointing to your site. It’s not just about the number of links, but also the quality of each link, the domain authority (a third-party metric) of the source, anchor text, and other factors impacting your site’s authority.

A well-balanced SEO backlink profile signals to search engines that your website deserves visibility in the SERPs. Building a natural link profile should be your ultimate off-page SEO goal.

Why a Strong Backlink Profile Matters

Google and other search engines don’t just evaluate the number of backlinks your website has—they examine each link closely. 

Your backlink profile is assessed based on:

• Domain authority of the source site.
• Relevance of the link and anchor.
• Anchor optimisation.
• Target URL.
• Ratio of link types.

Links from reputable industry sites matter, but they’re not the only factor Google considers. Once you’ve earned numerous links, actively monitoring and balancing your backlink profile becomes crucial for SEO.

A good backlink profile that appears trustworthy and natural helps:

• Improve rankings site-wide, as valuable as acquiring high-quality links.
• Optimise link-building efforts: Fewer hard-to-get links might be necessary.
• Boost brand visibility in AI search, as high rankings and a good backlink profile are likely to influence AI sourcing.

About 10% of UK users who use AI rely on AI search daily, and 41% occasionally. AI search result visibility must be a crucial part of your optimisation strategy.

(Source: Gemini)

While it’s unclear exactly how LLMs select source websites, strong keyword optimisation, high search rankings, and a well-balanced backlink profile likely play significant roles.

Good Backlink Profile vs. Bad Backlink Profile

Before diving into how to analyse and improve your backlink profile, let’s first define what makes a good or bad profile.

Good: High‑Quality, Relevant, Diverse

Here are the characteristics of a good backlink profile:

• Most links come from niche-relevant websites.
• Links are sourced from diverse domains.
• Many organic links from high-authority websites.
• Minimal links from spammy sources.
• Anchor texts are varied, not over-optimised.
• Links point to multiple pages on your site.

Having numerous backlinks from reputable, relevant sources matters, but variety is equally important. A natural profile can’t rely solely on one link type.

Earning links from authoritative sites often requires effort, but don’t dismiss links from lower domain authority websites. You can gain these organically or through smart content distribution. Such links, including nofollow ones, enhance variety in your profile and aren’t necessarily harmful to SEO.

Many legit businesses start with lower domain metrics, and these links can grow more valuable over time. 

Bad: Spammy, Irrelevant, Over‑Optimised

There are two types of bad backlink profiles: those with little to no effort and those that are overoptimised.

The first type typically has under 50 links, mostly from directories or a few guest posts. If that’s your situation, you’ll need to focus on building more backlinks.

An overoptimised profile may have hundreds or even thousands of backlinks, yet still looks unnatural:

• Most links come from either spammy sites or only high-authority sites.
• A few domains provide hundreds of backlinks.
• Most backlinks point to your homepage.
• Anchors are mostly brand names or transactional keywords like “best lawyer in London.”

This indicates significant link-building effort, but a lack of organic backlinks. Such a profile is a red flag for search engines, especially if most links come from low-quality sources.

Dofollow/Nofollow Ratio

Nofollow links, marked with the rel=”nofollow” attribute, signal to search engines that a link shouldn’t pass domain authority. For years, many SEOs prioritised acquiring only dofollow links.

However, in 2020, Google began treating the nofollow attribute as a hint rather than a strict rule. In a recent survey, 89% of SEOs say nofollow links impact ranking.

Therefore, maintaining a balanced mix of nofollow and dofollow links is crucial. It makes your backlink profile appear organic and positively impacts ranking. There’s no exact ideal ratio, but a profile heavily skewed (e.g., 90%) towards either type looks unnatural.

How to Analyse Your Backlink Profile 

Now that you know what to look for, let’s explore deeper how to analyse your backlink profile. To do backlink analytics, you’ll need a backlink profile checker like SE Ranking. These tools show all backlinks pointing to your site and offer quality metrics for each.

Referring Domains and Backlink Quantity

Start by checking how many referring domains and backlinks your site has. Generally, more referring domains are better.

A large gap between backlinks and domains isn’t always bad—but if you have 20 times more links than domains, it could mean low-quality sites are linking to you repeatedly, which can harm your backlink profile.

Focus on the quality of referring domains. Use the domain list for analysis, either in-app or as a downloadable spreadsheet.

Types of Links

Browse the list and note the types of links in your profile. You’ll often get similar links from the same domain, so using the referring domains list is fine.

These tools we mentioned earlier show the link’s page, title, anchor, and URL. Here are common link types and how to spot them:

• Directory link: Page is about your business, links to your homepage, anchor is your brand name.
• Blog content link: Page is informational, links to a blog page, and anchor matches the blog’s theme.
• Listicle link: Page lists top businesses, links to your homepage with a branded anchor.
• Partnership link: Page covers your business relationship, branded anchor, homepage link.
• Spammy link: Page and anchor don’t relate to your business or make sense.

You’re looking for a rough balance between these types. A strong shift in any one direction can hurt SEO.

Relevance

Next, check how relevant the linking websites are to your business. There are a few levels of relevance:

• High relevance: Industry blogs, directories, partnerships.
• Medium relevance: Social media, news sites, or related industries—e.g., a digital marketing blog linking to your IT page.
• Unrelated: No clear connection between your business and the linking site.

Ideally, 80–90% of your links should be at least somewhat relevant.

