9 Best Backlink Tools to Spice Up Your SEO Strategy

Grab a marker, go to your whiteboard, and add a daily priority task: “Check, monitor, and create backlinks!” If you fill that order right after your first cup of coffee each morning, you’ll see the results in the form of tons of new visitors to your website.

If you own or manage a website, you need to develop an SEO strategy to push your pages to the top of the SERPs. (If you don’t know what these acronyms are, read Overview of SEO before reading the rest of this article.)

Creating great, original content should be a top priority in your SEO strategy. And your second priority should be a good link building strategy to get lots of links, or backlinks, to your page.

Why are backlinks so important?

Search engines prioritize authoritative web pages for each keyword searched. This means these pages will appear in the first place in the SERP for those keywords, or even better, be placed within the featured snippet, virtually guaranteeing thousands of daily visitors. .

A web page must meet several criteria to be considered trustworthy by search engines. One of them is to have as many backlinks as possible.

By now you’re probably thinking, “That’s easy. I can just put a bunch of links to my page on other pages I own and problem solved.” Oh no. Sorry, it’s not that simple. You don’t just need a link. You need high quality backlinks.

Not all links are equal when it comes to SERP scores. It has good links, i.e. links from other authoritative pages for the same keyword. These will skyrocket your SERP rankings. Additionally, there are also bad links, also known as toxic links. These should be avoided or removed as they can nullify your entire SEO efforts.

There are various reasons why backlinks are considered harmful, but they all point to the same concept. This means that backlinks are harmful if they are not genuine. For example, a harmful link can be completely artificial if it is placed on a page full of links to unrelated pages with unrelated content. It can be a paid backlink and search engines hate that. Any links within unsafe websites or pages with a poor reputation are also considered harmful.

link building strategy

Basically, all link building strategies come down to the same idea. This means generating links to your site on trusted sites that you don’t own. Wondering how you can do that? First of all, you need to know that it is not easy. You need to find hard-to-find opportunities by considering that your competitors are doing the same thing.

So what you need is a good tool to uncover those opportunities. Think about the gold rush. Miners with the best picks and shovels had the best chance of finding gold nuggets. We’ll talk about tools later. First, let’s review some tips for using the tool.

First, rule out obvious backlink ideas. Yes, if you comment on a blog post and add a link to your website, that link may bring visitors. However, it may not include SERP information that search engines consider to increase (or decrease) rankings. Most easily posted links are created using the “nofollow” attribute. This basically suggests that search engines remove all SERP information before crawling it.

” nofollow ” is one of four attributes you can add to a link to tell search engines what to do with that link. There is also a default ‘ dofollow ‘. This is the opposite, suggesting that search engines carry SERP information when crawling links.

There are two additional attributes: “ ugc ” and “ sponsored .”

UGC stands for user-generated content and can be used to mark links inserted into user-generated content on a website. For example, post a comment or forum entry. Finally, “Sponsored” is used to mark links created as advertising, sponsorship, or other compensation arrangements.

white hat and black hat

When we talk about easy (or automated) link building tactics, you’ll hear about “white hat” and “black hat” techniques. As you have probably already guessed, white hats are good and black hats are bad. Blackhat refers to deceptive tricks that search engines don’t like and can be dangerous for SEO. If you are found to be using a black hat, your SERP rankings can drop to the bottom of search results.

Now let’s take a look at some white hat techniques. Your first priority in this regard should be to engage in outreach. Identify potential websites that could benefit from linking to your site, obtain their contact information, and send messages asking them to link to your site Must be. However, you don’t need to randomly browse to see where these emails are being sent. The right tools will show you the sites most likely to accept your link suggestions.

Guest blogging is an old-school tactic that works extremely well. You should suggest that bloggers write a post on their blog with their name and a link to your site. There are many blogs that welcome guest bloggers, but you need to find one. If the blogger doesn’t accept your guest blogging proposal, you can suggest that they fix the broken link. In other words, it detects broken links, creates content similar to the missing resource, and asks users linking to that resource to point to your content instead.

There are many other link building tips you can use. You can find lots of tips on good SEO blogs. But a comprehensive backlink strategy involves more than just link building. You should also regularly check and monitor your backlink inventory. And that’s something you can’t do manually. Now let’s talk about backlink tools.

