Agent skill

SEO Backlink Audit

by rampstackco in rampstackco/claude-skills

Audit a backlink profile using Ahrefs MCP data: profile health, anchor text distribution, toxic link identification, lost link reclamation, and gap analysis against competitors.

MITAuto-check passedMarketing & SEO

Install SEO Backlink Audit

skills CLI
$ npx skills add rampstackco/claude-skills --skill seo-backlink-audit -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install rampstackco/claude-skills seo-backlink-audit --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/rampstackco/claude-skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/seo-backlink-audit .claude/skills/seo-backlink-audit && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
seo-backlink-audit
GitHub stars
935
Token cost
~2k tokens
SKILL.md length
969 words
Files
3 (incl. references)
Skills in repo
103
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Audit a backlink profile using Ahrefs MCP data: profile health, anchor text distribution, toxic link identification, lost link reclamation, and gap analysis against competitors.

  • Works in 10 steps: Charter the audit. Goal, scope, time… → Pull baseline data. Referring domains,… → Map the profile across 5 dimensions. One… → …
  • Reviewing backlink health
  • SKILL.md covers When to use, When NOT to use, Required inputs and The framework: 5 dimensions of…, plus 5 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

SEO Backlink Audit is an agent skill from rampstackco/claude-skills. Audit a backlink profile using Ahrefs MCP data: profile health, anchor text distribution, toxic link identification, lost link reclamation, and gap analysis against competitors. Use this skill when reviewing backlink health, scoping a disavow project, recovering from a manual action, planning link building, or doing M&A due diligence on a property's link equity. Triggers on backlink audit, link profile, toxic links, disavow, anchor text analysis, lost links, link reclamation, referring domains, link gap. Also…

Its SKILL.md is about 2k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 3 other files, including reference files (for example `README.md` and `references/toxic-link-criteria.md`).

It sits in Marketing & SEO, covering Link building. It works with Ahrefs, Model Context Protocol and Google Search Console. The repository describes itself as: Stack-agnostic Claude Skills covering the full website lifecycle: brand, design, content, SEO, dev, ops, growth, and research. Build, ship, audit, optimize. The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Reviewing backlink health
  • Scoping a disavow project
  • Recovering from a manual action
  • Planning link building

Example prompts

  • “/seo-backlink-audit”

Workflow steps

10 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

  1. Charter the audit. Goal, scope, time window, competitor set.
  2. Pull baseline data. Referring domains, anchor text, link types, lost links, competitor overlap.
  3. Map the profile across 5 dimensions. One section per dimension.
  4. Identify red flags. Velocity spikes, anchor concentration, low-DR concentration, suspect TLDs, repeated footprints.
  5. Build the toxic list (if needed). Use the criteria in references/toxic-link-criteria.md.
  6. Build the reclamation list. Lost links worth recovering via outreach.
  7. Build the gap list. Domains linking to peers, prioritized by relevance.
  8. Synthesize. Profile health verdict, top 3 risks, top 3 opportunities.
  9. Recommend. Disavow (rare), reclamation outreach, link building targets, monitoring cadence.
  10. Document and hand off. Outputs feed seo-offpage and seo-audit-orchestration.

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 482c9bf. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md.

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

SEO Backlink Audit loads about 2k tokens when it runs, and up to ~3.4k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 163 tokens; SKILL.md has 969 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~163
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~2k
With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them
~3.4k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from rampstackco/claude-skills at commit 482c9bf, republished under its MIT licence (© rampstackco). 969 words, ~1,951 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/seo-backlink-audit/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 2 other files; get the full folder from GitHub.
name
seo-backlink-audit
description
Audit a backlink profile using Ahrefs MCP data: profile health, anchor text distribution, toxic link identification, lost link reclamation, and gap analysis against competitors. Use this skill when reviewing backlink health, scoping a disavow project, recovering from a manual action, planning link building, or doing M&A due diligence on a property's link equity. Triggers on backlink audit, link profile, toxic links, disavow, anchor text analysis, lost links, link reclamation, referring domains, link gap. Also triggers when traffic decline correlates with link loss or when an unnatural link warning appears in Search Console.
category
seo-audit-suite
catalog_summary
Profile health, anchor mix, toxic links, reclamation, gap analysis
display_order
2

Audit a backlink profile using data pulled from the Ahrefs MCP. Stack-agnostic. Produces a profile health assessment, a toxic link list (if needed), a reclamation list, and a gap analysis against competitors.


