seo-link-audit — independently scanned and version-tracked by SaferSkills.
SaferSkills independently audited seo-link-audit (Agent Skill) and scored it 100/100 (green). The audit ran 55 deterministic rules across Security, Supply Chain, Maintenance, Transparency, and Community; it found 0 high-severity and 0 lower-severity findings. The full rule-by-rule trace and per-finding evidence are below. Free, methodology-open.
Findings & checks · 0 flagged
Every scanned point with the score it earned and what moved between them.
First recorded scan — no prior version to compare against.
The primary manifest — the file an agent reads to learn what this artifact does.
A link profile is a portfolio. The audit asks four questions: how many distinct authoritative voices vouch for the site, how natural does the anchor distribution look to an algorithm, how much penalty exposure is hiding in the long tail, and where do credible competitors get links that this site doesn't. The answer is a prioritized finding list — not a vanity count of "total backlinks." Raw inbound count has been an inferior signal since 2019; unique referring root domains, topical fit, and authentic-mention sources are what compound in 2026.
Google's link spam policy (updated through 2026) still names paid links, link exchanges, automated links, and optimized-anchor links in guest posts and press releases. Google gave no specifics for the March 2026 (Mar 27–Apr 8) or May 2026 (May 21–Jun 2) core updates; third-party analyses saw aggregation-model sites lose. Spam updates in 2026 rolled out in days (March's in under 24 hours). The audit identifies risk patterns before they become algorithmic suppression or a manual action.
Three lenses, applied in order:
Audit walks the lenses in order. Authority surface tells you what's working; risk surface tells you what could collapse; gap surface tells you what to chase next.
site:<domain> — rough check of indexed pages and off-domain mentions (the search tool isn't Google)."<brand>" -site:<domain> — capture brand mentions (linked + unlinked)."<brand>" site:reddit.com — capture community presence; Reddit isn't a ranking signal, but forum threads hold many SERP slots and AI-answer citations.link: operator in 2017, so search can't produce them.knowledge(command="read", source="<url>"), or shell curl the raw HTML, to verify the link exists and its rel.Run in one block. Free-path covers the 80% case; paid-tool data adds census-level accuracy.
| # | Check | How to verify | Severity if failed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Unique referring root domains | Count distinct root domains linking to the site (not URLs, not subdomains) | Note as baseline; flag if <30 for sites older than 12 months in a competitive niche |
| 2 | Topical fit distribution | Sample 20 referring domains; categorize as in-niche / adjacent / off-topic | Critical if >50% off-topic (reasonable-surfer discount); Moderate if >70% adjacent |
| 3 | DR/DA distribution | Sample distribution across DR bands; no single source contributing >30% of total link equity | Moderate if concentration risk (one DR-80 + a long tail of DR-10) |
| 4 | Anchor-text distribution | Practitioner heuristic, not a Google threshold: branded/URL majority, partial-match and natural phrases next, exact-match a small minority | Critical if exact-match dominates commercial anchors; Moderate if branded is a minority |
| 5 | Toxic-neighborhood exposure | Sample referring domains; check for casino/pharma/adult/foreign-language farms or sites that link to those | Critical per identified toxic referrer; recommend disavow only after exhaustion of removal-request path |
| 6 | Paid-link risk patterns | Look for: dofollow links from sites with "sponsored" / "advertorial" navigation, sites in known paid-link networks, niche-edit/link-insertion services | Critical per pattern detected — paid links without rel="sponsored" violate Google's link spam policy |
| 7 | Velocity profile | Look for unnatural spikes — 50+ links in a week from disparate sources is fine ONCE on a newsworthy basis; sustained spikes trigger SpamBrain | Moderate if recent spike unexplained; Critical if pattern is ongoing |
| 8 | Manufactured-mention signals | Look for bulk-purchased "brand mention" patterns — same wording across many sites, low-quality directories, AI-generated guest-post farm placements | Critical per pattern — Google's May 2026 AI optimization guide says seeking inauthentic mentions isn't helpful and its AI features depend on its spam systems |
| 9 | Link gap vs niche competitors | Identify 3 same-niche same-DR-tier competitors; list referring domains they have and this site doesn't | Document as opportunity, not deficit; rank by topical fit × authority |
| 10 | Community / forum presence | Reddit (relevant subreddits), Stack Exchange, niche forums — is the brand mentioned naturally and recently? | Moderate if absent in niches with active communities (forums take many SERP slots and AI-answer citations) |
| 11 | Brand-mention trend | Brand search interest and web mentions — growing? Ahrefs (2025) found branded web mentions correlate more with AI Overview visibility than backlinks do (correlation, not cause) | Moderate if brand interest is flat/down while backlink count grows fast (suggests inorganic link-building) |
| 12 | Unlinked-mention surface | Sites that mention the brand without linking — reclamation opportunity | Document as opportunity |
| 13 | Site reputation policy exposure | Are inbound links from third-party sections of big publishers ("best [X] [year]" coupon/review folders)? Google may treat those sections separately and issue manual actions — except for EEA searchers since Aug 30, 2026 | Note as fragile, not durable authority |
| 14 | Primary-source pass-through | Links from intermediary aggregator pages vs primary-source publications | Moderate if portfolio skews to aggregators |
Google publishes no anchor ratios; its policy targets optimized anchors in paid, exchanged, or distributed content. Use this mix as a smell test, not a target to engineer:
Exact-match concentration on links the site controlled (guest posts, partner pages, releases) is the most common over-optimization pattern.
Any of these without rel="sponsored" is a Critical finding. Google's policy text covers "links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites" and "sending someone a product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link"; mass AI-written placements also fall under scaled content abuse.
[needs confirmation]."Never claim "no toxic links found" — claim "no toxic links found in sample of N."
Use the canonical output structure from the agent that runs this skill. Every finding includes: severity, evidence (referring domain, anchor text, page context, capture date), why it matters, fix direction. Save as seo-audit-[slug]-[YYYY-MM-DD].md in working directory.
Within-domain pairings:
External authoritative sources:
~30 seconds. Free. No account. Every finding cites a rule and a line of evidence.