Backlink management tool

You can see how important backlinks are, as there are many existing tools that can help you develop a successful backlink strategy. This most useful tool in the world tracks a mesh of backlinks across the internet and aids in link building and management activities.

Don’t be fooled by “magical” tools that promise to automatically generate backlinks to your site. Always keep in mind that link building is not an easy task and cannot be performed well by automated tools. Be wary of link building promises that employ black hat techniques and can ultimately harm your SEO.

Therefore, the best tools are those that provide a lot of information about backlinks that you can use to get the best results in your link building efforts.

Check out the top picks.

sem rush

Within Semrush we have the Backlink Analysis tool , a powerful tool to get functional data about backlinks from any domain. Semrush has a huge database of 26,5 trillion backlinks and provides many revealing charts showing new and lost backlinks, authority rank of every referral, evolution of backlink generation process, etc. .

Backlink audit tools allow you to consolidate your Search Console data and avoid Penguin penalties. You can also detect and remove harmful backlinks, send them to Google’s disavow tool, and keep your backlink profile clean with automatic and regular tracking.

In addition to backlink analysis, Semrush offers a complete set of SEO tools that are free and unlimited in use, but with limited functionality. This includes keyword research, monetization analysis, traffic analysis, SERP location tracking, CPC mapping, and more.

site checker

Sitechecker’s Backlink Tracker makes it easy to monitor your backlinks. This is equally useful for novice businessmen, professional marketers, and optimization experts who are just learning how to promote their sites. All the conditions will be created for you to easily analyze backlinks to your site.

In particular, it’s an opportunity to collect all your backlinks in one place. Most such trackers scan the entire Internet for new links, but with Sitechecker you can easily track important links found in Ahrefs or GSC or manually created links without expending additional resources. can be imported. This allows you to objectively understand the number and quality of incoming links to your site.

Backlink Tracker offers a free version with no obligation to provide payment details. It is enough to register and access the trial period and see the benefits and possibilities of the tool. In the paid version, the basic plan starts at $29 per month (subject to monthly payments) and allows you to track up to 3,000 backlinks.

If you need more, consider higher rates. Startup is $49 for 5,000 links or $99 for growth for 10,000 links. We also have special offers for customers who require special conditions. Get a 20% discount when you sign up for an annual plan. This means that using the service costs $23, $39, and $79 per month, respectively.

Conveniently, Backlink Tracker offers backlink monitoring options. Receive notifications about link removals and other changes from the index. Tracking is done 24 hours a day, and the system reports any situation instantly.

SE ranking

SE Rank is a backlink checker that uses data from Google Webmaster Tools to check incoming links to your website or your competitors’ websites. This tool generates detailed link analysis showing follow/nofollow attributes, indexed/unindexed, cached/uncached, domain authority, anchor text, social popularity, Alexa rank, and more. You can disavow the link, generate a file, and send it directly to Google.

SE Rank offers three basic plans: Optimum ($39/month), Plus ($89/month), and Enterprise ($189/month). The number of websites checked and the number of backlinks monitored vary. You can get discounts by subscribing for months or by checking less frequently. 20% if you want to check every 3 days, 40% if you are comfortable checking weekly. Otherwise, the check task will run daily.

SEO spyglass

Recently, a new candidate has entered the SEO arena. The leader of the group needs to pay attention to that.

SEO SpyGlass is part of SEO PowerSuite, a set of tools that has received many positive reviews. Unlike most SEO tools, this is an application that you install on your computer, be it a Mac, Windows, or Linux machine.

You can use the basic functions as much as you like for free. You can also pay $299 per year for the Professional license, which offers benefits such as unlimited backlink monitoring, task scheduling, and basic reporting features, or you can pay $699 per year. Enterprise license. All PowerSuite functionality is unlocked.

SEO Spyglass reportedly has the largest link database of all known tools. You can also add your own links and import them directly from Google Analytics or Google Search Console. This tool identifies potentially harmful links to avoid penalties from Penguin 4.0 (the latest version of Google’s search engine).

We consider the same factors that Google uses to calculate the risk associated with a penalty. If a threat is found, you can neutralize it in just a few clicks using SpyGlass’ exclusive disavow file generator. You don’t have to worry about doing it right yourself.

Some SpyGlass users say that this tool has helped them replicate their organic traffic simply by following SEO advice. The Enterprise version reportedly had a return on investment (ROI) of less than a month, so if you’re serious about your SEO strategy, you might want to give it a try.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs has one of the largest backlink indexes in the entire world.