Toxicity

Some SEO tools provide a spam score or similar metric to gauge how spammy your backlinks are and assess your site’s toxicity. You can also spot toxic links manually by reviewing your list of referring domains.

Spammy links are usually easy to identify—they look nothing like organic ones. For example, a link from a page promoting outdated SEO tactics or generic “domain list” pages is a clear red flag.

(Source: SE Ranking)

You’ll frequently see links from pages called something along the lines of “domain list.” Those are spammy as well.

(Source: SE Ranking)

Links like these are easy to spot because they have a low domain rating, very low or no traffic, and aren’t relevant to your site.

A few bad links won’t give you a toxic backlink profile, but if they start to outweigh your organic ones, it becomes a problem.

Anchor Text Variability

Finally, review the anchor texts pointing to your site. Common types include:

• Branded: Your company, brand, or website name.
• Keywords: Phrases like “best personal injury lawyer in Manchester.”
• Navigational: Generic text like “here,” “this link,” or “click here.”
• Contextual: Text describing the page content or a specific detail.

Too many over-optimised anchors can hurt your SEO, just like having none that describe your content. Aim for a balanced mix.

Proven Strategies to Strengthen Your Backlink Profile

If your backlink profile is unbalanced, you’ll need to fill in the gaps with the link types it’s missing. Here are 3 proven strategies to help build a more diverse profile.

Foundational

The easiest links to build are foundational links—from business directories and partner websites.

Look for directories relevant to your industry or location and create a profile. Some may charge a small yearly fee.

Partnership links often come naturally. When you team up with another business, they’ll usually link to your site on a partnership page or in a press release.

Content‑Driven

Links driven by content are typically a bit more difficult to build. There are two ways you can go about it.

The first one is guest posting. This involves reaching out to industry blogs and offering to create a piece of content for them. You can typically include one link to your site in the content and feature your CEO as the author, boosting their E-E-A-T.

The second is creating SEO content that’s worth linking to, such as a checklist or a data-driven study relevant to your field. You’ll also need to invest in content distribution to ensure editors and writers actually find and link to it.

Outreach & Community

These links are the hardest to earn. Use a platform like Source of Sources (the HARO/Connectively successor) to reach out to journalists and editors, help them get a quote for the article they’re working on, and get a link in return.

Best Practices & Common Pitfalls

Once you’ve done a backlink analysis and are starting to balance the profile, there are several best practices you should follow and avoid common mistakes.

Avoid Link Schemes

Build safe and organic backlinks only. Getting involved in a link scheme of any kind won’t help your SEO and can even hurt it. There are several kinds of link schemes, but most of them involve bulk link purchasing for a cheap price.

The links can come from low-quality spammy websites or even from hacked websites. Avoid building those, and if you have done so in the past, it’s best to disavow them.

Even if they work for a short time, Google is likely to pick up on the scheme, and your site’s reputation and traffic will come crashing down sooner or later.

Avoid Over‑Optimised Anchors

Using only anchors that feature a keyword won’t be as bad for SEO as engaging in a link scheme, but it does bring the quality of your backlink profile down if you do so forcefully. It looks suspicious when the only types of anchors you have on the profile are unnatural. 

Combine Anchor Text Types

The best approach to the anchor texts is diversification. Use a healthy ratio of branded, navigational, keyword-based, and descriptive anchors.

Focus on Quality Over Quantity

In link-building, quality always outweighs quantity. A few links from high-authority sources each month are far better than hundreds from low-quality or toxic sites.

After covering all your foundational link sources, shift your focus to earning editorial links from reputable websites.

Maintain a User‑First Mindset

Building user-focused links (not just the search engines) can help you create a natural backlink profile. This means avoiding links from spammy sites with no audience and building links from legitimate websites that real people actually visit.

This can also bring in referral traffic from those sites.

Investigate Suspicious Links

If you find links that look spammy, investigate them to understand why they ended up in your profile. Google recommends disavowing only the links you can’t remove by other means, so your first step should be to contact the website owners and request removal.

Managing and Cleaning Your Link Profile

To keep your backlink profile healthy, run a regular backlink audit every month or at least every quarter.

Here’s what to look at:

• Link type ratios.
• Anchor text ratios.
• New vs lost links.
• Broken links.
• Toxic, suspicious, or irrelevant links.

Fix the lost and broken links by reaching out to the websites that linked to you. When you spot a toxic or suspicious link, you can contact the website owners to get that link removed.

Google’s policies say that using the Disavow Tool is the last resort in case your site has been hit with a manual action or could be soon. Don’t disavow potentially harmful links unless there are hundreds of them, and it could lead to manual action.

Measuring Success: Reporting & KPIs

In addition to regular audits, you should monitor performance metrics. Here are metrics you can track to confirm backlink profile health:

• Total number of backlinks and referring domains.
• New vs lost backlink ratio.
• Link health.
• Backlink velocity.
• Referral traffic.

You can cross-reference these with general SEO metrics like ranking and traffic to see if your efforts pay off.

Maintaining Long-Term Backlink Health

A strong backlink profile isn’t just about earning great links—it’s also about keeping the overall profile balanced and healthy. Start with a thorough audit to understand where your profile stands, and fill in the gaps with the link types it’s missing.

Then, run monthly or quarterly audits to see if things are on track, and monitor key performance indicators relating to the backlink profile. Monitor how backlink profile optimisation impacts your general SEO performance, and adjust as needed.