Backlink Profile

Summary#

Backlink Profile reports every measurable part of a domain's inbound link footprint: how many links it has, how many distinct sites send them, how strong and trusted those sites are, what anchor text they use, and what is being gained or lost month by month.

Purpose#

Links are still the largest external factor in how a domain ranks, and they are the one factor you cannot see from your own site. You can read your content and your technical setup; you cannot read who links to you without a link index.

This tool exists to answer three questions in one run: how strong is this domain's link profile, is it growing or shrinking, and is any of it risky? Use it on your own domain to plan link building, and on a competitor's to find the sites you should be talking to.

Overview#

You enter a domain. Metric Vault queries DataForSEO's backlink index for the summary, a sample of individual backlinks, the anchor-text distribution, the month-by-month history, the referring networks and the domain's backlink competitors. The measured data is returned to you directly, with the analytical sections built on top of those figures.

The report is organized as: a verdict header, plain-language findings, eight KPI tiles, then the detail — growth, anchors, link types, the strongest links, risk, and outreach opportunities.

The detail tables#

Under the tiles are six tables. Each one filters and exports on its own, and the export writes every row the filter matches rather than the rows on screen.

The tables read the same measurements the tiles do. Referring domains are drawn from the strongest links by rating, so the table describes the part of the profile most worth knowing about; the line above it says how many links that covers out of the total.

Each table opens showing its first rows and grows on request, so the report stays readable rather than dropping several hundred rows into one scroller.

Benefits#

• One report covers strength, growth, quality and risk. You do not need four tools.
• Twelve months of link history, so a profile that looks large but is shrinking cannot hide.
• The anchor-text mix, which is where over-optimization shows up first.
• Toxic and disavow candidates surfaced next to the healthy links, so you can see the proportion rather than a scary count.
• Competitor link comparison and outreach targets, so the report ends in work you can do.

Use Cases#

• Planning a link-building campaign. Run your own domain, read the gaps, then take the outreach targets straight into your process.
• Reverse-engineering a competitor. Their strongest referring domains are a ready-made prospect list for you.
• Diagnosing a ranking drop. A large negative net gain in the last 30 days points at lost links rather than content.
• Auditing an inherited site. New client, unknown history — the spam score and anchor warnings tell you what you have taken on.
• Proving progress. Re-run monthly and show referring domains climbing.

Requirements#

• A signed-in Metric Vault account.
• A paid plan. Backlink Profile is not available on Free.
• At least 5 credits of your monthly allowance remaining.
• A public domain. No verification or connected account is needed.

Permissions#

Any workspace member can run it; access is by plan, not by role.

Cost#

5 credits per run.

A cached result still charges. Backlink data is held in the shared cache for 10 days, so a domain someone else analyzed recently returns instantly and still costs 5 credits. Re-opening your own saved run costs nothing. See How credits work and Result caching and freshness.

Note that Backlink Hygiene Toolkit runs the same analysis, so it costs the same 5 credits, and running one after the other on the same domain inside the cache window returns the same underlying data.

See example renders a stored sample and charges nothing.

Navigation Path#

Dashboard → Competitors & Backlinks → Backlink Profile

Inputs#

Step-by-Step Guide#

1. Open Dashboard → Competitors & Backlinks → Backlink Profile.
2. Type the domain into the field marked e.g. nike.com.
3. Press Analyze Backlinks · 5 reports, or press Enter in the field.
4. Choose Open saved result or Run fresh (5 credits) if you have run this domain before.
5. Wait for the loading line to clear.
6. Read the KPI tiles first, then the growth chart, then the risk sections.
7. Export or press Get recommendations to turn the findings into a plan.

Reading the Results#

The header names the domain and carries a verdict chip built from Domain Authority: 70 and above reads Industry leader, 50 and above Strong, 30 and above Moderate, below that Emerging. It also shows Live · DataForSEO, so you know these are measured figures.

What This Means for <domain> is the plain-language read, followed by Recommended Action Plan when one was produced. Start here.

The first KPI row is the size and quality of the profile.

• Total Backlinks — every inbound link found. On its own it means little; a single site can send thousands.
• Referring Domains — distinct sites linking in. This is the number that matters. A ratio of hundreds of backlinks per referring domain usually means sitewide footer or template links, which carry little weight.
• Domain Authority (out of 100) — the provider's strength score. Compare it only with domains in the same industry.
• Trust Score (out of 100) — the quality signal behind the authority. Trust far below authority means the links are numerous but low-grade.

The second KPI row is momentum, over the last 30 days.

