Backlink Analysis and the Link Graph

StretchSEM's own backlink engine

Backlinks — links from other sites to yours — are a core ranking signal. StretchSEM analyzes them with its own proprietary link graph, built by crawling pages, extracting their outbound links, and persisting them as edges. A domain's backlinks are simply the edges whose target is that domain. There's no third party involved: the graph is StretchSuite's own and it grows the more it's used. A backlink scan costs 1 credit.

Running a backlink scan

Open the Diagnostics tab and choose Backlinks (or run it from a project).
Enter the domain, for example acme.com.
Run. StretchSEM does three things: harvests the domain's known pages to refresh its outbound edges, expands the graph by crawling a few frontier domains (so coverage compounds), and returns the domain's backlink profile.

Reading the backlink profile

The profile reports:

Backlinks — total inbound links found in the graph.
Referring domains — how many distinct sites link to you (often more meaningful than raw link count).
Dofollow vs nofollow — the split between links that pass ranking signals and those that don't.
Top referrers — the domains sending you the most links.
Top anchors — the most common anchor text pointing at your site (watch for over-optimized or empty anchors).
Referring pages — the actual pages that link to you (Ahrefs-style), one per source page with its strongest anchor and follow status.

Asset, CDN, and tracker domains (fonts, analytics, tag managers, and the like) are excluded because they carry no editorial value.

How coverage grows

StretchSEM's link index starts with what it has crawled and expands outward with use. Every scan crawls a few "frontier" domains — sites the graph links to but hasn't harvested yet — one hop out. Over time, and across all the domains your organization scans, the index gains real external coverage. This is honest by design: the profile reflects what StretchSEM has actually harvested, not an inflated estimate. When DataForSEO is connected, Domain reports can supplement the proprietary profile with web-scale backlink summaries.

A realistic example

A startup scans acme.com. The first scan finds 38 backlinks from 12 referring domains, with top anchors acme, acme software, and (empty). The top referrer is a partner's resource page. They notice several (empty) anchors — image links with no alt/anchor text — and reach out to those referrers to add descriptive anchor text. A month later, after more of the web has been harvested through routine scans, a re-scan shows 61 backlinks from 19 referring domains.

Using backlinks with the rest of StretchSEM

Site audit uses the same link graph to find orphan pages — running a scan first improves orphan detection.
Domain reports include a backlink summary when the graph has data for your domain.
Domain monitor tracks your backlinks and referring domains over time and alerts on gains or losses.

Tips

Focus on referring domains, not raw backlink count — 20 links from 20 sites beats 100 from one.
Review top anchors for over-optimization (too many exact-match keyword anchors) and fix (empty) anchors where you can influence them.
Run a backlink scan before a site audit to give orphan-page detection the freshest link graph.
Re-scan periodically; coverage compounds as the graph expands.

Troubleshooting

My domain shows 0 backlinks. StretchSEM hasn't harvested links pointing to your domain yet. Coverage grows with use; run scans over time. When available, connect DataForSEO for immediate web-scale coverage.

I know I have more backlinks than this. The proprietary profile reflects what's been harvested so far — it's a growing index, not a claim of total web coverage. Use it for the referring domains and anchors it does surface, and supplement with DataForSEO when connected.

Anchors show (empty). Those are links with no anchor text (often image links). They still count as backlinks; add descriptive anchor text where you control the linking page.