Decide what you need to learn
An audit might investigate lost referrals, broken destination pages, inaccurate coverage, or the history of a link campaign. Write the question first so you do not spend the whole exercise cleaning up an export.
We would start with a small sample of important referring pages and the pages they link to. Search Console's links report can provide a starting point for a property you can access.
Build a usable record
Save the referring URL, target URL, context, anchor text, source of the data, and check date. If you use several providers, keep their data sources separate. Different indexes may discover different links at different times.
Read a representative selection of pages. Check whether the link still exists and whether it leads to the information the writer meant to reference.
Prioritize concrete issues
A broken destination or an inaccurate product description is actionable. So is a link campaign you commissioned that does not match the agreed editorial standards.
Use the Broken Link Checker for a bounded inspection of links on a supplied page. It does not replace a backlink index or a complete site crawl.
Be careful with cleanup
Review Search Console messages and Google's disavow guidance before making a disavow decision. Most sites do not need that tool. Do not upload an entire export simply because a score looks concerning.
End with a short list of evidence-based actions: repair the destination, request a factual correction, investigate an arrangement, or keep monitoring. A longer list of alarming-looking domains is not a better audit.