5 Backlink Analysis Tools to Diagnose the Health of Your Link Profile
Your website is like a human body.
It has basic necessities for survival. Lacking these can lead to poor website health—or even death (otherwise known as being deindexed by Google).
Just like you need food, shelter and clothing to stay healthy, your website needs quality content, SEO and backlinks.
Since backlinks are the hardest to view and manage, we’re going to hook you up with a great backlink analysis tool today.
These tools are designed to help you clean out the spammy and low-quality backlinks that can make a site sick.
You’ll be able to ensure that your site always has plenty of good backlinks, and if it doesn’t, you’ll be able to take steps to acquire them.
This is why you need a backlink analysis tool to monitor your backlinks.
With it, you’ll be able to see what’s affecting your website’s health before your organic traffic takes a hit.
Why Backlink Analysis Is Essential
You don’t have full control over your backlinks. Your site can acquire spammy links naturally, or maybe you’re the victim of negative SEO.
But while you can’t control your backlinks, you can track and take care of them. Analyzing your links regularly is critical to ensure that you don’t have too many spammy links, and to avoid Google dropping the hammer on you.
You can disavow those toxic links before they damage your rankings. Or if your rankings have already taken a hit, then finding and disavowing your bad backlinks will help your site recover lost ground and move back up the ranks.
More importantly, by analyzing your backlinks, you’ll know whether or not your link building strategy is working. You can develop a campaign that diversifies and strengthens your backlink profile, and gives your search rankings a boost!
5 Backlink Analysis Tools to Diagnose the Health of Your Link Profile
Manually reviewing your backlinks is incredibly time-consuming.
Instead, here are five of the best backlink analysis tools to automate the process of tracking your site’s backlinks, so that analysis is a breeze.
Let’s dive down the list, shall we?
Monitor Backlinks
As the name suggests, this tool will help keep your backlinks in check.
Upon creating an account and entering your domain, Monitor Backlinks will automatically gather all the links you have and their metrics.
On the Backlinks page, you’ll see the quality of each linking site by its Trust Flow, Citation Flow, MozRank, Domain Authority and Page Authority. The higher the score of the site for these metrics, the more valuable the backlink is that you got from them.
You can easily find your low-quality backlinks by filtering each of these columns from low to high, and carefully analyzing the backlinks at the top of the list.
Another cool feature of Monitor Backlinks is the ability to keep track of and analyze the backlinks your competitors are getting, so you can understand how they’re going about getting their links. Look at your competitors’ best links for inspiration, and try to get the same or similar links so that you can outrank them in SERPs.
You can also disavow low-quality links directly from the tool itself, as well as set up disavow rules to automatically filter out toxic links from particular sites.
Plus, Monitor Backlinks has a Free Backlink Checker that you can use for quick backlink analysis, even without a paid subscription.
Enter a URL in the search bar to gain access to hundreds of its top backlinks, along with metrics to help you analyze each link including the AC Rank, anchor text, nofollow/dofollow status and more.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs started out as a backlink analysis tool but has grown into something even bigger, and arguably better, ever since.
Upon entering a URL, you’ll immediately get access to its backlink profile data for the last three months.
What makes Ahrefs stand out is its vast features to choose from on the left. On top of backlinks, you can also see organic keyword rankings, competitors’ pages and domains, top referring content and more.
Another cool feature is the ability to check the best pages by links and their growth. You’ll get a look at site pages (whether yours or a competitor’s) that are getting lots of links quickly. This feature is a great way to determine site pages that are worth looking into.
For example, if your competitor has a page that’s getting more links than anyone in your niche, you can analyze the page and determine the factors that explain why it’s generating lots of backlinks. Maybe the content is in-depth and informative, or the layout is super-sleek and helps improve the UX.
Use your observations to build your content the same way in the hope of attracting the same amount of links.
