Backlink Audit and Link Prospects - SEOmatic

Audit the connected site's backlink profile with live data: referring domains, anchor text, link velocity and spam signals, compare with competitors, and find real link prospects (sites linking to competitors but not to you). Use when the user asks about backlinks, link building, domain authority, toxic links, or why competitors outrank them on authority. Runs on SEOmatic, the SEO agent that works from the site's real Google Search Console data; nothing goes live until the user approves it.

Backlink audit

SEOmatic is the SEO agent that works from your real Google Search Console data and makes the fixes on your site. Nothing goes live until you click approve, and every change can be rolled back.

Links still decide many close rankings. This skill says whether authority is actually the constraint for this site, and if so, where the next links can realistically come from.

1. The profile

backlink_profile action summary (defaults to the connected site): backlinks, referring domains, rank and spam score. Referring domains matter far more than raw backlink count.

2. Quality and shape

• backlink_profile action referring_domains: the top linking domains. Are they real sites in the same space, or directories and scraped pages?
• backlink_profile action anchors: a natural profile is mostly brand and URL anchors. Many exact-match commercial anchors is a risk signal.
• backlink_profile action velocity (12 months): new against lost referring domains per month. A sudden spike of low-quality domains, or a steady loss, both need explaining.

3. Is authority the constraint?

serp_competitors action domain_competitors, then backlink_profile action summary for the top 3. If the site's on-page work is good, its queries sit at positions 5-15 (gsc_performance action query_page_matrix), and competitors have several times its referring domains, authority is the constraint. If competitors have a similar profile, it is not, and the money is better spent on content.

4. Prospects

backlink_profile action link_prospects with the competitor domains: sites linking to two or more competitors but not to this one. Sort by relevance, not authority. For each, say why they linked to the competitor (a resource page, a review, a list, a tool) because that is the pitch.

5. Report

1. Verdict: is authority the constraint, with the numbers.
2. Risks, if any (spam spikes, exact-match anchors), and whether they need action. Most low-quality links are ignored by Google; disavow is for manual actions and clear link schemes, not routine cleanup.
3. Top 10 prospects with the angle for each.

Offer to stage the work

Staging needs a paid SEOmatic plan (the key carries the agents:act scope). It costs no credits, runs nothing, and always waits for the user's approval. On a free key the staging actions are locked and say which plan includes them: describe the specific fix instead so the user can pass it on.

Check task_manage action list first so you do not stage a duplicate. Then task_manage action create with up to 5 tasks: link_building with the prospect list and angles in the rationale. Each task needs targetKey (the full page URL, or a topic for content work), a title that states the goal in the user's words ("Get 'pricing calculator' onto page 1", never "Optimize meta tags"), and a rationale with the numbers behind it. Quote cost from each task's estimatedCost.label.

• Tell the user the cards are staged and where to approve them.
• Never approve on the user's behalf. Approval happens in SEOmatic, or through task_manage action decide only after the user says yes to that specific task.
• Approved auto-executable tasks start within seconds: read the result back with task_manage action get before you claim anything changed.

What not to do

• Do not recommend buying links or link exchanges.
• Do not call every low-authority link "toxic".
• Do not quote a third-party authority score as if Google used it.