Best Methods and Tools for Monitoring your Website's Backlinks
-
Recently, I've launched two websites. I want to make sure I'm doing a good job monitoring our link building efforts. I'm see a lot of tools out there to supplement my use of Open Site Explorer. What I want to know is what tools I should be using to monitor my links? My ultimate goal would be to have the data to track the number of links I'm adding a month so that I can use it for reporting.
There is another layer. Because the sites are new, OSE is actually not reporting any links found. I can only find reported links through Google Search Console. Any advice? Is this something where I will just have to wait for everything to get indexed?
-
Hi
Ahrefs is definitely a better option than SEMrsuh for this, because it has a more accurate link database. SEMRush and Moz both have less link data, so Ahrefs would give you the most complete picture. I suggested SEMrush because it is free tool (sort of, 10 free requests per day + 10 with an account).
-
Thanks everyone! I'll check all those resources out.
Are there a lot of overlaps with SEM Rush, Ahrefs and Moz?
-
Hi
I would go for Ahrefs and Majsitc site Explorer along with Google Webmaster.
In my opinion, use of these would give you a snopysis of new and exsiting backlinks for your site. You can also try MOZ site explorer tool. However, this is relatively new and has less data than the other two.
-
Another vote for Ahrefs.
I personally wouldn't use SEMrush for stuff like this as their backlink data isn't going to be as comprehensive. There is always Majestic as well, but I find that a bit clunky now.
Try the free trial with Ahrefs - you wont be disappointed
-Andy
-
Hi Jason,
My personal preference is Ahrefs. Now I do gather data from other sources, but I find ahrefs gives you the highest number of active links.
Thanks
-
Personally I use semrush.com to quickly monitor the backlinks to a website. It will give you a nice overview of all the referring ip’s and url’s and you can export it into Excel. However there is no option to see the changes over time (at least not in the free version). In Moz under “Links > Competitive metrics” on the History tab you can see graphs that compare some link data with your competitors over time. To get more information for a rapport I export the data from semrush once a week. This way I can show all the link metrics over time with the top referring domains for a website compared to the competitors. And yes it can take some time before the link metrics are indexed.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Backlinks not indexed on MOZ
Why our backlinks do not show up? Even GSC shows a good amount of our backlinks and other applications show too. But in the case of MOZ, it still shows 0 backlinks and 0 organic visibility. Don't you guys think this puts a user of your software way behind in terms of competition and real data? If my backlinks will be considered by MOZ, when will it be❓
Link Building | | MariApps0 -
What are the best Guest posts?
Hi, we have been working on improving the SEO for our website www.caffeinemarketing.co.uk and we are looking to guest blog on some sites. Are there any that you would recommend. What kind of volume of posts do we need to make a significant difference to rankings?
Link Building | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
How to Index my backlinks?
I create backlinks at everyfay but backlinks not indexed. So, i want to know how to indexed my backlinks?? If you have any free indexed tool then please suggest me as soon as possible.
Link Building | | renukishor0 -
A backlinks question
Hi all Could do with a second opinion on this one if anyone has a moment please. Recent Google updates have targeted overally optimised backlink profiles as they are clearly for seo purposes and not natural. The question I have is how does this relate to an ecommerce website? If I sell 'blue 1980 aged cheese' (I know nothing about cheese so perhaps not the best example!!) and I have a url on my shop domain.com/store/blue-1980-aged-cheese with the product name as the page title along with the domain name. If I were to get backlinks pointing to this page using the anchor of 'blue 1980 aged cheese' (and other variations of that, blue cheese, aged blue cheese etc) would this be considered to be too optimised? Given the page is about this item then surely it could be considered natural that people link using the product name, as well as using the site name and the domain url Any thoughts please Thanks, Carl
Link Building | | GrumpyCarl0 -
What's a really good example of a linkbait-y Category / Subcategory hierarchy?
Rand makes a really great point in this 2009 post about the shape of crawl paths: "#4. Craft navigation / category pages that are worthy of links. If you can make these pages worthy of links and attention, you drive PageRank and crawl priority further down your site's architecture into the content (and signal the engine that ALL your pages are important." Which makes sense, intuitively, because you'd like link juice to flow directly and undiluted to your money pages. "Here's all my Green Widgets, Roger: they're all right here. While you're at it, here's a related blog post—'5 Ridiculously Awesome Things Every Green Widget Buyer Should Know'—and, oh look! Would you like to see my Blue Widgets as well?" In practice, though, the Home » Widgets » Green Widgets doesn't sound all that alluring. Useful, absolutely, for UX, but not for getting links. Anyone have some favorite examples of Category / Subcategory hierarchies that do well as link-bait? Client is a marketing agency dealing in the technical arcana of databases and ad serving, so their money pages won't be as specific as a Green Widget or a Miami Hotel. Their site isn't huge, and the pages will be extensively interlinked, so the emphasis has more to do with link juice / page authority than indexation. But I'm wondering if it could it be smart to replace a generic "Services" category with a KW-rich drop-down menu of "Marketing Solutions" (i.e. 'Increase Customer Retention') and link each landing page to a relevant charcuterie of services, white papers, webinars, case studies, etc., rather than keeping these pages in their respective silos—even as they link horizontally to related services?
Link Building | | sweetfancymoses2 -
'Pay With A Tweet' - Yay or Nay
Is this system a good way of creating social signals? If you have something of value maybe a eBook, does using the 'Pay With A Tweet' system seem like a good one? The only thing I can think of that would be negative is if they paid with a tweet and then after removed the tweet. Cheers
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
New pages backlinking
Hello there, I have created a website that with some basic link building has been appearing nicely in location based keywords, eg, computer repairs flintshire, this was easy enough to achieve as the competition wasnt great, just wish i has these on page seo tools 6 months ago! my question is this - i am trying to get similair results in other location based keywords, eg, computer repairs chester and computer repairs wirral. What i have done is created a new page dedicated to each keyword, making sure that there is no duplicate content ect ect, the on page SEO is perfect and i am already on the first page for a couple i have done. so i have a url that now is http://www.ep-networks.co.uk/computer-repairs-chester.php
Link Building | | eirianprice
when linking the keyword 'computer repairs chester' do i point the url to this page or just to the http://www.ep-networks.co.uk ?? Thanks EP0 -
What can I do to increase this page's rank
I have this page that is doing alright for the phrase "skyward sword walkthrough" I used to be ranked number 2 but it has dropped http://legendzelda.net/skyward-sword-walkthrough/ Sites like IGN are huge so I do not blame them for overpassing my rank but zelda informer I feel like I should be outranking at least. I have a fairly good on page ranking grade using the seomoz tool. And the OSE shows I have 11 domains linking - most with some kind of variation to that keyword. And I have actually built out more since then. Most the links are on highly relevant pages. I contacted a lot of gaming sites before this game was released and asked for a link back in exchange for a variety of things (shoutouts mostly - no paid links) The page performed extremely well when Skyward Sword came out and I got hundreds of thousands of hits but as my rank is beginning to drop its a lot less (also can be attributed to hype dying down). But any suggestions or glaring issues would be great. Link building is something I am always doing as well - mostly through guest blogging.
Link Building | | webfeatseo0