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
-
Does having '?search' in a URL affect the page quality?
In our Costume Themes category on our website, http://www.costumedirect.com.au/themes/, the links direct to search pages with URLs containing the term '?search'. For example, the 'Edward Scissorhands' link directs to http://www.costumedirect.com.au/search.php?search_query=edward. Will the question mark and 'search' in our URL affect the page quality and rankings? Thank you.
Link Building | | CostumeD0 -
Are links from charities really better than 'normal' links.
Hi Guys. Just wondering about this idea that links from Charities are particularly good. I've heard people say that links from .org sites are particularly strong. But anyone can get a .org domain, it's just that charities tend to use them more often. Right? I just don't get the logic. Can anyone give more detail about this? Is it a myth? Is there quality info on this topic I can check out? We're working with several charities at the moment, and they all seem happy to blog and link to us...so I just wanted to know a little more. Isaac.
Link Building | | isaac6630 -
When we use 'link:' for who get the link, how come google show us the same domain as a link.
the search result show the domain of its own. what is is? and is it meaningful as a link?
Link Building | | onedaykorea0 -
Can 302's Negate Spam Link Profile?
To make a long story short, the previous SEO company we hired spammed us on LOTS of crappy links, many of which are still indexed. We're currently in the act of removing these links before we receive a manual spam penalty/notification + building new, stronger links to balance out our profile. While most of these garbage links were sent to our homepage, many are linking our Services page (and a bunch to our .com/sitemap.html for some reason, lol). Now we're in the midst of updating our entire website and the permalinks are going to change. While I'd normally 301 our old links to the new ones, Id rather not bring the horrible link profile with it if at all possible. Would a simple 302 redirect effectively dodge the bad juju from these spam links to our Services page since they pass 0 juice? Any thoughts on this would be appreciated. Thanks!
Link Building | | kirmeliux0 -
Can't remove and can't disavow...
Wondering if anyone could help me. A client is suffering a Google penalty at the moment which is harming their performance. That said it is properly the best penalty they could have got..the site has a penalty which is stopping them ranking as high on keywords which they have been spamming links for. I say the best penalty they could have got because, other than these keywords, the site is still performing as well as before in the engines. Have been trying to clear up the backlinks for the past couple of months and just when I think im winning I discover some 32,000 blog comments on one domain 6 weeks or so ago!! - [http://www. iimpact.co.uk/blog/about?ss=%25&replytoc&rep&d=http://8;d=http://166",.moveForm("comment-1628", "1628", addComment.m&replytocom=265](http://www.iimpact.co.uk/blog/about?ss=%25&replytoc&rep&d=http://8;d=http://166",.moveForm("comment-1628", "1628", addComment.m&replytocom=265) example url, I broke it on purpose as to not make it a backlink With that many links i will not even try and contact the site, I put in the disavow in google that there is no way I can get these removed and explained it etc, however, they, again, rejected the reconsideration request saying they are still not happy with the links. At a bit of a loss here. It's starting to look that the best approach will be to write off the half a dozen terms and go a little more long tail. The site will not rank for (this is an example as would not want to give the client away) door knockers. They used to be first page but now are page four. However they remain page one for terms such as brass door knockers, cheap door knockers, chrome door knockers etc. In WMT ranking report they have hits from 1200 words ranking in the top 5 in the past 30 days and 3000 in the top ten. Im a considering trying to up the rankings of these words at the expense of the ones which we cannot seem to get the penalty off. Any thoughts please.
Link Building | | Grumpy_Carl0 -
Is there a tool to find out our website's link in some other website?
sometimes we know our site link is there on a site but the site is so big its hard to search manually. Is there any tool which can crawl the whole site and find the page having our site link ? though I know about OSE, and we can also see backlinks from webmaster tool. But still if you know any tool where instead of seeing the whole back link profile, we can add a specific url and see our site link in that url.
Link Building | | Personnel_Concept0 -
Backlinks in client website footers - best strategy?
I work for a web design & development agency. We are looking to rank for 'web design' and 'web development'. Typically we have a credit in the footer of every site we build (below). We have a lot of backlinks (>60,000) this way. web design and development by We link 'web design and development' and '<our name="">' separately.
Link Building | | JeromeSavon
Does this strategy sound ok and can anyone suggest improvements?</our> Thanks0 -
Effectiveness of Forum Backlinks: specifically Paul's Backlinks
I know the general consensus is that these kinds of backlinks are of low value, however I'm curious as to anyones present day experience with them and if they are providing any value. More specifically, I am curious if they can do harm. I don't see how they could, as it would be a very easy tactic for an unscrupulous competitor to sabotage another by implementing them for their competitors. I can see possibly losing rank if they were discounted, however if this is the case, then it would only be rank that would not have been gained in the first place, minus those kinds of links. I ask because I have competing websites who have started to outrank me (they have been climbing and improving through each Google algorithm change in the past year), despite the fact that my mosrank and authority are better than every single one of them. But they have a sheer growing volume of backlinks that I can't match (seemingly low value when I look at their link profiles). Plus my domain is older (9 years as opposed to 3-4 years), and my site is clearly better (in terms of aesthetics, usability, content, etc), as well as my link profile being selectively cultivated from truly relevant sites. None the less, they are starting to kill me at this point -and I don't have the luxury of time. So....I was wondering about the wisdom of upping my volume of forum type links, as this is the only area of measurement where I can see my competitors are beating me. I am a believer in true, difficult, quality inbound marketing - however it is not getting the job done. Any thoughts on this?
Link Building | | csblev0