A backlink audit that finds every bad link and gets it dealt with — this week, not next quarter.

A reading of every site that links to yours — which domains, which pages, what the link says, when it appeared and whether it is followed — to find the links that can be held against the site and to name the ones worth keeping. Ours lists the links to review in tiers with the reason beside each, reports the anchor mix, the links to dead pages and the links you have lost, and ends with a verdict in Google’s own terms that is always a to-do list: what to remove, what to disavow, what to redirect, what to ask back.

They can, and the damage arrives as a manual action for unnatural links, which takes a site out of the running for the terms that pay until the links are removed or disavowed and Google reviews a reconsideration request — weeks to months. The links that earn one are the manufactured kind — a past agency’s package, a link network, sitewide commercial anchors, a burst aimed at you — and they look the same to Google whoever built them. The audit finds them, says why each is on the list, and gets the removal requests and the disavow file moving before the action lands rather than after.

Disavow the manufactured ones — link networks, link-seller pages, bought guest posts, bursts of exact-match anchors — by domain, after asking for removal where a person can act, and with Search Console’s manual actions report open so you know whether you are preventing an action or lifting one. Google’s own rule for the tool is a considerable number of artificial links that have caused or are likely to cause a manual action; its caution that misuse can harm a site is about disavowing real links, which is why every line is read by hand and the local paper never goes on the list.

They can try, and the attempt is cheap: thousands of bought spam links pointed at your site in a week, built to look like a scheme you paid for. The response is the same week, not after a manual action: the burst dated by month from the index, the anchors read for the bought-link shape, the manual actions report checked with you, removal requests where a person can act, and the ones that fail outright disavowed by domain with the dated record kept — so if a reconsideration request is ever needed, the proof that the links were not yours already exists. What a competitor can do beyond links — fake reviews, edits to your profile, copied pages, a hack, drained ad clicks — is in our negative SEO post.

A manual action is a penalty a person at Google applies to a site that violates its spam policies — for links, the notice says “unnatural links to your site.” It is listed under Security and Manual Actions in Google Search Console. An empty report means nothing is being held against you yet, and the time to act on the links is before it fills. Only the site owner can see it, which is why the audit starts with that report open on your side.

The removals and the file take days; Google’s review of a reconsideration request takes as long as Google takes, and the return of rankings after a link penalty is lifted is measured in weeks to months rather than days. We do not put a number on it, because nobody honest can. What we do is get the request filed with the evidence it needs the first time, the week the audit lands, and watch Search Console until it is answered.

A fixed price for the audit and the report, quoted before we start; the cleanup — removal requests, the disavow file, the reconsideration request — is scoped from the audit’s to-do list. For SEO clients the audit is included: on onboarding and every quarter. The link data itself costs very little; what you are paying for is the reading, the judgment and the work that follows.

Not by buying them, which would put you back where you started. The links that move a local business are few and earned once: the local paper that covered your project, a supplier’s installer list, a trade association, the chamber of commerce, a charity you sponsored, a directory that checks licenses. Earning those is part of the SEO layer, and the audit names the ones you already have so they are protected.

A live commercial backlink index, and Google Search Console’s own Links export when you send it. A tool’s toxicity score is one input among the written rules, never the verdict: it is a guess built from patterns — the linking site’s size, its topic, how many other sites it links to — and it colors a list red without saying why or what to do. The report prints the rules, the reason beside every flagged domain and the action that goes with it, so you can check the reasoning yourself.

No. The audit reads the link index and your Search Console, so it is done the same way for a business anywhere in the United States. Most of our clients are in Middle Tennessee, and the cleanup conversations happen over the phone and email wherever you are.