When to use

  • Periodic backlink health check (quarterly or biannual)
  • Recovering from a Google manual action or unnatural link warning
  • Scoping a disavow file
  • Pre-acquisition due diligence on link equity
  • Planning a link building campaign (need a baseline)
  • Investigating ranking drops correlated with link loss
  • Recovering lost links after a migration or replatform

When NOT to use

  • Building new links (use seo-offpage)
  • General SEO audits (use seo-audit-orchestration)
  • Keyword opportunity analysis (use seo-keyword-gap-audit)
  • Technical issues unrelated to links (use seo-site-health-audit)

Required inputs

  • Target property (root domain, subdomain, or URL prefix)
  • Competitor set (3-5 properties with comparable strategies)
  • Time window (typically last 12-24 months)
  • Confirmation Ahrefs MCP is connected and has access to the property
  • Search Console manual action status (if any)
  • Recent SEO history (migrations, link campaigns, penalties)

A profile is healthy when all five dimensions are healthy. Issues in any one can cap rankings or invite penalties.

Dimension 1: Referring domain quality

Volume of links matters less than the quality and relevance of the linking domains.

Pull from Ahrefs:

  • Total referring domains (current and trended)
  • Domain Rating distribution (DR bands)
  • Topical relevance of linking domains
  • Geographic distribution (where appropriate)
  • Domain age and trust signals

Healthy signal: a long tail of relevant, established domains. Concentration in any single source is a risk.

How fast links are gained or lost.

Pull from Ahrefs:

  • New referring domains per month (trended 12-24 months)
  • Lost referring domains per month
  • Net change

Healthy signal: steady positive growth. Sudden spikes suggest paid campaigns or negative SEO. Sudden drops correlate with redirect mistakes, content removal, or the linking sites going down.

Dimension 3: Anchor text distribution

The mix of anchor types tells search engines what the property is about and whether the profile looks natural.

Categories to map:

  • Branded (the brand name)
  • Naked URL
  • Generic ("click here", "this page")
  • Exact-match keyword
  • Partial-match keyword
  • Image (alt text or none)

Healthy signal: branded and naked URL anchors dominate. Exact-match keyword anchors are a small minority. Heavy exact-match concentration triggers spam filters.

Not all links are equal.

Categories:

  • Dofollow versus nofollow
  • Editorial versus directory or comment
  • In-content versus footer or sidebar
  • Sponsored or UGC tagged
  • Redirect chains
  • Lost links recoverable via outreach

Healthy signal: editorial in-content dofollow links from relevant sites dominate.

Dimension 5: Competitive gap

What links do peers have that you do not?

Pull from Ahrefs:

  • Domains linking to 2+ competitors but not the target
  • Domains linking to 1 competitor with high relevance to the target
  • Top performing competitor pages by referring domain count

Healthy signal: the gap is shrinking over time. A widening gap is a strategic risk.


Workflow

  1. Charter the audit. Goal, scope, time window, competitor set.
  2. Pull baseline data. Referring domains, anchor text, link types, lost links, competitor overlap.
  3. Map the profile across 5 dimensions. One section per dimension.
  4. Identify red flags. Velocity spikes, anchor concentration, low-DR concentration, suspect TLDs, repeated footprints.
  5. Build the toxic list (if needed). Use the criteria in references/toxic-link-criteria.md.
  6. Build the reclamation list. Lost links worth recovering via outreach.
  7. Build the gap list. Domains linking to peers, prioritized by relevance.
  8. Synthesize. Profile health verdict, top 3 risks, top 3 opportunities.
  9. Recommend. Disavow (rare), reclamation outreach, link building targets, monitoring cadence.
  10. Document and hand off. Outputs feed seo-offpage and seo-audit-orchestration.

Show full SKILL.md (371 more words)Show less

Failure patterns

  • Disavow happy. Most profiles do not need a disavow. Disavowing legitimate links damages rankings. Use it only after a manual action or clear algorithmic signals.
  • Counting links instead of evaluating them. A profile with 10,000 referring domains can be weaker than one with 200 high-quality editorial links.
  • Ignoring lost links. Recovering a lost link is faster and cheaper than building a new one.
  • No competitor benchmark. Profile health is relative. A "low" backlink count for a tier-1 competitor is a "great" count for a niche site.
  • Anchor text panic. A high exact-match percentage in absolute terms is fine for niche sites where the brand and keyword overlap. Investigate before disavowing.
  • One-time audit. Profile health drifts. Audit on a cadence (quarterly minimum for active properties).
  • Treating Ahrefs as ground truth. Ahrefs sees most links but not all. Triangulate with Search Console for completeness.
  • Over-indexing on Domain Rating. DR is a relative metric, not a quality signal. A DR-30 niche site can be more valuable than a DR-80 generalist.

