A Beginner Guide On How To Manage Backlinks In SEO

What are backlinks in SEO?

Backlinks are links that point to a website from another website. In simple terms, a hyperlink helps Google Bot crawl and index web pages more efficiently on the web. Apart from crawling and indexing web pages, backlinks are the most important part of SEO. They help improve a website’s organic presence on SERPs and drive organic traffic.

However, backlinks cannot be the only factor in improving a website’s ranking. To improve organic rankings on Google, one needs to invest in on-page SEO and off-page SEO. On-page SEO is all about optimizing the content of your site, and off-page SEO is all about increasing the number of backlinks on your website. In order to get a good ranking on Google, you need to implement both on-page and off-page SEO by equally distributing your efforts. 

In order to better understand backlinks in SEO, here’s a great example about it. 

Imagine you have a blog about “Digital Marketing Strategies.” A popular website, such as moz.com, publishes an article on “Top 10 SEO Trends for 2024” and includes a hyperlink to your blog post, “Ultimate Guide to Digital Marketing,” within their content. This hyperlink pointing from moz.com to your blog is considered a backlink.

Here’s how it might look in practice:

“For a more comprehensive understanding of digital marketing strategies, check out this Ultimate Guide to Digital Marketing.”

The text “Ultimate Guide to Digital Marketing” is the anchor text, and the hyperlink directs readers to your blog post.

What is backlink management in SEO?

SEO and backlink strategies have changed a lot over the years. 10 years ago, backlink strategies like forum posting, image links, PPT links, PDF links, and directory submissions had a huge role to play in SEO. However, these strategies don’t work today. Nowadays, contextual, relevant, and high-authority backlinks play a huge role in SEO. And this is where backlink management comes into the picture. Backlink management simply means optimizing your website’s link profile and taking complete control over your off-page SEO activities.

Acquisition, maintenance, and monitoring of backlinks are the three most important tasks of backlink management in SEO. 

1. Link acquisition 

As the name says it all, link acquisition involves the strategic process of obtaining backlinks from other websites to your own. This can be achieved through various methods, such as building relationships with industry influencers, engaging in guest blogging, creating high-quality content that naturally attracts links, and leveraging directories or business listings. 

The main aim of the backlink acquisition is to increase the number of referring domains to your website, which can enhance your website’s credibility and search engine ranking. Acquiring links does not mean getting backlinks from any website. The backlink you are trying to acquire must be relevant to your niche. Plus, the website from where you are getting a link must be a genuine business website with good authority, design, traffic, and quality pages on the site. 

Following are some of the best link acquisition techniques: 

a) Blogger outreach

Blogger outreach is a fantistic way by which you can reach out to fellow bloggers or webmasters in your niche and ask them to give a backlink to your site. However, no one would like to give you a link for free. So you can either contribute a guest article on their website or mention them in your content and link out to them. Highlight that you have given them a backlink and, in return, you would like to get a backlink from their website too.

Check out this sample blogger outreach template: 

b) LinkedIn outreach

This is one of my personal favorites and most effective link-building techniques. It works like a charm and gives me 100% results when done in the step-by-step format.
The first step is to find a website from which you would like to get a link. After that, you need to scroll that website and come to the footer section, where you can find the social media icons of that site. 

Now click on the LinkedIn icon, and you will be taken to the company page of that site on LinkedIn. After that, you need to come to the people section on the page and look for the employees who are working as SEO or digital marketing executives or managers at that company. 

You can use the advanced filter option and type of position and job role to make it quick. After you find a few employees, you can send them the connection request. Once they accept your connection, you can outreach them and ask for a link to your site.

c) Be part of SEO Slack communities.

Joining SEO Slack communities for link exchange can be an effective way to build relationships, share knowledge, and acquire quality backlinks. I am personally part of 10+ Slack communities, where I build 30+ quality backlinks to my site every month. You can also leverage these communications and connect with fellow SEO professionals, digital marketers, content creators, and website owners who actively engage in discussions, share insights, and collaborate on various SEO strategies.

