We have written some tutorial guides on how to carry out link audits using URL Profiler, here is a written guide and here is a video walkthrough.

They will explain how to use the software, where this section will go into a bit of detail about the results you get back.

The most important datapoints you get back from the link analysis are the link scrores, which are determined as follows:

None - this means that no links were found, either because the URL was not processed (see below) or simply because we could not find any links on that page. It typically means that the link is no longer live.

Not processed - in the Link Analysis 'Settings' tab you are able to set the maximum number of URLs per domain (to a maximum of 10). If you have set this, and you have a domain with 500 different URLs linking to you, it will only check 10 as specified and not the other 490. Everything else will be classified as 'Not processed' and will appear on this tab. In real terms, if you have any more than 10 links from any one domain and there is no good reason for it, you should be treating this as a spammy signal (e.g. link in the footer).

Ignore – don’t pass PageRank or are ‘safe’
Reasons:

  • All links that are rel nofollow or on pages with robots nofollow
  • Domains in your whitelist

Low – shows signs of being a low quality link
Reasons:

  • Comment, trackback, author bio, advert or sponsored links with non-commercial anchor text.
  • Forum post links where the anchor text is a URL

Optimized – anchor text optimized for rankings
Reasons:

  • Any link with commercial anchor text that is not Suspect or Unnatural (see below)

Suspect – needs to be manually reviewed, but likely to be deemed unnatural once checked
Reasons:

  • Author bio, advert or sponsored links with commercial anchor text
  • Press release, forum, wiki, bookmarking and voucher links with non-commercial anchor text
  • Profile, signature, footer, sidebar, comment and trackback links with commercial anchor text

Unnatural – clearly demonstrating manipulative practices, should be removed or disavowed
Reasons:

  • All article and link directory links
  • Press release, wiki, bookmarking, voucher and forum links with commercial anchor text
  • Profile, signature, footer, sidebar, comment and trackback links with commercial anchor text
  • Domains in your blacklist

Review - All followed links that don’t match any of the above options (i.e. the default is set to ‘Review’)