A 25-Point Domain Analysis Workflow You Can Run This Week

This checklist is designed to be run in order. Each phase builds on the previous one, so skipping ahead — for example, jumping straight to competitive analysis before auditing your own backlink profile — produces incomplete conclusions.

The 25 points are grouped into five phases:

1. Domain Authority Signals — baseline scores and historical trajectory
2. Backlink Profile Quality — link sources, anchor distribution, and toxic link identification
3. Technical Health — crawl, index, and site architecture factors
4. Content and Topical Authority — coverage depth, keyword ownership, and internal linking
5. Competitive Gap Analysis — where rivals rank that you don't, and why

For each checkpoint, the expected output is a simple status — Pass / Flag / Action Required — plus a brief note on what you observed. Avoid writing lengthy commentary during the audit itself; that slows execution. Capture observations quickly, then synthesize findings after all 25 points are complete.

Depending on domain size and the tools you're using, a thorough run-through takes between two and four hours for a domain with several years of history. Newer domains with thin link profiles move faster.

If you're auditing a domain before acquisition — for example, evaluating an expired domain or a competitor's asset — weight Phases 1 and 2 heavily. If you're auditing your own site ahead of a content investment, Phase 4 deserves the most time.

Authority signals give you a starting benchmark. No single score tells the full story, but together they establish whether a domain has accumulated meaningful trust with search engines over time.

• Checkpoint 1 — Domain Rating / Domain Authority score: Record the current score from your primary tool (Ahrefs DR, Moz DA, or Semrush Authority Score). Note the date so you can track trajectory over time.
• Checkpoint 2 — Score trajectory (12-month trend): A score that has declined over the past 12 months despite consistent publishing is a signal worth investigating before drawing conclusions from the current number alone.
• Checkpoint 3 — Referring domain count vs. linking page count: A healthy profile has referring domains growing alongside referring pages. A site with 50,000 backlinks from 12 domains has a concentrated, fragile profile.
• Checkpoint 4 — Age and registration history: Check WHOIS history and archived registration data. Domains with gaps in registration history or previous ownership changes may carry penalties or low trust that isn't visible in a current authority score.
• Checkpoint 5 — Google Search Console index coverage: Authority tools score what they can crawl. GSC shows what Google actually indexes. Significant gaps between the two indicate technical issues or quality problems that suppress real authority expression.

After completing Phase 1, you should have a clear picture of where the domain stands and whether its score reflects genuine accumulated trust or inflated metrics from a limited source pool.

Raw link counts are meaningless without understanding what's behind them. Phase 2 is where most domain audits either go deep enough to be useful or stay shallow enough to miss the problems that actually matter.

• Checkpoint 6 — Referring domain topical relevance: Pull your top 50 referring domains by DR or DA. What percentage are topically relevant to your site's subject matter? Industry benchmarks suggest relevance matters more than raw score for ranking in competitive niches.
• Checkpoint 7 — Anchor text distribution: Flag over-optimized exact-match anchor patterns. A natural profile has a mix of branded, naked URL, partial-match, and generic anchors. Exact-match concentration above roughly 20% warrants closer review.
• Checkpoint 8 — Link velocity trend: Sudden spikes in link acquisition — especially if not correlated with known content campaigns or PR activity — are worth investigating. Flat or gradual growth is generally healthy.
• Checkpoint 9 — Lost links in the past 90 days: Links that disappear are often overlooked. Lost links from high-authority referring domains can explain ranking drops more clearly than algorithm updates in many cases.
• Checkpoint 10 — Toxic or manipulative link patterns: Review flagged links from your tool's toxicity or spam score filter. Do not disavow based on a tool flag alone. Manually review flagged domains before adding anything to a disavowal file.
• Checkpoint 11 — Link placement (editorial vs. footer/sidebar): Editorially placed links within body content carry more weight than sitewide footer or sidebar links. Assess whether your strongest referring pages are linking editorially.
• Checkpoint 12 — Competitor link gap (top 20 opportunities): Identify referring domains linking to two or more competitors but not to you. These represent the highest-probability link acquisition targets because demonstrated editorial willingness already exists.

Technical issues don't just hurt rankings directly — they prevent your authority signals from being fully expressed. A domain with strong links and solid content can underperform significantly if crawl and index problems exist.

