9 Best Backlink Tools to Improve Your SEO Strategy (2023)

Take a bullet point, go to the whiteboard, and add a daily priority task: "Verify, Monitor, and Build Backlinks!" After a while of fulfilling this request every morning, immediately after your first cup of coffee, you will see the results in the form of hordes of new visitors coming to your website.

If you own or run a website, you must have an SEO strategy that will put your pages at the top of the SERPs. (If you don't understand any of these acronyms, you should probably read aintroduction to seobefore reading the rest of this article).

Your SEO strategy should make creating great and original content your number one priority. And the second priority is to have a great link building strategy that generates a lot of links pointing to your pages i.e. backlinks.

Why are backlinks so relevant?

Search engines favor web pages that are trustworthy for each searched keyword. This means that these pages appear at the top of the SERPs for those keywords or, better yet, are placed within featured snippets, virtually guaranteeing thousands of visitors every day.

To be considered trustworthy by a search engine, the web page must meet some conditions. One is to have as many backlinks as possible.

By now you're probably thinking "well that's easy, I can put lots of links to my page on other pages I have and the problem is solved". No-ah. Sorry, but it's not that simple. You don't just need links, you need high-quality backlinks.

See, not all links are created equal when it comes to SERP score. There are good links, that is, links that come from other authoritative pages for the same keywords. This will skyrocket your SERP ranking. And then there are the bad links, also called toxic links. You should avoid them or get rid of them because they cannullify all your SEO efforts.

A backlink can be considered toxic for many reasons, but they all point to the same concept: a backlink is toxic when it is not authentic. A toxic link can be completely artificial, for example if it is placed on a page full of links to unrelated pages with even more unrelated content. That could be a paid backlink, and the search engines hate it. All links on unsafe sites or on pages with a low reputation are also considered toxic.

Link Building Strategies

Basically, any link building strategy boils down to the same idea: generating links to your site from authority sites that you don't own. Are you wondering how you can do this? Well, first of all, you should know that it is not easy. You need to uncover hard-to-find opportunities, keeping in mind that your competitors are doing the same.

So what you need are good tools to reveal these opportunities. Think of the gold rush: the miners with the best picks and shovels had the best chances of finding gold nuggets. We'll talk about tools later; First, let's go over some tips that the tools can be used for.

First, rule out the obvious backlink ideas. Yes, you can put a comment on a blog post, adding a link to your website, and that link is likely to attract some visitors. But chances are you won't take into account SERP information search engines to increase (or decrease) your rankings. Most of these easy-to-post links are created with the "nofollow" attribute, which basically suggests that search engines remove all SERP information before crawling them.

“do not follow” is one of four attributes that can be added to a link to guide search engines on what to do with that link. There is also the default value "dofollow“, which is quite the opposite: it suggests that search engines load SERP information when crawling that link.

There are two more attributes: “UGC"e"sponsored“.

UGC stands for User Generated Content and can be used to tag links embedded in User Generated Content on a website. For example, posting comments or forum posts. Finally, "sponsored" is used to mark links created as advertising, sponsorship, or any other compensation arrangement.

White hats and black hats.

When talking about easy (or automated) link building tactics, you'll hear about "white hat" techniques and "black hat" techniques. As you probably guessed, a white hat is good, and a black hat is bad. Black hat refers to dirty game tricks that can be dangerous for your SEO because search engines don't like them and if they find out that you are using them, your SERP ranking can sink to the bottom of the search results.

So let's look at some white hat techniques. Your first priority in this matter should be to work on your range. You need to identify potential sites that could benefit from linking to your site on your site, get their contact information, and send messages asking them to link to your site. But you don't have to randomly browse to see whoenvy esses emails. The right tool will show you the sites most likely to accept your link proposals.

Guest blogging is an old school tactic that works very well. You have to offer bloggers to write a post for their blogs, with your name and a link to your site. There are many blogs that welcome guest bloggers, but you have to find them. If bloggers don't accept your guest blogging proposal, you can offer them to fix their broken links. This means detectbroken links, create content similar to the missing resource, and ask anyone who links to it to point to your content.

There are many more link building tips you can use; you can find dozens of them on good SEO blogs. But a comprehensive backlink strategy includes more than just link building. It also requires you to regularly check and monitor your backlink inventory. And this is something you can't do manually. So, let's talk about backlink tools.