By becoming an active member of such groups, you can connect with like-minded professionals interested in mutually beneficial link exchanges, guest posting opportunities, and other collaborative efforts to enhance backlink profiles. 

Additionally, these communities can provide a platform to stay updated on the latest SEO trends, tools, and algorithm updates, helping you refine your strategies and achieve better search engine visibility.

2. Link maintenance 

Link maintenance is another important part of backlink management, which is the ongoing effort to manage the quality of your existing backlinks, ensuring that they continue to provide value to your website’s SEO. This can be done by checking your backlink profile for any broken links, reaching out to webmasters to update or fix these links, and disavowing harmful or spammy links that could negatively impact your site’s performance. 

Additionally, link maintenance includes reclaiming lost links by contacting the site owner who has removed your link after a while. Proper link maintenance helps preserve and enhance the benefits of your backlink profile over time.

For the link maintenance task, you can use the Ahrefs or Semrush tool, which will tell you the number of backlinks acquired and lost. I use Ahrefs to check the new and lost backlinks.

The only drawback associated with Ahrefs is that it does not tell you the number of toxic links pointing to your site. For that, you can use Semrush or Moz and create a list of toxic backlinks and then submit those URLs to the Google Search Console. 

3. Link monitoring 

Link monitoring involves continuously tracking and analyzing your backlink profile to assess its quality and impact on your SEO strategy. This process includes using SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz to monitor new and existing backlinks, evaluate the authority and relevance of the linking domains, and identify any potentially toxic links that may harm your website’s ranking. 

Regular link monitoring helps you stay informed about who is linking to your site, understand which pages are attracting the most links, and take timely action to either capitalize on positive trends or mitigate any negative effects.

Link monitoring includes the following:

a) Removing toxic links

In order to remove toxic backlinks, you can use tools like Semrush and Moz to analyze your backlink profile. Semrush is a great tool that tells you which links are highly toxic, and you can export those links or remove them. You can also integrate Semrush and Google Search Console and automate the toxic backlink removal process.

b) Updating content

Updating content for backlink management involves regularly refreshing and improving your existing content to maintain and enhance its value. Start by reviewing and replacing outdated information with the latest data, statistics, and examples to ensure your content remains current and relevant. Enhancing the quality of your content by adding more details, examples, visuals, or expert quotes makes it more appealing to other websites, increasing the likelihood that they will maintain or add new backlinks. 

Why is backlink management important in SEO?

1. Boosting Search Engine Rankings

Whether you believe it or not, backlinks are the number one factor that search engines like Google use for determining a website’s position on SERPs. A high number of quality backlinks from reputable and relevant sources signals to search engines that your content is valuable, trustworthy, and authoritative. 

However, more backlinks usually do not mean better rankings because not all backlinks are created equal; links from high-authority domains and those with contextual relevance to your content have a more significant impact on your rankings. For example, suppose you are running a hotel or restaurant business. In that case, getting a backlink from a from a food blog or a food-related website will be more relevant and practical than getting a backlink from the irrelevant website. 

Effective backlink management involves not only acquiring these high-quality links but also maintaining a clean backlink profile to avoid any negative effects from low-quality or spammy links.

2. Driving Referral Traffic

Backlinks are a valuable source of referral traffic, which is a type of a traffic that comes on your site when users click on a link from another website that directs them to your site. This can result in increased visits and potentially more conversions. This is especially true when you are getting a backlink from a page that is ranking on Google.

In order to find the top ranking pages, you can use the Ahrefs tool and seach for the top performing pages and try getting a link from there. This will give you the most link juice and referral traffic as well. 

Check out the page traffic from where I have created backlinks for my website.

Bonus Tip: Building backlinks for the home page will give you maximum ranking in the minimum time.