• New (30d) and Lost (30d) — links gained and links gone.
• Net Gain — the difference, marked net positive or net negative. A negative month is normal once; three in a row is a problem worth chasing in Lost-Link Recovery Opportunities.
• Follow Ratio — the share of links that pass authority, drawn as a meter. Anything above roughly 60% is healthy. A very low ratio means most links are nofollow or sponsored and carry no ranking value.

Backlinks Growth plots twelve months of history. Read the shape, not the last point: steady growth is what a healthy profile looks like, a vertical spike usually means a single viral page or a bought batch, and a cliff means a large referrer removed its links.

Anchor Distribution and Anchor Text Health Warnings are the risk pair. A natural profile is mostly branded and URL anchors, with exact-match commercial anchors as a minority. When exact-match anchors dominate, the warnings section says so — that pattern is what manual link penalties are built to catch. Recent Anchor Activity shows how the mix is changing.

Link Types, Link Placement Breakdown and Referring Page Types describe where the links sit. In-content links from article pages are worth far more than footer, sidebar or profile links, so a profile weighted toward placements outside the main content is weaker than its totals suggest.

Top Backlinks lists the ten strongest individual links, and Backlinks by DA Band shows how the whole set distributes across authority tiers. A profile concentrated in the lowest band is volume without weight. Top Referring TLDs and Referring Networks (subnet diversity) test independence: many links from one network or one subnet often means one owner, not many endorsements.

Link Acquisition Velocity is the new-versus-lost view over time and is the best early warning in the report.

Spam Score, Suspicious / Toxic Links and Disavow Candidates are the clean-up sections. Disavow Candidates is labelled review before submitting to Google for good reason: disavowing healthy links costs you rankings. Review each one. When there is nothing to flag you get No toxic links detected. For the guided version of this workflow, including a ready-made disavow file, use Backlink Hygiene Toolkit.

Link-Building Opportunities, Top Backlink Competitors and Competitor Backlinks Comparison are the outward-facing half. Competitors here are domains competing for the same links, and their referring domains are your prospect list. Link Prospector takes that further.

Recommendations closes the report.

If a section has nothing to show it says so — for example No anchor distribution data. — rather than showing an empty frame. See Reading a result.

Examples#

Screenshots#

Tips#

• Judge a profile on referring domains, not total backlinks.
• Compare Trust Score against Domain Authority. A wide gap is a quality problem.
• Run a competitor before you run an outreach campaign; their referring domains are the cheapest prospect list you will find.
• If Net Gain is negative, work the recovery section before chasing new links. Reclaiming a lost link is far easier than earning a new one.

Best Practices#

• Re-run monthly. Link data moves slowly and the shared cache holds it 10 days.
• Track referring domains as your headline metric over time, not total links.
• Read Anchor Distribution every time. It is the first place manipulation shows.
• Never submit a disavow file straight from the candidate list without reviewing each domain.
• Pair this with Domain Overview so you see links in the context of traffic and rankings.

Common Mistakes#

• Celebrating total backlinks. Ten thousand links from twelve sites is twelve endorsements.
• Treating Domain Authority as a Google score. It is a provider metric derived from the link graph.
• Disavowing on volume. The disavow tool is a blunt instrument; over-use of it has cost sites more traffic than the bad links ever did.
• Reading one month of Net Gain as a trend. Look at the twelve-month chart.
• Running the profile and the hygiene toolkit separately, expecting different data. They run the same analysis and both cost 5 credits.

Limitations#

• Coverage is the provider's link index. No index sees every link on the web, so treat counts as a large, consistent sample rather than a census.
• Top Backlinks is the strongest ten, not a full export. Individual backlinks and referring domains are capped samples.
• Link history is monthly, not daily, so a link gained and lost inside a month may not appear.
• Toxicity is a scored judgement from the provider's signals, not a statement from Google.
• The report covers a domain, not one page.

Troubleshooting#

FAQs#

Can I analyze a competitor's backlinks? Yes, and it is the most common use. Any public domain works, with no verification needed.

Why does it cost 5 credits? One run queries six separate backlink endpoints — summary, individual links, anchors, history, networks and competitors. The price reflects that.

Is this the same as the Backlink Hygiene Toolkit? They run the same underlying analysis and cost the same 5 credits. Backlink Profile is the full report; the hygiene toolkit is a focused view on spam, toxic domains and a downloadable disavow file. See Backlink Hygiene Toolkit.

Should I disavow everything in Disavow Candidates? No. Review every entry first. The section is labelled review before submitting to Google because disavowing a healthy link removes value you have earned.

How often will the numbers change? Link indexes update over days and weeks, and Metric Vault caches this data for 10 days. Monthly is the right cadence.