Output format

A backlink audit document with:

  1. Executive summary. Profile health verdict and top risks.
  2. Profile snapshot. Key metrics: referring domains, DR distribution, anchor mix, velocity, or state the gap per the data-availability rule.
  3. 5-dimension analysis. One section per dimension with findings.
  4. Toxic link list. If needed. Disavow file ready format.
  5. Reclamation list. Lost links worth recovering, with contact paths.
  6. Gap list. Top 50 domains linking to competitors but not target.
  7. Recommendations. Disavow (Y/N), reclamation outreach plan, link building targets.
  8. Methodology. Data sources, pull dates, criteria used.

Length: 8-15 pages depending on profile complexity.


If required data is unavailable

This skill's output depends on data, measurements, or tool results it cannot generate on its own. When a required input, tool, or data source is unavailable or unverifiable, the sanctioned output is the deliverable with the gap stated: what was needed, what was actually obtained or verified, and which parts of the output are affected. Fabricating, estimating, or interpolating a required number to complete the deliverable is never sanctioned. A stated gap is a complete answer.


Reference files

© rampstackco, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 2 other files (references) in skills/seo-backlink-audit of rampstackco/claude-skills.

  • SKILL.md
  • README.md
  • references/toxic-link-criteria.md

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 482c9bf

Compare with similar skills

SEO Backlink Audit next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

SEO Backlink Audit compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
SEO Backlink Audit this skillrampstackco/claude-skills935—~2kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Global SEO Growthminhnv0807/ai-business-skills608—~5kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Backlinkyan-labs/yan-skills208—~8.9kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
SEO AhrefsAgriciDaniel/claude-seo18k1 repos~611Automated safety check: PassMIT
Backlink Auditnowork-studio/notfair-plugin3.9k—~979Automated safety check: PassMIT
SEO DataforseoAgriciDaniel/codex-seo7872 repos~4.6kAutomated safety check: PassMIT

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Categories

Questions about SEO Backlink Audit

What does SEO Backlink Audit do?

Audit a backlink profile using Ahrefs MCP data: profile health, anchor text distribution, toxic link identification, lost link reclamation, and gap analysis against competitors. SEO Backlink Audit is an agent skill from rampstackco/claude-skills. Audit a backlink profile using Ahrefs MCP data: profile health, anchor text distribution, toxic link identification, lost link reclamation, and gap analysis against competitors.

When should I use SEO Backlink Audit?

SEO Backlink Audit fits situations like: reviewing backlink health; scoping a disavow project; recovering from a manual action; planning link building.

How do I install SEO Backlink Audit in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add rampstackco/claude-skills --skill seo-backlink-audit -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/seo-backlink-audit in rampstackco/claude-skills) into .claude/skills/seo-backlink-audit in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install SEO Backlink Audit in Codex?

Run `npx skills add rampstackco/claude-skills --skill seo-backlink-audit -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/seo-backlink-audit in rampstackco/claude-skills) into .agents/skills/seo-backlink-audit in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use SEO Backlink Audit in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add rampstackco/claude-skills --skill seo-backlink-audit -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/seo-backlink-audit, .gemini/skills/seo-backlink-audit, .github/skills/seo-backlink-audit and .opencode/skills/seo-backlink-audit in your project.

What does SEO Backlink Audit need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: SEO Backlink Audit is instructions for the agent only.

Does SEO Backlink Audit access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is SEO Backlink Audit safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does SEO Backlink Audit use?

SEO Backlink Audit is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does SEO Backlink Audit use?

About 2k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 7.8k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full. Its references folder adds about 1.5k tokens, read only when the agent opens those files.

What are the alternatives to SEO Backlink Audit?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with SEO Backlink Audit: Global SEO Growth (minhnv0807/ai-business-skills, 608 stars), Backlink (yan-labs/yan-skills, 208 stars), SEO Ahrefs (AgriciDaniel/claude-seo, 18k stars) and Backlink Audit (nowork-studio/notfair-plugin, 3.9k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains SEO Backlink Audit?

rampstackco (a GitHub organization) maintains it in rampstackco/claude-skills, which has 935 GitHub stars. The repository holds 103 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on October 7, 2026.

Source: rampstackco/claude-skills on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.