Managing your backlinks effectively ensures that you are optimizing these opportunities for referral traffic. By continuously seeking and acquiring valuable backlinks, you can drive a steady stream of targeted traffic to your site, which can contribute to overall business growth.

3. Building Domain Authority

Domain authority (DA) is a metric developed by Moz to help webmasters estimate the likelihood of a website ranking well in search engine results. High-quality backlinks play a crucial role in building and increasing domain authority. Websites with strong domain authority are generally seen as more credible and authoritative by search engines, leading to better rankings on SERPs. 

Backlink management helps you focus on acquiring links from high-authority sites, thus boosting your domain authority. Additionally, maintaining a healthy backlink profile by disavowing toxic links ensures that your domain authority is not adversely affected by low-quality or spammy backlinks.

4. Protecting Against Penalties

One of the most critical aspects of backlink management is protecting your site from Google penalties. Google and other search engines have strict guidelines regarding the quality of backlinks, and engaging in manipulative practices or acquiring spammy links can result in penalties that harm your site’s rankings.

Before making any backlinks, make sure to follow Google’s guidelines for link building. 

Backlink management involves regularly monitoring your backlink profile to identify and address potentially harmful links. Tools like Google Search Console and various SEO analytics platforms can help you track backlinks and take action against those that could trigger penalties. Disavowing toxic links through Google’s Disavow Links Tool is a proactive measure to mitigate the risk of penalties and maintain your site’s SEO health.

5. Supporting Long-Term SEO Goals

Effective backlink management supports long-term SEO objectives by improving your backlink profile and making it more strong and relevant over time. SEO is not a one-time effort but a continuous process that requires ongoing attention and adaptation. 

By regularly updating your content, acquiring new high-quality backlinks, and maintaining a clean backlink profile, you can surely rank any website on Google. Backlink management helps you build a solid foundation for long-term growth, enabling you to stay competitive in your industry and achieve enduring results.

6. Enhancing Content Visibility

Backlink management will also help you enhance the visibility of your content. When authoritative sites link to your content, it increases the likelihood that your content will rank better on Google and will be discovered by a broader audience. 

High-quality backlinks can lead to increased exposure through referral traffic, social sharing, and additional linking opportunities, which will bring more eyeballs to your content. So, by focusing on obtaining backlinks from relevant sources and promoting your content effectively, you can improve its visibility and reach. This, in turn, can drive more engagement and conversions.

7. Fostering industry relationships

Building and managing backlinks often involves establishing relationships with other industry professionals, bloggers, and website owners. These relationships can lead to valuable opportunities for collaboration, guest posting, and co-marketing efforts. 

Effective backlink management encourages you to engage with your industry peers, contribute valuable content, and participate in discussions that can lead to high-quality backlinks. By fostering positive relationships within your industry, you not only enhance your backlink profile but also position your brand as a credible and influential player in your field.

8. Measuring and Analyzing Backlink Performance

An essential aspect of backlink management is measuring and analyzing the performance of your backlinks. SEO tools provide insights into various metrics related to backlinks, such as the number of referring domains, the quality of links, and the impact on search rankings. 

By analyzing these metrics, you can assess the effectiveness of your backlink strategy, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions. Regular analysis helps you understand which backlinks are driving the most value and allows you to refine your approach to acquiring and managing links.

9. Adapting to SEO Changes

The SEO landscape is continually evolving, with search engines frequently updating their algorithms and ranking criteria. Effective backlink management requires staying informed about these changes and adapting your strategies accordingly. 

By keeping up with SEO trends and algorithm updates, you can adjust your backlink acquisition and management practices to align with the latest best practices. This adaptability ensures that your SEO efforts remain effective and that your backlink profile continues to support your overall goals.

Types of backlinks to manage

1. Natural Backlinks

There are many different types of backlinks, but the most important and most authoritative backlinks are the natural backlinks that other websites provide without any action from you. You can build such backlinks purely based on the value of your content. Natural links indicate that other websites find your content genuinely helpful and worth linking so that their audience can find some helpful content. 