Backlink Management Tools

The myriad of tools out there to help people implement a successful backlink strategy can give you an idea of ​​just how important backlinks are. Within this universe of tools, the most useful ones accompany the network of backlinks through the Internet and help you in your link building and administration activities.

Just don't be fooled by "magic" tools that promise to automatically generate backlinks to your website; Always remember that link building is not an easy task and cannot be done well with any automated tool. Beware of link building promises that employ black hat methods and may end up hurting your SEO.

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

Let's take a look at the top picks.

Semrush

Within Semrush, you can find theBacklink analysis tool, a powerful aid to obtain functional data on backlinks of any domain. With its huge database of 26.5 billion backlinks,Semrushoffers many insightful graphs showing new and lost backlinks, authority rankings of all referrals, the evolution of backlink generation processes, and much more.

With the Backlink Audit tool, you can integrate your Search Console data and avoid being penalized by Penguin. You can also discover and remove toxic backlinks and submit them to Google's disavow tool, keeping your backlink profile clean thanks to automatic and regular monitoring.

In addition to backlink analysis,Semrushoffers a complete set of SEO tools that you can use for free, for an unlimited time, but with limited functionality. That includesSearch by Keyword, monetization analysis,traffic analysis, SERP position tracking, CPC mapping and more.

site checker

backlink trackerby Sitechecker makes it possible to conveniently monitor backlinks. It is equally suitable for novice entrepreneurs who are just learning how to promote their own websites, for marketers and optimization specialists. It creates all the conditions for a convenient analysis of backlinks to the site.

In particular, it is an opportunity to collect all the backlinks in one place. While the vast majority of these crawlers scour the entire Internet for new links,site checkermakes it possible to import important links found in Ahrefs or GSC, as well as those created manually, without spending additional resources. This allows you to create an objective view of the number and quality of incoming links to the site.

Backlink Tracker offers a free trial with no obligation to provide payment details. Simply register and access the trial period and make sure of the advantages and possibilities of the tool. The paid version starts on the Basic plan 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 $49 for 5,000 links or Growth $99 for 10,000. There is also a special offer for customers interested in special conditions. A 20% discount applies when you sign up for an annual plan: so using the service will cost you $23, $39, or $79 per month, respectively.

Conveniently, Backlink Tracker offers a backlink monitoring option. You can receive notifications about removed index links and any other changes. Monitoring is carried out 24 hours a day and the system promptly reports any situation.

Ahrefs

Ahrefsit has one of the highest backlink rates in the world.

In addition to managing backlinks, Ahrefs is designed to perform most of the activities that an SEO professional needs to perform on a daily basis, and is very easy for non-professionals to use. But specifically in the area of ​​backlinks, Ahrefs provides a lot of tools for doing backlink research.

For example, one such tool, called “Crossing Links”,allows you to discover sites that link to your competitors but not to you. This is very useful information because if a site links to more than one of your competitors, there is a good chance they will add a link to your site.

Ahrefs offers a free version that allows you to monitor ten backlinks and two domains per request. If you're willing to pay $82 per month, you'll get a full analysis of your backlink profile, including image backlinks, dofollow/nofollow, anchor text, etc.google penaltybecause it gives you numbers about the rate of anchor text on your website.

The information provided by Ahrefs doesn't just help you with your link building activities. It also shows lost backlinks and new backlinks to your site so you can thank the webmaster or return the favor with a reciprocal link. For lost links, you'll be told the reason for the loss, so you don't have to guess. The Ahrefs dashboard also shows suspicious links that you can disavow to avoid penalties.

Moz

MozProis a complete set of professional SEO tools, in which Moz Link Explorer is one of the main utilities. It's especially helpful to reverse engineer your competitors' backlinks. To see its magic in action, simply enter a competitor's domain or a specific URL, and Moz will show you all of their backlinks. For each backlink, you can see some metrics like a domain authority score, the number of domains linking to, a spam score, and a list of top links.

Their pricing plans range from $99 to $599 per month, depending on how many features and how "professional" you want to be in your SEO endeavors.

One of Link Explorer's distinctive features is anchor text analysis, which shows you the most common anchor text in a website's backlink profile. Many ask what this feature is for, and the answer is that it helps detect black hat linking techniques: if there is a lot of exact match anchor text, it could be a sign of fraudulent tactics.

