Start with source quality

Inspect a sample of referring domains. Are they real publications, communities, companies and resources, or mostly low-quality directories and unrelated sites?

Look at relevance distribution

A healthy profile can be diverse, but the strongest links usually have a plausible relationship to the site's industry, content or audience.

Check anchors in aggregate

A profile dominated by repeated commercial keyword anchors can look different from one that naturally includes brand names, URLs, descriptive phrases and varied editorial wording.

Look for sudden changes

Large spikes or drops can be worth investigating. They may reflect campaigns, migrations, spam, data changes or legitimate publicity.

Use multiple signals

Authority metrics summarize complex data. Use them to orient your review, then inspect the actual referring domains and pages.