/seo-backlinks

name: seo-backlinks
description: "Analyze a site's backlink profile, anchors, toxic signals, competitors, gaps, and disavow candidates. Use only when links or referring domains are the requested focus."
user-invocable: true
argument-hint: "<url>"
license: MIT
compatibility: "Free: Common Crawl + verify always available. Optional: Moz API, Bing Webmaster, Keywords Everywhere (free signup). Premium: DataForSEO extension."
metadata:
  author: AgriciDaniel
  version: "2.6.0"
  category: seo

Backlink Profile Analysis

Source Detection

Before analysis, detect available data sources:

1. **DataForSEO MCP** (premium): Check if `backlinks_summary` tool is available 2. **Moz API** (free signup): `"${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/claude-seo" run backlinks_auth.py --check moz --json` 3. **Bing Webmaster** (free signup): `"${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/claude-seo" run backlinks_auth.py --check bing --json` 4. **Keywords Everywhere** (free signup; domain rank plus referring-domain count): `"${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/claude-seo" run backlinks_auth.py --check keywordseverywhere --json` 5. **Common Crawl** (always available): Domain-level graph with PageRank 6. **Verification Crawler** (always available): Checks if known backlinks still exist

Run `"${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/claude-seo" run backlinks_auth.py --check --json` to detect all sources at once.

If no sources are configured beyond the always-available tier:

• Still produce a report using Common Crawl domain metrics
• Suggest: "Run `/seo backlinks setup` to add free Moz and Bing API keys for richer data"

Quick Reference

| Command | Purpose | |---------|---------| | `/seo backlinks <url>` | Full backlink profile analysis (uses all available sources) | | `/seo backlinks gap <url1> <url2>` | Competitor backlink gap analysis | | `/seo backlinks toxic <url>` | Toxic link detection and disavow recommendations | | `/seo backlinks new <url>` | New and lost backlinks (DataForSEO only) | | `/seo backlinks verify <url> --links <file>` | Verify known backlinks still exist | | `/seo backlinks setup` | Show setup instructions for free backlink APIs |

Analysis Framework

Produce all 7 sections below. Each section lists data sources in preference order.

1. Profile Overview

**DataForSEO:** `backlinks_summary` → total backlinks, referring domains, domain rank, follow ratio, trend.

**Moz API:** `"${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/claude-seo" run moz_api.py metrics <url> --json` → Domain Authority, Page Authority, Spam Score, linking root domains, external links.

**Keywords Everywhere:** `"${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/claude-seo" run keywordseverywhere_api.py rank <domain> --json` → 0-10 Open PageRank (`open_page_rank`), a global `rank`, and a referring-domain count (`referring_domains`), per the current API; no anchors or individual links. Use as a fallback when Moz isn't configured; do not use in place of Moz when both are available.

**Common Crawl:** `"${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/claude-seo" run commoncrawl_graph.py <domain> --json` → PageRank, harmonic centrality, and low-confidence rank/presence data.

**Scoring:**

| Metric | Good | Warning | Critical | |--------|------|---------|----------| | Referring domains | >100 | 20-100 | <20 | | Follow ratio | >60% | 40-60% | <40% | | Domain diversity | No single domain >5% | 1 domain >10% | 1 domain >25% | | Trend | Growing or stable | Slow decline | Rapid decline (>20%/quarter) |

2. Anchor Text Distribution

**DataForSEO:** `backlinks_anchors`

**Moz API:** `"${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/claude-seo" run moz_api.py anchors <url> --json`

**Bing Webmaster:** `"${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/claude-seo" run bing_webmaster.py links <url> --json` (extract anchor text from link details)

**Healthy distribution benchmarks:**

| Anchor Type | Target Range | Over-Optimization Signal | |-------------|-------------|-------------------------| | Branded (company/domain name) | 30-50% | <15% | | URL/naked link | 15-25% | N/A | | Generic ("click here", "learn more") | 10-20% | N/A | | Exact match keyword | 3-10% | >15% | | Partial match keyword | 5-15% | >25% | | Long-tail / natural | 5-15% | N/A |

Flag if exact-match anchors exceed 15% as a review heuristic; it may indicate unnatural or link-spam patterns.

3. Referring Domain Quality

**DataForSEO:** `backlinks_referring_domains`

**Moz API:** `"${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/claude-seo" run moz_api.py domains <url> --json` → domains with DA scores

**Common Crawl:** `"${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/claude-seo" run commoncrawl_graph.py <domain> --json` → domain-level rank/presence data, no verified referring-domain counts

Analyze:

• **TLD distribution**: .edu, .gov, .org = high authority. Excessive .xyz, .info = low quality
• **Country distribution**: Match target market. 80%+ from irrelevant countries = PBN signal
• **Domain rank distribution**: Healthy profiles have links from all authority tiers
• **Follow/nofollow per domain**: Sites that only nofollow = limited SEO value

4. Toxic Link Detection

**DataForSEO:** `backlinks_bulk_spam_score` + toxic patterns from reference

**Moz API:** Raw vendor spam_score from `"${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/claude-seo" run moz_api.py metrics <url> --json` (source-label the value; apply thresholds only if verified against current Moz docs)

**Verification Crawler:** `"${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/claude-seo" run verify_backlinks.py --target <url> --links <file> --json` (verify suspicious links still exist)

**High-risk indicators (flag immediately):**

• Links from known PBN (Private Blog Network) domains
• Unnatural anchor text patterns (100% exact match from a domain)
• Links from penalized or deindexed domains
• Mass directory submissions (50+ directory links)
• Link farms (sites with 10K+ outbound links per page)
• Paid link patterns (footer/sidebar links across all pages of a domain)

**Medium-risk indicators (review manually):**

• Links from unrelated niches
• Reciprocal link pattern