Stay on Top of Your Backlinks: A Comprehensive Guide to Tracking and Managing Your Link Building Efforts

Backlinks are an indispensable part of SEO. Every webmaster needs them to rank on SERPs, especially for competitive terms.

However, link-building is only part of the process. Monitoring your site’s backlink profile is as important.

Keeping a clean link profile requires consistent monitoring. It’s the only way to gauge the effectiveness of your link-building efforts.

This guide will discuss how to find the backlinks of a website with different tools (Free and paid).

We’ll also talk about which metrics and factors you should monitor and why.

Let’s get started.

Why Track and Manage Your Backlinks

A link-building campaign doesn’t end with successful outreach.

There are several reasons you should continuously monitor them.

Broken Links

Any redirects on your website can cause broken links on a referring site.

Broken links can also arise as a result of changes on a referring site.

You need to know about any lost backlinks to reclaim them on time.

Change of Topic

A change in the owner of a website can lead to changes on the page level.

If the new owner changes the topic of a page, your backlink could become irrelevant.

You’d want to remove those backlinks as they’ll send different signals to Google.

Competitor Backlinks Tracking

You can use tracking tools to monitor your competitors’ backlinks as well.

Competitor backlinks tracking can help you replicate their links and outrank them on SERPs.

How to Track Backlinks with Tools

Let’s talk about some popular tools (free and paid) you can use to track your and your competitors’ backlinks.

Google Search Console

One of the first things you should do after creating a website is submit it to Google Search Console.

The tool not only provides a performance overview but also tells you which sites are linking to yours.

Here’s how to track backlinks with Google Search Console.

Just go to “Links” at the left bottom of your dashboard and click on “Top Linking Sites”.

Note that GSC doesn’t go into the details and provides a simple list of referring domains.

If you want to know more than that, you’ll have to use a different, more powerful, too.

You also can’t analyze competitors’ websites with GSC.

Nevertheless, GSC is a good place to start as it’s free and user-friendly.

Semrush

Semrush is a popular all-in-one SEO tool, offering a range of services, including backlinks tracking.

The tool lets you do a complete backlinks audit of any website.

With its backlink report, you can identify any bad backlinks easily.

Semrush lets you download a list of spammy links that you can disavow in GSC later, making your work easier.

SE Ranking

SE Ranking isn’t as sophisticated as Semrush, but it gets the job done when it comes to backlink tracking.

So, how to check backlinks on a website with SE Ranking?

Just enter the domain or URL and click “Analyze”.

The tool lets you analyze linking pages, anchor texts, competitor’s backlinks, and a few other SEO features.

Overall, it’s a good, affordable alternative to Semrush.

Monitor Backlinks

Monitor Backlinks is another popular and effective backlink tracking software.

So, how to find backlinks to a page with Monitor Backlinks?

Start a free trial. Test the tool with up to 10 results and then decide if it’s worth investing in.

Paid plans start from $25.

Features include:

Domain Overview
SEO metrics
Anchor text reports

Keyword rankings

With Monitor Backlinks, you get a detailed analysis of each backlink. It even lets you disavow low-quality backlinks.

There’s no shortage of tools that can help you track your links. Some other options are:

BuzzSumo
RankSignals
OpenLinkProfiler
Coupler.io
Ahrefs
RankActive
Sitechecker

This was all about how to check backlinks to your website with tools.

Let’s discuss some link management tips.

Tips on Tracking and Managing Your Backlinks: Ultimate Guide

Build Quality Backlinks

If you build high-quality links in the first place, you won’t have to worry too much about low-quality ones.

Focusing on high-quality link-building strategies will also protect your site from a Google penalty.

However, the fact that not everything is in your control makes backlinks management a necessity for every webmaster.

Track Your Spam Score

Spam score is a third-party metric developed by Moz. You can check the spam score of your backlinks with its Link Explorer Tool for free.

If your website has a high spam score, remove backlinks coming from low-quality sites.

