Backlink Analyzer

When This Must Trigger

Use this when the conversation involves any of these situations — even if the user does not use SEO terminology:

Use this whenever the task needs time-aware change detection, escalation, or stakeholder-ready visibility.

• Auditing your current backlink profile
• Identifying toxic or harmful links
• Discovering link building opportunities
• Analyzing competitor backlink strategies
• Monitoring new and lost links
• Evaluating link quality for outreach
• Preparing for link disavow

What This Skill Does

1. Profile Analysis: Comprehensive backlink profile overview
2. Quality Assessment: Evaluates link authority and relevance
3. Toxic Link Detection: Identifies harmful links
4. Competitor Analysis: Compares link profiles across competitors
5. Opportunity Discovery: Finds link building prospects
6. Trend Monitoring: Tracks link acquisition over time
7. Disavow Guidance: Helps create disavow files

Quick Start

Start with one of these prompts. Finish with a short handoff summary using the repository format in Skill Contract.

Analyze Your Profile

Analyze backlink profile for [domain]

Find Opportunities

Find link building opportunities by analyzing [competitor domains]

Detect Issues

Check for toxic backlinks on [domain]

Compare Profiles

Compare backlink profiles: [your domain] vs [competitor domains]

Skill Contract

Expected output: a delta summary, alert/report output, and a short handoff summary ready for memory/monitoring/.

• Reads: current metrics, previous baselines, alert thresholds, and reporting context from CLAUDE.md and the shared State Model when available.
• Writes: a user-facing monitoring deliverable plus a reusable summary that can be stored under memory/monitoring/.
• Promotes: significant changes, confirmed anomalies, and follow-up actions to memory/open-loops.md and memory/decisions.md.
• Next handoff: use the Next Best Skill below when a change needs action.

Data Sources

Note: All integrations are optional. This skill works without any API keys — users provide data manually when no tools are connected.

See CONNECTORS.md for tool category placeholders.

With ~~link database + ~~SEO tool connected: Automatically pull comprehensive backlink profiles including referring domains, anchor text distribution, link quality metrics (DA/DR), link velocity, and toxic link detection from ~~link database. Competitor backlink data from ~~SEO tool for gap analysis.

With manual data only: Ask the user to provide:

1. Backlink export CSV (with source domains, anchor text, link type)
2. Referring domains list with authority metrics
3. Competitor domains for comparison
4. Recent link gains/losses if tracking changes
5. Any known toxic or spammy links

Proceed with the full analysis using provided data. Note in the output which metrics are from automated collection vs. user-provided data.

Instructions

When a user requests backlink analysis:

1. Generate Profile Overview -- Key metrics (total backlinks, referring domains, DA/DR, dofollow ratio), link velocity (30d/90d/year), authority distribution chart, profile health score.

2. Analyze Link Quality -- Top quality backlinks table, link type distribution, anchor text analysis (brand/exact/partial/URL/generic), geographic distribution.

3. Identify Toxic Links -- Toxic score, risk indicators by type (spam, PBN, link farms, irrelevant), high-risk links to review, disavow recommendations (domain-level and URL-level).

4. Compare Against Competitors -- Profile comparison table (referring domains, DA/DR, velocity, avg link DA), unique referring domains, link intersection analysis, competitor content attracting most links.

5. Find Link Building Opportunities -- Link intersection prospects, broken link opportunities, unlinked mentions, resource page opportunities, guest post prospects, priority matrix (effort vs impact).

6. Track Link Changes -- New and lost links for last 30 days with DA, type, anchor, dates. Net change and links to recover.

7. Generate Backlink Report -- Executive summary, strengths, concerns, opportunities, competitive position, recommended actions (immediate/short-term/long-term), KPIs to track.

   Reference: See references/analysis-templates.md for complete output templates for all 7 steps above.

CITE Item Mapping

When running domain-authority-auditor after this analysis, the following data feeds directly into CITE scoring:

Validation Checkpoints

Input Validation

• Target domain backlink data is complete and current
• Competitor domains specified for comparison analysis
• Backlink data includes necessary fields (source domain, anchor text, link type)
• Authority metrics available (DA/DR or equivalent)

Output Validation

• Every metric cites its data source and collection date
• Toxic link assessments include risk justification
• Link opportunity recommendations are specific and actionable
• Source of each data point clearly stated (~~link database data, ~~SEO tool data, user-provided, or estimated)

Example

User: "Find link building opportunities by analyzing HubSpot, Salesforce, and Mailchimp"

Output:

## Link Intersection Analysis

### Sites linking to 2+ competitors (not you)

| Domain | DA | HubSpot | Salesforce | Mailchimp | Opportunity |
|--------|-----|---------|------------|-----------|-------------|
| g2.com | 91 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | Get listed/reviewed |
| capterra.com | 89 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | Submit for review |
| entrepreneur.com | 92 | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | Pitch guest post |
| techcrunch.com | 94 | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | PR/news pitch |

### Top 5 Immediate Opportunities

1. **G2.com** (DA 91) - All competitors listed
   - Action: Create detailed G2 profile
   - Effort: Low
   - Impact: High authority + referral traffic

2. **Entrepreneur.com** (DA 92) - 2 competitors have links
   - Action: Pitch contributed article
   - Effort: High
   - Impact: High authority + brand exposure

3. **MarketingProfs** (DA 75) - All competitors featured
   - Action: Apply for expert contribution
   - Effort: Medium
   - Impact: Relevant audience + quality link

### Estimated Impact

If you acquire links from top 10 opportunities:
- New referring domains: +10
- Average DA of new links: 82
- Estimated ranking impact: +2-5 positions for competitive keywords

Tips for Success

1. Quality over quantity - One DA 80 link beats ten DA 20 links
2. Monitor regularly - Catch lost links and toxic links early
3. Study competitors - Learn from their link building success
4. Diversify your profile - Mix of link types and anchors
5. Disavow carefully - Only disavow clearly toxic links

Link Quality and Strategy Reference

Reference: See references/link-quality-rubric.md for the complete link quality scoring matrix (6 weighted factors), toxic link identification criteria, link profile health benchmarks, and disavow file guidance.

Reference: See references/outreach-templates.md for email outreach frameworks, subject line formulas, response rate benchmarks, follow-up sequences, and templates for each link building strategy.

Save Results

After delivering monitoring data or reports to the user, ask:

"Save these results for future sessions?"

If yes, write a dated summary to memory/monitoring/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>.md containing:

• One-line headline finding or status change
• Top 3-5 actionable items
• Open loops or anomalies requiring follow-up
• Source data references

If any findings should influence ongoing strategy, recommend promoting key conclusions to memory/hot-cache.md.

Gate check recommended: If toxic link ratio exceeds 15%, recommend running domain-authority-auditor to assess overall domain trust impact.

Reference Materials

• Link Quality Rubric — Quality scoring matrix with weighted factors and toxic link identification criteria
• Outreach Templates — Email frameworks, subject line formulas, and response rate benchmarks

Next Best Skill

• Primary: domain-authority-auditor — translate link findings into a domain-level trust view.

Related Skills in This Suite

Install the full suite: See README for one-command install of all 20 skills.