Backlink Monitoring Automation with Google Sheets + DataForSEO

What This Workflow Does

This n8n workflow reads backlinks from a Google Sheet, sends each one to the DataForSEO On-Page API, and checks:

Whether the backlink is still live on the target page Whether it's dofollow or nofollow Whether it's missing (i.e., lost)

The result is then written back to the same Google Sheet under a Status column.

Your result will look like this:

Step-by-Step Setup Instructions

Add your DataForSEO and Google Sheets credentials in n8n Make sure your Google Sheet has these columns: Backlink URL, Landing page, and Status Click the Test Workflow button to check a batch of backlinks

Workflow Breakdown Trigger: Manual test start Read Data: Pulls backlink URLs and target pages from Google Sheets Format URLs: Extracts domain from URL Send POST Request to DataForSEO: Triggers a crawl on the backlink URL Wait 20 seconds: Allows crawl to finish Fetch Link Results: Retrieves backlink data from DataForSEO Validate Backlink: Checks if the backlink is live, and whether it’s dofollow Update Google Sheets: Logs the status as Live, Lost, or Lost (Nofollow)