Sequel
SEO

Backlink profile health check

See who links to the site and whether the backlink profile is healthy: referring domains, authority distribution, anchor text mix, dofollow share and concentration risk from Ahrefs, optionally compared against a competitor.

Install into your agent
  • Who links to our site?
  • Is our backlink profile healthy?
  • Are we too dependent on one referring domain?

The playbook

Link count is a vanity metric. What matters is how many distinct domains link to you, how authoritative they are, and whether the anchor text looks natural.

Steps

  1. Get the baseline. Call ahrefs.domain_overview for the target to establish domain rating and organic traffic. Everything below is read relative to this.

  2. Pull referring domains. ahrefs.referring_domains with order_by on domain rating descending, limit: 200. Referring domains matter far more than total backlinks: 500 links from 5 sites is a much weaker profile than 100 links from 100 sites.

  3. Pull individual backlinks for anchor analysis. ahrefs.backlinks with limit: 500 ordered by source domain rating. Aggregate anchor text into buckets: branded, exact-match commercial, partial-match, generic ("click here", "read more"), and naked URL.

  4. Look for concentration risk. Compute what share of links come from the single largest referring domain, and from the top 5. A profile where one domain supplies most of the links is fragile: losing it moves rankings.

  5. Compare against a competitor if one is named. Run steps 1–2 for the competitor. Referring-domain count and average domain rating are the two numbers worth comparing directly.

  6. Report. Lead with: total referring domains, median domain rating, share of links from the top domain, and the anchor-text distribution. Then flag anything anomalous.

Gotchas

  • A high exact-match anchor share is a risk signal. Natural profiles are dominated by branded and generic anchors. If exact-match commercial anchors are a large share, say so plainly. It's the classic footprint of paid or manipulated links.
  • Don't recommend disavowing on this data alone. Ahrefs shows links, not penalties. Flag suspicious patterns for human review; disavow files cause real damage when applied carelessly.
  • New links take weeks to appear in any third-party index. Absence of a recent link isn't evidence it doesn't exist.
  • Dofollow vs nofollow matters for authority, but nofollow links from high-traffic sites still drive referral visits. Don't dismiss them outright.
  • To grow the profile rather than audit it, continue with competitor-new-backlinks: the sites linking to competitors right now are the prospect list.

Install

Install Sequel skills into your agent

Pick your app and Sequel installs itself: a one-click link where the client supports it, that client’s own few steps where it doesn’t. The playbooks come with the server: your agent sees that this playbook exists and reads it when a question matches.

Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code, Claude Code, Codex, Grok, Muse, dots and any other MCP app

Already have an MCP client?

https://api.sequel.sh/mcp

Add it as a remote (streamable HTTP) server and sign in when prompted. Skills come with it; nothing else to install. Manual setup per client

Choose your app

  • Claude

    One click, opens in the app

  • Cursor

    One click, opens in the app

  • VS Code

    One click, opens in the app

  • ChatGPT

    Turn on developer mode, then add Sequel. About two minutes.

  • Claude Code

    Run one command, then sign in with /mcp.

  • Codex

    Run one command, then sign in.

  • Gemini CLI

    Run one command, then sign in with /mcp auth.

  • Grok

    Add Sequel as a connector and sign in.

  • Grok Bot

    Paste this to the bot. It registers Sequel and asks you to sign in.

  • Muse

    Muse writes its own connector. One message is the whole setup.

  • dots

    Add Sequel in ChatGPT; your dot picks it up with no extra step.

  • OpenCode

    Add Sequel as a remote server from the OpenCode CLI.

  • Other MCP app

    Any client that speaks remote MCP can connect with this URL.

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Audit internal links to important pages

Audit the site's own internal linking: crawl navigation and body links between the site's pages to find valuable pages with too few inbound internal links, orphan pages, and the handful of cross-links that would lift striking-distance rankings.

Audit or draft an llms.txt

Check whether the site has an llms.txt, whether it follows the spec and points at the pages that matter, and if it is missing draft one from the pages Search Console shows people actually find, so AI assistants get a curated map of the site instead of guessing.

Audit redirect chains and loops

Follow every redirect on the URLs Search Console still sends traffic to, on the sitemap, and on backlinked pages, to find chains, loops, redirects to the homepage, and temporary redirects that should be permanent, so link equity and crawl budget stop leaking.

Audit referring domain quality

Grade the domains linking to a site by authority, traffic and link count, spot concentration risk and link-farm patterns, and separate the referring domains that carry weight from the ones that are noise.

Audit titles and meta descriptions

Compare the title and meta description of each top page against the queries it actually ranks for in Search Console, and find missing, duplicate, truncated or misaligned metadata on the pages where a rewrite would earn the most clicks.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What is a backlink profile health check?
A review of the domains linking to your site to assess their quality, identify toxic or spammy links that may harm rankings, and benchmark your profile against a competitor to spot authority gaps. It tells you whether your link equity is growing, shrinking, or at risk.
How do I identify toxic backlinks?
Look for links from domains with a very low domain rating combined with high spam score, non-topical directories, link farms, or anchor text that is keyword-rich in an unnatural way. Ahrefs flags many of these automatically. The question is whether the pattern is isolated or pervasive.
Should I disavow backlinks?
Only if you have evidence of a manual action or a clear pattern of bought or spammy links that a competitor could have pointed at you. Google's guidance is that most low-quality links are ignored rather than penalised. Disavow recklessly and you may disavow links that were helping.
What makes a backlink profile strong?
A mix of domains across industries, a high proportion of editorial mentions rather than directory or footer links, growth in referring domains over time, and anchor text that is mostly brand or natural rather than exact-match keyword. Concentration risk is the main warning sign.
Can an AI agent audit my backlink profile?
Yes. With Ahrefs connected, the agent pulls referring domains, assesses quality distribution, flags anomalies, and benchmarks against a competitor. Sequel provides the Ahrefs connection over MCP and the backlink-profile-health-check playbook.

Put this playbook to work

Connect a source, ask the question, and the agent follows these steps. Free to start.

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