• Checkpoint 13 — Crawl coverage vs. sitemap coverage: Compare the number of URLs your site intends to be crawled (sitemap) against what your crawl tool actually finds and what GSC reports as indexed. Meaningful gaps indicate crawl budget waste or blocking errors.
• Checkpoint 14 — Canonical tag implementation: Incorrect or missing canonicals cause duplicate content dilution. Audit for pages that are self-canonicalized incorrectly and for paginated pages that point to non-preferred versions.
• Checkpoint 15 — Redirect chain depth: Chains longer than two hops bleed PageRank and slow crawl efficiency. Flag and map any redirect chains, particularly for high-value pages that have been moved or restructured.
• Checkpoint 16 — Core Web Vitals status: Pull current LCP, INP, and CLS readings from Google Search Console's Core Web Vitals report. Flag pages failing the Good threshold, prioritizing those targeting competitive head terms.
• Checkpoint 17 — Mobile usability errors: GSC flags specific pages with mobile usability issues. These suppress ranking in mobile search, which in most verticals represents the majority of impressions.
• Checkpoint 18 — Internal link structure to priority pages: Identify your five to ten highest-priority pages. Count internal links pointing to each from within the site. Pages with strategic importance but few internal links are under-supported and will underperform relative to their potential.

Technical findings from Phase 3 often explain anomalies surfaced in Phase 1 and Phase 2. Always revisit your authority signal notes after completing the technical review.

Topical authority — the depth and coherence of your content coverage within a subject area — has become an increasingly important ranking signal. A domain that covers a topic comprehensively and consistently tends to rank for that topic's terms more reliably than one with isolated strong pages.

• Checkpoint 19 — Topic cluster coverage map: List the core topics your domain targets. For each, identify whether you have a primary hub page, supporting subtopic pages, and definition or FAQ-style content that captures long-tail demand. Gaps in coverage represent content investment opportunities with direct ranking upside.
• Checkpoint 20 — Keyword cannibalization check: Search your own site using site: queries or a crawl tool for duplicate intent coverage. Two pages competing for the same query split equity and often prevent either from ranking well. Consolidation or differentiation is the typical fix.
• Checkpoint 21 — Content freshness on high-traffic pages: Pull your top 20 pages by organic traffic. Flag any with a last-modified date more than 18 months ago and no recent content refresh. In experience-sensitive queries, freshness signals influence both rankings and click-through rates.
• Checkpoint 22 — E-E-A-T signals on key pages: Review whether your most commercially important pages include author attribution, publication and update dates, external citations where relevant, and clear expertise signals. These factors are particularly important for pages targeting queries Google evaluates under higher scrutiny.

Phase 4 findings should feed directly into your content roadmap. Prioritize filling gaps in topic clusters where you already have some authority before investing in entirely new subject areas.

Competitive analysis belongs at the end of a domain audit, not the beginning. Running it last means you interpret competitor data against a fully understood picture of your own domain's strengths and weaknesses — which leads to better prioritization.

• Checkpoint 23 — Keyword gap identification: Use a keyword gap tool to find terms where two or more competitors rank in positions 1–20 and your domain does not appear at all. Segment these by search intent — informational gaps and commercial gaps require different responses.
• Checkpoint 24 — Competitor content structure review: For your top five priority keyword gaps, examine how the ranking competitors have structured their content. Look for content depth, internal linking patterns, and page structure signals. You're not copying; you're understanding what the search result ecosystem rewards for that query.
• Checkpoint 25 — Backlink opportunity prioritization matrix: Combine the link gap data from Checkpoint 12 with your keyword gap findings from Checkpoint 23. Links from domains that would help both your authority and your topical relevance for gap keywords are your highest-priority acquisition targets. Map the top 10 and assign outreach owners.

When the competitive analysis is complete, you have all 25 checkpoints producing a structured set of findings. The final step is synthesis: group findings into Quick Wins (fixable within two weeks), Medium-Term Actions (one to three months), and Strategic Investments (ongoing or quarter-length projects). This triage prevents the common outcome where a thorough audit produces an overwhelming list that no one acts on.

If running this workflow manually feels time-intensive, domain intelligence tools to automate this checklist can compress Phase 1 through Phase 3 significantly by pulling authority, backlink, and technical signals into a single dashboard.