How to find "backlinks" onto my site

[Justin Smith]

I expect most of you on here will remember Yahoo site explorer which used to list all the backlinks (or external links) onto any site. Does anyone know if there`s an equivalent since Yahoo`s demise ?

 

[StephenSumner]

There are various tools out there, but the one considered to be the most comprehensive and useful is called ahrefs.com

 

[Darren_Ssc]

A lot of these 'seo' sites now require payment or credit card number for free-trial.

Here is a basic free option:
https://smallseotools.com/backlink-checker/

Sometimes you get different results by changing the format, for example:

http://example may return a different result to
http://www.example

and so on..

 

[StephenSumner]

The backlink tools that do the best job are always going to be a pay for service, the free ones are generally pretty out of date or their corpus of data is much smaller. If it's important, pay for it.

 

[ProspectedSEO]

The best tools for checking backlinks are:

Ahrefs, Monitor Backlinks,
SEO Spyglass and
CognitiveSEO Backlink Analysis

 

[jackanderson]

There are different tools to check backlinks:
Some great tools are Ahref, Semrush, Majestic and Moz, etc.

 

[UKcentric]

It's a good idea to combine the results from as many different tools as you can since they tend to all give different results (varying degrees of up-to-dateness).

Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz and Majestic are professional tools for this task.

 

[Darkterror]

Like somebody already mentiones ahrefs.com, then majestic.com, then semrush.com, then some various google operators which will allow you to do that. And yes, they are paid, and comes along with all other tools like keyword research and so on and on.

 

[stugster]

+1 for the Google Search Console is probably the easiest solution.

Log in to the GSC, click "Links" on the left hand side, and voilà!

 

[fisicx]

On the other hand...

Why do you need to know? In another thread you mentioned that your ranking has plummeted which suggests none of those backlinks were of any use.

 

[itsnathanhere]

Just to note: Ahrefs will show you some of your backlinks free of charge, just not all of them. It's handy if you don't need specifics and just need to know how many links you have, domain score etc.

 

[Clinton]

https://neilpatel.com/backlinks/

Cheaper and better.

 

[jackanderson]

There are various tools out there, but the one considered to be the most comprehensive and useful is called ahrefs.com
SEO Spyglass and CognitiveSEO Backlink Analysis are also helpful for monitoring backlinks.

 

[fisicx]

There are various tools out there, but the one considered to be the most comprehensive and useful is called ahrefs.com
SEO Spyglass and CognitiveSEO Backlink Analysis are also helpful for monitoring backlinks.

That's not what you said earlier:

Some great tools are Ahref, Semrush, Majestic and Moz, etc.

I'm confused now. Which ones do you suggest we use?

 

[onebasemedia]

There are various tools for checking backlinks of a website.

Some of the best tools are:
1. Ahrefs
2. Open Site Explorer
3. Google Search Console
4. SEMRush

 

[Harson]

Lot of Tools are available in online. Small SEO Tool, watchbacklink, etc.

 

[mannierichardson214]

Learn your niche very well, use Ahrefs and put them in Excell file or something. Track your progress.

 

[alagu]

I expect most of you on here will remember Yahoo site explorer which used to list all the backlinks (or external links) onto any site. Does anyone know if there`s an equivalent since Yahoo`s demise ?

Lot of tools availables. also Search operators is best way to get backlinks as per your domain name

 

[antropy]

This is quite a useful one - https://monitorbacklinks.com/seo-tools/free-backlink-checker

 

[Aishley Giles]

There are many tools to check backlinks pointing to your site, such as ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz, etc. If you're looking for a free tool then you can use Ubersuggest.

 

[DigitalSheppard]

As mentioned already on this thread, go with ahrefs.

It's a fantastic tool and will identify all the links - functioning and not - pointing to your website.

 

[philipking2019]

As mentioned already on this thread, go with ahrefs.

It's a fantastic tool and will identify all the links - functioning and not - pointing to your website.

Agreed. When it comes to checking backlinks, there's only one tool that comes to mind and that's Ahrefs

 

[HostOX]

Google itself, I have all our websites on webmaster tools - We can see a good amount of info, backlinks and the page / keywords, referring Domains, search traffic and keywords.

Set it up, leave it to run and check it every few weeks.

 

[fisicx]

We can see a good amount of info, backlinks and the page / keywords, referring Domains, search traffic and keywords.

You see the bits Google want you to see. There are be many more backlinks than Google tells you about.

 

[John Liverstone]

The best tool available is Ahrefs, you can find some info for free, but the paid subscription is great.

 

[fisicx]

Why this obsession with discovering backlinks?

 

[Clinton]

Why this obsession with discovering backlinks?

You no understand?

More backlinks meaning more good in Google ranking. All the gurus saying do it the guest post and forum posting to up increase SEO.

Looking for high DA sites to get best results.

 

[Darren_Ssc]

Why this obsession with discovering backlinks?

You can see 'some' of the backlinks that your competitors have and 'some' of these are easy to replicate.....

....the irony of which is lost on a lot of folks.

 

[fisicx]

Indeed. I can see a competitor has a link from hairybikerbabes.com and I can get one of my own because it means my ranking will get better. That's what my Punjabi SEO guru says.

 

[Darren_Ssc]

Indeed. I can see a competitor has a link from hairybikerbabes.com and I can get one of my own because it means my ranking will get better. That's what my Punjabi SEO guru says.

I can imagine a link from hairybikerbabes will do wonders for the rankings of my nursery furniture website.

 

[iilyasgohar]

The best tools for checking backlinks i will prefer these three.

1. Ahrefs
2. Majestic SEO
3. SEMrush

 

[fisicx]

The best tools for checking backlinks i will prefer these three.

Excellent! It will help to find all those hairybikerbabes links that are so valuable to my competitors.

 

[annap]

Why would you not want to check your backlinks? It's not an obsession for most people - just another regular checkup for a healthy website.
My vote goes to SEO Spyglass - checks, monitors changes and pulls in links from Google Search Console in addition to its own DB of links

 

[fisicx]

Why would you not want to check your backlinks? It's not an obsession for most people - just another regular checkup for a healthy website.

And what do you do with this information?

 

[annap]

Aside from the obvious like making sure I don't have too many low quality or nofollow links it's a way to find out who has linked to my website that I could contact directly to, say, collaborate with or add to my network/list of contacts.

 

[fisicx]

Aside from the obvious like making sure I don't have too many low quality or nofollow links...

Suppose you find a low quality link, what next? Google is going to ignore it anyway so knowing it exists has no value. Same with no-follow links. Does it matter how many or how few there are?

And how do you know a link is low quality? It may be that Google really likes this link and it's give you a boost.

 

[StevePoster]

With my experience in Ahrefs, they are not only focusing on links but also with keywords and content because they want to give us more information to be use from our respected websites. Content explorer and keywords explorer are one of the greatest features.