How do you keep track of backlinks after they're built?
by•
Most SEO conversations focus on acquiring backlinks, but I rarely see people talk about what happens afterward.
If you're managing dozens or hundreds of backlinks, how do you keep track of whether they're still active, whether they've changed, or whether they still point where they should?
Do you have a workflow for this, or is it something you only check occasionally?
I'm curious how different teams approach backlink maintenance.
8 views
Replies
Great question, backlink maintenance is one of those things everyone agrees matters but almost nobody has a real system for.
Our workflow: we check broken pages, spam score, and active backlink status monthly (sometimes fortnightly if bandwidth allows). The three things we watch for are (1) links going dead/404, (2) links getting nofollowed or the anchor/context changing, and (3) spam score creep on referring domains, that last one especially gets ignored until it tanks rankings.
We actually built this into our own tool (RankQ) since we needed it ourselves, it tracks and flags these issues for us.