Managing natural backlinks involves ensuring that your content is high-quality, well-researched, and backed by data and statistics so that you can generate links organically. Regularly updating your content and adding more research and data can help increase the number of natural backlinks over time.

2. Manual or Outreach Backlinks

Manual and outreach backlinks are my personal favorite backlink type, as they give 100% results and are easy to build. They are acquired by reaching out to other websites, bloggers, or influencers and requesting a link. You can build manual and outreach backlinks by guest posting, collaborations, link exchange agreements, and more. To manage these backlinks effectively, focus on reaching out to bloggers and webmasters that are authoritative, relevant, and have a good reputation. 

Make sure your outreach efforts are personalized by using tools like NinjaOutreach and Pitchbox, and provide value in return, such as high-quality content or reciprocal backlinks in return. 

Also, regularly monitor the performance of these links to ensure they are still active and beneficial.

3. Editorial Backlinks

As the name says it all, editorial backlinks are the links that come from high-authoritarian media and news websites. Blog posts and research articles that mention your site as a source of quality information. Search engines highly regard these backlinks because they are typically earned based on merit rather than paid for or exchanged. 

Managing editorial backlinks is a daunting task but can be done by building relationships with media publishers and journalists, creating good, quality content, participating in online discussions, or giving an interview that could lead to such mentions. It’s important to maintain a good reputation and consistently produce valuable content to encourage more editorial backlinks.

4. Guest Post Backlinks

You can also get backlinks by contributing article to other’s website in your niche. This is called as guest post backlink. These links are usually embedded within the content or author bio and direct to the home page of your website, which can be a great way to build authority and drive traffic to your site and increase the overall authority of your site. 

Managing guest post backlinks involves selecting reputable websites that align with your niche and audience, ensuring the content you provide is valuable and relevant, and following the guest posting guidelines of each site. Track the performance of these backlinks and periodically check if they remain live, as some websites may remove older guest posts.

5. Social Media Backlinks

Generally social media links are not useful because of most of these links are nofollow. they  come from links shared on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others. While these links are usually “nofollow” and don’t directly impact your search engine rankings, they can drive significant referral traffic and increase brand visibility. 

By managing social media backlinks, you can increase your website’s brand awareness and drive some referral traffic. However, it involves actively sharing your content across social channels, encouraging others to share it, and engaging with your audience to create a buzz around your content. 

You can take the help of social media marketing tools can and track the performance of these backlinks and understand which platforms drive the most traffic. You can repetae the process on the platform that performs well. 

6. Profile Backlinks

Profile backlinks are also not useful in 2025, but if you are running a small business or a local website, then profile backlinks matter the most. These links come from creating profiles on various websites, such as social media platforms, business listings, forums, and communities. You can ditch the forums and communities in 2025 and focus on listing websites. 

Most of the time profile backlinks are usually “nofollow,” they can still contribute to brand awareness and referral traffic. In few cases, some of the profile sites allow a do-follow backlink. 

Managing profile backlinks involves ensuring that your profiles are complete, accurate, and regularly updated with current information. Focus on creating profiles on authoritative and relevant platforms that align with your niche or industry.

7. Dofollow Backlinks

These are the most important type of backlinks to manage as they impact the 90% of the ranking.  These links are critical for SEO because they directly influence your search engine rankings. Managing “do follow” backlinks involves focusing on acquiring these links from high-authority, relevant websites. The links are followed and so it is essential to regularly monitor your them to ensure they remain active, relevant, and valuable. 

To check a link is dofollow or not, you can use a paid tool like Semrush or Ahrefs. 

One important thing to note is that you can disavow any “dofollow” links from spammy or low-quality sites to protect your site’s authority and ranking.

8. Paid Backlinks

Paid backlinks are links you acquire by paying other websites to link back to your site. While this practice is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can result in penalties if detected, some websites still engage in buying backlinks for a quick boost in rankings. 