Claim Lost Backlinks

The problem with lost backlinks is that you don’t get to know about them.

You can lose backlinks for two reasons:

Broken referring page
The owner removes the backlink

The only way to know if you’ve lost a backlink is by monitoring your link profile.

Whenever you identify a broken link on your site, try to claim it back with a simple outreach email.

Set Alert for Broken Links

If you don’t want to manually check lost backlinks, set an alert for them in tools like Monitor Backlinks.

The tool will send you an alert when you lose or gain a backlink.

Monitor Competitor’s Backlinks

Monitoring competitors’ backlinks is a great way to understand their strategies.

Reverse-engineer their link profile with an SEO tool like Semrush.

Then, build better backlinks to outrank them on SERPs.

To get a list of backlinks pointing to a competing website, all you have to do is run a quick backlinks analysis.

Track Trust and Citation Flow

Trust Flow and Citation Flow indicate how trustworthy a website is in the eyes of Google and its users.

It’s a metric designed by Majestic, a reputable SEO company.

Trust Flow is the measure of the reputation of a link, whereas Citation Flow reflects the quality of the citations.

A high TF and CF generally indicate that the backlinks are high-quality.

Check Dofollow Vs Nofollow Ratio

Every web page has two types of links: Dofollow and nofollow.

These are HTML tags that tell a search engine if it should pass link equity or not.

By default, every link has the dofollow HTML attribute.

Search engines are free to crawl any link on the web unless it has a nofollow attribute.

It’s a webmaster’s way of telling search engine bots to not associate the link to their website.

From an SEO standpoint, nofollow attributes don’t affect rankings directly.

However, Google may take them as hints while ranking content for its users.

But, why is monitoring this aspect of link-building important?

Because too many dofollow backlinks don’t send a good signal.

There’s no right ratio between the two types of backlinks.

But, it should look natural. For instance, it’d look unnatural to have 9 dofollow backlinks and 1 nofollow one.

In addition to that, you should keep an eye on the quality of the backlinks, irrespective of their HTML attribute.

Analyze the Impact of Your Backlinks

Every backlink has a unique effect on your search engine rankings.

You can use some tools and metrics to get an idea of each backlink’s power.

Here are the 3 important factors that affect the quality of a backlink:

The domain authority of the linking site
Relevance
Content quality

You can get an idea of a linking site’s domain authority with Moz.

As a rule of thumb, the DA of a linking site should be higher than the DA of your site.

The next most important factor is the relevance of the content on the linking website.

Lastly, you don’t want backlinks from web pages with low-quality content.

Disavow Unnecessary Backlinks

When it comes to backlinks, the more the better, right? Wrong.

You only need the right kind of backlinks. Disavow any backlinks that are irrelevant, unnecessary, or plain spam.

Thankfully, disassociating links from your website is easy.

All you need to do is:

Create a list of web pages and domains in a .txt file
Upload the file to Google’s disavow tool

How to Track Backlinks: FAQs

How Do I Track Backlinks to My Website?

You can find backlinks of website with tools like Google Search Console, Semrush, SE Ranking, and Ahrefs. To check your backlinks for free, go to “Links” > “Top Linking Sites” in your Google Search Console dashboard.

How Can I Check My Backlinks for Free?

Wondering how to find backlinks to my website without paid tools? Here’s how to search for backlinks for free with Google Search Console: After logging in with the right property, go to “Links” > “Top Linking Sites” and click on “More”. You’ll be able to download the list in a spreadsheet file.

What are Backlink Checkers?

Backlinks checkers are tools that help website owners track and monitor their backlinks. They identify low-quality backlinks and find new link-building opportunities. Some examples are Semrush, Monitor Backlinks, and SE Ranking.

Can Google Analytics Track Backlinks?

Are you wondering “Can I find my backlinks with GA4”? You can. Backlinks in Google Analytics 4 are called “Referrals”. You can access them under “Acquisition” > “Traffic Acquisition Report”.