Though SEO in 2012 has changed a lot and it’s not only about backlinks, but still backlinks is one of the biggest backbone of SEO. Unlike old days, now it’s important to get quality backlinks from good PR blogs instead of lots of backlinks from low PR blogs. In recent days, Google link spam algo update, killed all the private blog networks and devalued links. Anyhow, as a blogger we concentrate on getting quality links to our site and in this tutorial, I will be talking about some of the best online backlink checker websites, which you can use to check how many backlinks your website have got.
More about backlinks:
Why you need Backlink checker tools?
When any website links to your site or any page of your site from his Website, it’s call backlinks. Backlinks used to be one of the most important parameter for high page rank and better keyword ranking. Though with time, Google demoted the priority of Backlinks and added more signals in order to rank a website. Backlinks are usually categorized in two ways: Dofollow backlinks and no follow backlinks. When we talk about creating back-links, we usually concentrate on creating dofollow links and using these backlink checker tools, we count how many back-link we have created for our site. Also, a good number of backlink helps in improving page rank and also mozrank of our site.
Here are few online free backlink checker tools which will help you to see all the incoming backlinks to your Website. You can select anyone of these tools according to your requirement. Few of them gives detailed results and few gives results in number of backlinks but the best part in all of them is none of them requires registration or signup which makes the process quick.
- Update: Even SEMRUSH added backlink analytic feature.
List of useful Online Backlink Checker Websites:
One thing which you need to keep in mind, that many of them will now show correct stats and you might see a huge difference. Though, after testing I have pointed out some of the best backlink checker site among them, but I also suggest you to look into Traffic travis (a desktop SEO software) or SEMRUSH, which is also very useful to check and analyze links to your site.
Analyze Backlinks:
Analyze Backlinks have a good clutter-free homepage to check back links of your blog. Apart from just entering the website URL, Analyze Backlinks gives you different options like don’t repeat backlinks from same domain, Show links only from homepage, Anchor Text, Total Links, Outbound Links and more. You can opt for any option according to your requirements.
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BackLinkWatch:
BacklinkWatch is one of the popular tools to check backlinks of your blog. But one thing which I don’t like about BacklinkWatch is it’s pop-ups of course we can close them with single click but pop-up ads always repeals me. BacklinkWatch provides you all details of backlinks of your blog.
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Open Site Explorer:
Of all the tools listed above, Open Site Explorer is my favorite online backlink checker site. It is worth trying if you want to compare backlinks between two or more domains. This tools work best when you have a paid account of SEOMOZ, though free tool is good enough to get you started for checking backlinks of yours and your competitor.
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Link Diagnosis:
Link Diagnosis provides you different options while checking backlinks for your blog like you need detailed report or optimized, you want to check backlink for single page or whole website, different kind of outputs and more. One thing you need to remember that Link Diagnosis works best with Firefox.
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W3tool’s Backlink Checker:
W3Tool Backlink Checker allows you to enter up to 10 blog URLs in one go. It provides you the number of backlinks your blog has got in Google, Yahoo, AltaVista and alltheweb. If you have a blog network and want to check backlinks of all blogs together then W3tool Backlink Checker is for you.
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AHrefs:
Here is a latest addition and I find this really worth mentioning here. It’s a paid backlink checker tool but you can get complete backlink analysis along with anchor text analysis of your site, when you register for free account. This tool offers great deal of detailed related to all backlinks to your site and with time, how your site links are increasing or decreasing. Specially after Penguin update, if you are hit by negative SEO, this tool will be your life saver, as you can get all the link details, along with percentage breakdown of anchor text pointing to your site. One of the best backlink checker tool in the whole list. < Check out Ahrefs>
I also used SEOMOZ premium account, which sends weekly report where you can get more detailed backlink and keyword ranking report. But for free options, all the above mentioned backlink tools and traffic travis is the best.
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{ 45 comments… read them below or add one }
backlinks are necessary for any website to grow on web especially they are offering SEO service at that time your blog work as a great portfolio.
There is o shortcut to build backlink you need to be consistent on building links without using blackhat seo techniques.
Growing website also depends on back links and dependends on seo
Agree Vivek, there is no shortcut for building backlinks, if someone is using unethical way to build backlinks it won’t give good long term results.
Open Site Explorer is best because we can check tracking of competitor’s blog backlinks with our blog
Right Rahul, if you need to track competitor’s backlink, Open Site Explorer is best option. But its always better to have healthy competition with other bloggers.
Nice Post !!!
ButYahoo site explorer(King to watch backlink) is missing.
Click on “Inlinks” and select “Except from this domain”, It will also display count of backlinks.
even in google webmasters, you can see backlinks for the website.
I would like to add these two in your list.
Yeah Brij, but I preferred to list up tools which don’t require registrations or logins. Thanks for adding two more to list.
You need not to login in Yahoo Site Explorer case:
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
Direct give website link and click on Explore URL, Click on “Inlinks” and select “Except from this domain” and you will get all backlinks.
I normally use backlink watch.. Thanks for sharing the rest Whizy
Backlinks are very for optimizing the site for Search Engine and it affects SERP. Thanks for these excellent collection of tools.