While Moz's database isn't as large as Ahrefs', its subscription fee includes several other tools besides Link Explorer that might be worth paying for.

Majestic

majestic seooffers this tool as a Chrome app, bringing backlink analysis directly to your browser. It's a quick way to check the strength of any page based on its backlink information. Trust Flow and Citation Flow scores appear immediately in the URL bar of any page you visit, along with summary information about the URLs and domains linking to the page.

While you can subscribe for a fee to get all the features, the Chrome app gives you some data for free, including link profile graphs and link counts for URLs, subdomains, and root levels. Subscribers get more details about links, including lists of the 10 strongest backlinks and the 10 strongest anchor texts. They can also dig deeper into link analysis by accessing the tools directly from the app.

SEO spyglass

Recently, a new competitor has entered the field of SEO and the leaders of the group should pay attention to it.

spy seoGRAMSchicaIt is part ofSEO PowerSuite, an award-winning toolkit with many positive reviews. Unlike most SEO tools, this is an application that you install on your computer, be it Mac, Windows, or Linux. You can use its basic functionality for free for as long as you like, or you can pay $299 per year for a pro license, which offers features like unlimited backlink monitoring, task scheduling, and basic reporting features, or $699 per year for a licensed company. , which unlocks all of PowerSuite's features.

SEO Spyglass supposedly has the largest link database of any known tool. You can also add your own links by importing them directly from Google Analytics and Google Search Console. The tool identifies potentially harmful links so as not to be penalized by Penguin 4.0 (the latest version of the Google search engine). Calculate the risks involved in a sanction, taking into account the same factors that Google uses. If you find a threat, you can neutralize it in a few clicks using SpyGlass's unique reject file generator; you don't have to worry about doing it yourself.

Some SpyGlass users say that the tool has allowed them to double their organic traffic simply by following its SEO tips. They even say that the return on investment (ROI) of the Enterprise version was less than a month; so if you're serious about your SEO strategy, you might want to give it a try.

SE Classification

SE Classificationis a backlink checker that uses data from Google Webmaster Tools to check inbound links to your site or your competitors' sites. The tool generates a detailed link analysis showing follow/unfollow, index/not index, cache/no cache, domain authority, anchor text, social popularity, Alexa rank, and more. It allows you to reject links and generate files to send directly to Google.

SE Classificationoffers three basic plans: Optimum ($39/mo), Plus ($89/mo), and Enterprise ($189/mo). They vary in the number of verified sites and the number of monitored backlinks. You can get discounts by subscribing for many months or by reducing the checkup frequency: 20% for checkups every three days and 40% if you accept weekly checkups; otherwise, the analysis task is performed daily.

night vision

A backlink monitoring tool that analyzes the true impact of your backlinks on your SERP ranking. Through smart notifications,night visionsend regular updates on newly discovered and lost backlinks. It uses its own trackers, combined with various external tracking sources, to give you accurate and up-to-date information on all the backlinks that could affect your rankings.

Visualization tools offer segmentation by any type of parameter to help understand the impact of each backlink. A backlink portfolio summarizes different segments acquired at different times. Learn about their diversity by quality, domain, follow/unfollow attributes, and spam status.

Nightwatch performs an automatic check for active and dead links to show you which links add value to your site and which reduce that value.

LinkMiner

A huge database, bigger than Elon Musk's ambitions, as his own website claims, is the foundation on whichLinkMinerIt is based.

Just by typing your competitor's domain name, you can identify their most powerful backlinks, evaluating them with recognized metrics such as Citation Flow, Trust Flow, among others. A simple preview pane avoids the common problem of excessive browser tabs: with just one click, you preview each referring site with the anchor location highlighted.

LinkMiner gives you the option to find backlinks from all yourdatabase of 9 billion backlinks, or search only the most recent data, to limit the search to links that are 30 days old. The "Lost" option helps you find deleted backlinks and get a chance to replace your competitors. To keep the focus on the links that matter, LinkMiner lets you save your best finds to a list. You can save the most relevant backlinks and return to them whenever you want.

Pick 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 your goal is to index the best content on the web so that it is easily accessible. And you must help them with these two objectives by creatinggreat contentand making sure it can be easily reached from as many places as possible.