SEO backlink checkers
As every pro knows, backlinks are amongst the most, if not the most, important aspects of SEO. A backlink is simply a site linking to yours, but it’s extremely important to not just have many backlinks, but also high quality backlinks.
A quality backlink is one from a site that Google determines to be of quality - their impression of quality propagates along backlinks. That is, a link from the New York Times is far more valuable than a link in the comment section on a barely visited site with no good content.
Backlinks and content go hand in hand - if you’re producing quality content that gets linked by lots of quality sites, you’re on the right path.
The following tools allow you to analyse the backlinks of your site, and importantly, the backlinks of competitors sites. This is extremely important. If you’re targeting a particular keyword and your competitor is higher up on Google’s search results, analysing the backlinks of their page will give you insights into how they’re doing it - where their links are coming from, and what they look like.
You can then implement similar strategies.
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An all-in-one SEO tool which gives you all the important functionality, with best-in-class data and analysis on a wealth of aspects of your site: organic keyword and pay-per-click advertising research, backlink analysis, and technical optimizations.
SEMrush really shines when you enter a competitor's domain - you'll be presented with their best keywords, and performance reports. It also allows you to analyse your competitors' ad keywords and budgets.
On top of this it provides an advanced site audit tool, a social media tracker and poster, including post scheduling and analysis, brand mention monitoring and more.
Free data available:
Yes
Serpstat is a general SEO tool providing position tracking, backlink analysis, competitor research, and a site audit.
The keyword research identifies Google volume, competition, and cost-per-click rates. It also provides analysis on niche questions.
For backlink analysis, Serpstat gives a detailed report on referring domains, backlinks with historical charts, and a quality score or rank.
Serpstat also provides a site audit functionality, identifying errors and recommendations, analysing meta tags, headings, redirects, accessibility, and inbound links. It's error reports are detailed and instruct you on how to fix them.
The cheapest tier provides a generous amount of data at a price that won't put you out of business.
Free data available:
No
A well-presented analysis of your backlinks, including domains, anchor text and URLs, and a comparison tool.
You get a preview of data for free, expandable to a basic analysis by registering - also for free - and much more data when you pay a fair price.
Free data available:
Yes
A free Chrome browser extension which gives an SEO summary for the page you're viewing in your browser, or a more detailed listing of information with a click providing a pretty detailed overview, including search engine performance, domain analysis, and social analysis.
Also analyzes content for keyword density.
Free data available:
Yes
This tool allows you to bulk check the Domain Authority and Page Authority of a number of sites in one go - a nice time saving tool if you manage a lot of sites. The metric itself comes from Moz.
For free, it allows you to bulk check up to 10 sites.
Free data available:
Yes
An advanced, paid tool which includes detailed analysis of your site's backlinks and their quality. Also includes competitor research and site auditing.
Focuses on avoiding Google penalties, with an innovative tool which simulates the risk of a potential new link.
Another innovative tool presents information on how quickly your site is building links so you can compare with your competitors and make sure you're winning the race.
Free data available:
No
Provides a wealth of information, actually for free. They link off to a more advanced paid tool, but the amount of data you get for free here is pretty substantial, especially compared to the competition.
While the depth of the analysis might not compare to tools like Ahrefs, for those on a budget, this is a great way to look into your backlinks, or your competitor's. It includes, still for free, an analysis of the context of the links, including the countries and industries of the sites.
Free data available:
Yes
Ahrefs is widely renowned, and near-unparalleled. However this quality comes at a steep price. At the core, they allow you to analyze your competitor's site, learn what factors are effecting their ability to rank on Google, and therefore what you can do to compete.
This is primarily done with backlink analysis, but Ahrefs includes an overall competitor analysis, along with keyword, and content analysis. You can analyse your competitor's top pages, and even compare their top keywords with the keywords on your own site, to identify gaps in your content.
Ahrefs also includes an advanced keyword research tool, identifying search volumes and cost-per-click.
Free data available:
No
Majestic Site Explorer gives a generous amount of information for free, such as an overall trust index, and some backlink analysis including link types, depth, follow type, languages, and anchor text. Particularly usefully, It also charts your domain's backlink history for free so you can monitor how your efforts are proceeding.
If you verify your ownership of a domain, you gain access to extended information for free. Upgrading gives you deep analysis on referring domains, anchor text, and backlinks.
Free data available:
Yes
One of the top backlink research tools; fast and effective, now owned by Moz.
Like most, this site relies on the freemium model. You get a small amount of queries for free, however.
Includes measures of page and domain authority, and the paid version includes data on social metrics like Facebook likes
Free data available:
Yes
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