Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is constantly evolving. As Google continues to update its algorithm to enhance the user experience, backlinks remain a significant factor in determining search rankings.
When reputable sites reference your website by including a hyperlink, it indicates that your content is trustworthy and credible. For Google, this counts as a favorable vote. The more votes you receive, the better your chances are of landing on the top of a search page.
Backlink quality will always trump quantity so be careful where you obtain backlinks. Using paid links for SEO or employing black hat link-building tactics clearly violates Google’s guidelines and may result in your site being delisted.
Here are a few backlinks checker tools that can help you audit which sites are linking to your pages–they can also assess your backlink profile:
Google Search Console
The Google Search Console GSC), formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools, lets web admins investigate search traffic, indexing status, website performance, and crawling errors. GSC has a Links Report that shows you all the backlinks driving traffic to your site. This handy tool provides metrics and analytics that allow you to improve your link-building strategy.
Bing Webmaster Tools
Microsoft’s Bing Webmaster Tools shows you which websites link to your web pages along with the anchor text associated with each link. It also offers a relatively new feature called Similar Sites that allows you to assess your competitors’ backlinks. All detailed reports can be downloaded in CSV format for more analysis.
Ahrefs Site Explorer
Ahrefs is one of the most popular sites for checking backlinks. While Ahrefs is a paid service, you can opt for a free account to view which sites link back to yours and start your analysis.
The main benefit of using paid tools, such as Ahrefs, is that you get to see the backlinks for sites you don’t own. Analyzing and trying to emulate your competitor’s links is a crucial part of SEO in competitive niches.
MOZ Backlink Explorer
Moz is a SEO software that provides backlinks data and analysis. It doesn’t have a free version, but you can sign up for a Moz Pro free trial. Moz has a tool called Link Explorer that collects backlink data.
Moz has its own SEO ranking score known as Domain Authority. It measures how a website will fare in search engine result pages using several data points. Domain Authority scores range from one to one hundred.
SEMrush
Like Ahrefs and MOZ, SEMrush is a paid search engine marketing tool that provides a slew of data about websites. The main difference between these tools is their database and when it comes to links, most experts consider SEMrush to have the best and most reliable data.
Also like Ahrefs and MOS, SEMrush assigns an authority score to sites that serves as a useful heuristic to help you decide quickly how valuable a link from a site would be.
Buzzsumo
For analyzing your backlinks and those of your competitors, Buzzsumo is one of the best backlink checkers.
You can use it to search for keywords or domains. When you search by keyword, Buzzsumo will show you the sites that rank highest for that keyword and which domains link to those sites.
Furthermore, Buzzsumo allows you to find out which domains link to other domains. Its dashboard is very user-friendly, so you can easily search for different domains and get valuable information about them.
In Conclusion
Backlink checker tools are invaluable for competitor analysis and allow you to find opportunities to boost your link-building strategies. Most people waste time searching for links without any strategy.
For best results, start by understanding what links your competitors have, and why those links are helping them rank. Then, do your best to replicate those links and do just enough link-building to beat them. Don’t waste time and money building links you may not even need.
To improve your link-building strategy, you can consider building a private blog network (PBN) on a safe and reliable PBN hosting service with low deindexation rates through Easy Blog Networks. These services utilize a natural hosting profile and zero footprints to ensure your site will not be delisted.