Ahrefs is designed to perform most of the activities that SEO professionals need to do on a daily basis, in addition to managing backlinks, but it’s also very easy to use for non-professionals. But especially in the area of ​​backlinks, Ahrefs offers a number of tools to conduct backlink research.

For example, you can use one of these tools, Link Intersect, to find sites that link to your competitors but not to you. This is very useful information because if your site links to multiple competitors, they are likely to add more links to your site.

Ahrefs offers a free version that allows you to monitor 10 backlinks and 2 domains per request. For $82/month, you get a comprehensive analysis of your backlink profile, including image backlinks, dofollow/nofollow, anchor text, and more. Such information can prove invaluable if you receive a penalty from Google. It gives you numbers about the proportion of anchor text on your site.

The information provided by Ahrefs is not only useful for your link building efforts. It also shows lost and new backlinks to your site, so you can thank the webmaster and return the favor with a reciprocal link. For lost links, you’ll be notified of the reason for the loss, so you don’t have to guess why it happened. The Ahrefs dashboard also shows suspicious links that you can disavow to avoid penalties.

Shrike

Moz Pro is a complete suite of professional SEO tools, and Moz Link Explorer is one of the main utilities. It’s especially useful to reverse engineer your competitors’ backlinks. To see its magic work, just enter your competitor’s domain or specific URL and Moz will show you all the backlinks. For each backlink, you can see several metrics such as domain authority index, number of linking domains, spam score, and list of top links.

Pricing plans range from $99 to $599 per month, depending on the number of features and how “pro” you want to be with your SEO efforts.

One of Link Explorer’s signature features is anchor text analysis, which shows you the most common anchor texts in a website’s backlink profile. Many people may wonder what this feature is used for. The answer is that it helps detect black hat linking techniques. A large number of exact matches of anchor text can be a sign of deceptive tactics.

Moz’s database isn’t as large as Ahrefs, but its subscription fee includes several tools beyond Link Explorer, so it’s worth the money.

majestic

Majestic SEO offers this tool as a Chrome app, providing backlink analysis directly to your browser. This is a quick way to verify the strength of a page based on backlink information. The Trust Flow Score and Citation Flow Score appear immediately in the URL bar of the page you visit, along with summary information about the URLs and domains linking to the page.

Although you can pay to subscribe for full functionality, the Chrome app provides some data for free, such as link profile graphs and link counts at the URL, subdomain, and root level. . Subscribers receive detailed information about links, including a list of the 10 most powerful backlinks and the 10 most powerful anchor texts. You can also access tools directly from the app to dig deeper into your link analysis.

night watchman

A backlink monitoring tool that analyzes the true impact of backlinks on SERP rankings. Nightwatch sends regular updates about newly discovered and lost backlinks through smart notifications. We combine our own crawler with multiple external tracking sources to provide you with accurate, up-to-date information about all backlinks that can impact your rankings.

Visualization tools provide segmentation by all kinds of parameters and help you understand the impact of each backlink. A backlink portfolio summarizes different segments acquired at different times. You can see their diversity by quality, domain, follow/nofollow attributes, and spam status.

Nightwatch performs automatic checks of live and dead links, showing you which links are adding value to your website and which links are decreasing it.

link miner

The basis of LinkMiner is a large database (bigger than Elon Musk’s ambitions, as stated on the website).

Just enter your competitor’s domain name and we’ll identify the strongest backlinks and evaluate them using famous metrics like citation flow, trust flow, and more. A simple visualization panel avoids the common problem of too many browser tabs. With one click, you’ll see a preview of each reference website with anchor placement highlighted.

With LinkMiner , you can choose to search for backlinks across all 9 trillion backlink databases , or search only the most recent data and limit your search to links that are 30 days old. The “lost” option helps you find deleted backlinks and give your competitors a chance to replace them. To stay focused on important links, LinkMiner suggests saving the best search results to a list. Save the most relevant backlinks and access them whenever you want.

Please select a tool. Any tool.

Now there is no excuse not to adopt a link building strategy. Search engines are constantly evolving and getting smarter. Never forget that their goal is to index the best content on the web and make it easily accessible. And we need to help them achieve these two goals by creating great content and making it easily accessible from as many places as possible.