Nice lists.
Some how I like to stay with Google webmaster tools and yahoo site explorer to check my blog’s back links.
Do you know Bing also started this service recently in their webmaster tools. Worth to check.
Above all of the tools, backlink watch is a great tool!
Link diagnosis is very slow
Yeah I normally use backlink watch too thats how I’ve been growing my backlinks great post.
Awesome tools to check backlinks. Many tools are new to me.
Going to check out. Thanks for sharing whitechy..!
nice list to analysize the backlinks for my blog….plz answer this..is shoutmeloud a dofollow blog or nofollow blog???
We can use google search to know the back links of a site.
Just type link:
According to google shoutmeloud have 190 results(backlinks)
I haven’t had good luck with using the link command in Google. It hasn’t produced as good as results as the Backlink Watch tool or the Google Webmaster tool. I think the Google Webmaster tool is the most accurate, but I can’t check up on competitors’ backlinks.
Thanks for sharing this……Backlinks are important for any blog/site and thus tools to check them become all the more important
Agree Kartik, Backlink are important and thus tools are also important. Hope blogger use these tools to keep track of backlinks for their blogs.
Till now I was just checking on yahoo . Thnx for this list I will try all of these
Do try it out Mahendra, you don’t have to login to use these tools as it is required in Yahoo!
I like Analyze Backlinks and Open Site Explorer, I do not like link diagnosis because it ask me to install a plugin. Thanks
I often use Backlink Watch for checking links. Thanks for providing the other website.
The problem I have with sites and scripts that show your backlinks is that they never give the same result. I’ve had sites claim I have thousands only to check another and it says I have about a dozen.
I did check out the first one and actually found links I had left on long forgotten blogs that I used to enjoy reading but had lost their url.
very nice sites all in this post, i use always backlinkwatch, now i jump to Analyze backlinks, because it having one great option “Don’t repeat backlinks from same domain:” i like it very much and t useful
I never keep track of my blacklinks, although I should. I just write, and promote my stuff, and network with other people.
Looks like the services you’ve added will be of a lot of help.
I’m not sure why we need to check our backlinks, is it because only then will we understand how to build backlinks (because we see what types of posts will get the backlinks, and what types of sites will be linking to ours)?
I;m using sheerseo.com to check my backlinks.
Nice collection, this is very helpful.
Few of the important tools which are missed is also mentioned in my article.
Backlink Watch
Yahoo site explorer
iwebtool
are few of them.
Apart from pop up problem, Backlinkwatch gives awesome results. I am using it
The problem I have with sites and scripts that show your backlinks is that they never give the same result. I’ve had sites claim I have thousands only to check another and it says I have about a dozen.
I agree totally with keshav. So whom should we trust. Which site , which script checks our site with every site and shows the correct accurate results. May be it depends on the page rank of the sites on which we have backlink.
It is such a shame the API keys have been stopped with Yahoo etc!!
I think they should have still allowed the tool but possibly on a pay basis and they would have made a fortune!!
I have checked all the available tools and not anyone is as good a the Yahoo tool was!!
I agree totally with keshav. So whom should we trust. Which site , which script checks our site with every site and shows the correct accurate results.
These back link checker are used by me but i like ahrefs.com because it upadate almost every day and the others take some weeks even a month.
Agree Vivek, I ussually use analyzebacklinks, backlinkwatch, and opensiteexplorer. The 3 of this is the most accurate I think.
Thanks for this useful post. i like ahrefs.
Hi Whiztechy,
I came upon this article in my pursuit to look for a really reliable free backlink checker tool/site to check if the backlinks I’ve been trying very hard to manually build for my newly acquired PR 2 domain name for a domain monetize opportunity…and in my count I’ve so far already done 50+ manual backlink efforts for my domain name, but sadly none of these backlinks were reflected, or tracked, by all the tools you’ve mentioned in your article. I’m just frustrated to continuously work building backlinks without the guarantee that my efforts are really accounted for by search engines.
Could you kindly give me some helpful advice?
@The Believer
Try Ahrefs.com.. It shows backlinks for the current day too…Very effective and one of the best here…
Thanks to for your collection of this seo tools. I agree with you about backlink checker but I chose opensite explorer. It is most powerful.
I also normally use backlink watch. And also sir the w3tool is not working it 404-ing
Getting good Backlink is important, but, getting rid of bad backlinks is much more important now.
Thanks for this article. Now I have a list of online backlink checkers, all in one single page. Very useful information. By the way, does anyone know how frequently Backlinkwatch.com updates itself?
I suggested https://ahrefs.com. You can get dofollow, nofollow, image, .giv, .edu and backlinks independently.
https://ahrefs.com/ is best for checking , try it
Hello,
I’m really confused about back links. I have been submitting articles to article directors, web directories, commenting on blog posts and also using socialadr, but when I use the back link checker, I notice that I do not have any back links. I have even submitted my first article to ezinearticles which was approved. Can someone tell me how long it takes for the back links to show up. What is the procedure?