Managing paid backlinks, if used, involves being cautious and ensuring they come from high-quality, relevant sites. However, it is generally recommended to focus on organic link-building strategies rather than risking penalties from paid backlinks.

9. Broken Backlinks

Broken backlinks are links that lead to a page on your site that no longer exists or returns a 404 error. These can harm your SEO and user experience, as they provide no value to the user and may signal to search engines that your site is not well-maintained. 

Managing broken backlinks involves regularly checking for any broken links using tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, or SEMrush and redirecting them to relevant, active pages on your site. Reach out to webmasters of linking sites to request an update or correction to the broken link.

How to manage backlinks in SEO?

• Conduct regular backlink audits to identify low-quality or spammy links that may harm your site’s SEO. Use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz to monitor and assess backlink quality.
• Focus on quality over quantity by aiming for high-authority, relevant backlinks from reputable sites. A few high-quality links are more valuable than numerous low-quality ones, boosting your domain authority and search engine rankings.
• Disavow harmful backlinks if you identify them during your audit. Use Google’s Disavow Tool to prevent them from affecting your site’s SEO performance.
• Build relationships with industry influencers, bloggers, and webmasters in your niche to earn natural backlinks through guest posts, collaborations, or partnerships.
• Create link-worthy content, such as in-depth guides, research studies, infographics, and interactive tools, that naturally attracts backlinks.
• Monitor competitors’ backlinks to discover potential link-building opportunities. Analyze their backlink profiles and replicate successful tactics.
• Utilize internal linking strategically to guide users and search engines through your website, enhancing the overall SEO value of your backlinks.
• Stay updated on SEO guidelines and best practices to ensure your backlink strategy aligns with current search engine algorithms and standards.

Tools required to manage backlinks in SEO

1. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a comprehensive tool for backlink management that tracks your entire backlink profile, providing insights into the number of backlinks, their quality, and their sources. It helps identify toxic links that could harm your SEO and offers features to discover new link-building opportunities by analyzing competitors’ backlinks.

2. SEMrush

SEMrush offers in-depth backlink analysis, including metrics like domain authority, page authority, and anchor text distribution. It helps monitor your site’s backlink profile, identify potentially harmful links, and provides suggestions for new link-building prospects. SEMrush also allows you to keep an eye on your competitors’ backlinks to discover effective strategies.

3. Moz Link Explorer

Moz Link Explorer provides data on the number of backlinks, linking domains, and spam scores. It helps identify and remove toxic backlinks and offers metrics like Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) to evaluate the quality of your backlinks. Moz also helps in discovering link-building opportunities by analyzing the backlink profiles of competitors.

4. Google Search Console

Google Search Console provides a list of all the backlinks pointing to your website, helping you monitor and maintain a clean backlink profile. It allows you to disavow harmful or low-quality links directly, ensuring they don’t negatively impact your site’s ranking.

5. Majestic SEO

Majestic SEO offers comprehensive backlink analysis with unique metrics like Trust Flow and Citation Flow to assess the quality and influence of your backlinks. It provides detailed reports on backlink history, link types, and anchor texts, making it easier to identify valuable backlinks and remove harmful ones.

6. Linkody

Linkody is a backlink monitoring tool that continuously tracks your backlinks and alerts you to any changes, such as lost or broken links. It also provides a disavow tool to remove harmful links and a reporting feature to keep track of your backlink progress over time.

7. Monitor Backlinks

This tool offers an easy way to track your backlinks and analyze their performance. It notifies you of any changes in your backlink profile, such as new, lost, or broken links, and helps manage toxic links by providing a disavow feature.

8. Screaming Frog SEO Spider

While primarily a website crawler, Screaming Frog can help identify broken backlinks, analyze internal linking, and audit the overall health of your backlink profile, ensuring no errors impact your SEO efforts.

FAQs On How to Manage Backlinks in SEO