SEMrush
Similar to Ahrefs, SEMrush is an all-inclusive SEO tool that not only lets you analyze your backlinks but also research for keywords, brainstorm for content topics and more.
Upon entering your URL in the search bar and clicking on the Backlinks option from the drop-down menu, you’ll gain access to a wealth of data for your site’s or competitor’s backlinks.
Aside from the actual backlinks, SEMrush gives you access to the anchors used for the links, competitors that share the same backlinks, referring IPs and more.
When comparing the backlinks of competing domains, the Backlink Gap will help you in this regard. Upon typing up to five websites (including your site), you’ll see domains that some of the sites have backlinks from.
The graph will show you the number of links that the sites have. Click on the site to reveal what those backlinks are, so you can try and find a way to get the same links for yourself.
If you added a site as a project, the tool’s Backlink Audit feature will show the toxicity score of your links. The higher the score, the more reason you should analyze it more carefully—you may need to disavow the link from your site.
You can do that from within the tool, as well, and can choose to either whitelist the domain and all its links, or delete the link from your list and disavow it.
Majestic
Majestic is one of the most dedicated link analysis tools on the market. What makes it quite unique is its Topical Trust Flow and Flow Metrics graph.
Topical Trust Flow is one of Majestic’s own metrics that shows you the percentage of links you have in each category assigned by the tool.
For example, if you have a site about computers, then the majority of your links should fall under the Computers / Software / Data Compression category.
If not, then that would explain why your rankings are low for your keywords. You need to get more relevant backlinks from sites under this category so you can boost your Trust Flow.
The Flow Metrics graph shows you a visual representation of your backlink profile. Ideally, you want to see the most links clustered at the top-right corner of the graph, which would mean that your linking sites have high Trust and Citation Flow.
Using these feature will help you unearth more insights about your backlink data, especially when comparing your site to your competitors.
Moz
Rounding out the list is Moz, another comprehensive SEO tool in the vein of Ahrefs and SEMrush.
Aside from Moz Pro, which requires you to have a paid subscription to use, their Open Site Explorer is a free tool that lets you check the backlinks of any website. If you’re simply focused on backlink analysis, then this tool should be enough to help you check and stay on top of your links.
Just enter the URL you want to track.
You’ll see each backlink’s Domain Authority and Page Authority, Moz’s propriety metrics for analyzing site quality.
You’ll also see the Spam Score of each page—the higher the score, the spammier it is. All these indices should help you get an idea of the health of your site’s backlink profile as well as your competitors’.
On the left sidebar, you can see more options to help you with your backlink analysis.
The Top Pages will show you pages from the sites with the most backlinks. Linking Domains will show you the Domain Authority of the sites linking to yours. Lastly, the Spam Analysis will show a graph that categorizes the linking domains based on their Spam Score.
Now It’s Over to You
Analyzing your backlinks is a lot like taking care of another person.
You need to check the vital signs to see if it’s working properly.
If your site has lots of toxic links, then you need to get it treated immediately before your organic rankings drop.
You also need to make sure that it’s getting the nourishment it deserves, and that you’re building high-quality backlinks to keep its health up.
A lot is at stake when taking care of your backlinks. It’s your site on the line.
However, these backlink analysis tools will make the job much more manageable, and help keep your site in top shape.
5 Backlink Analysis Tools to Diagnose the Health of Your Link Profile
Your website is like a human body.
It has basic necessities for survival. Lacking these can lead to poor website health—or even death (otherwise known as being deindexed by Google).
Just like you need food, shelter and clothing to stay healthy, your website needs quality content, SEO and backlinks.
Since backlinks are the hardest to view and manage, we’re going to hook you up with a great backlink analysis tool today.
These tools are designed to help you clean out the spammy and low-quality backlinks that can make a site sick.
You’ll be able to ensure that your site always has plenty of good backlinks, and if it doesn’t, you’ll be able to take steps to acquire them.
This is why you need a backlink analysis tool to monitor your backlinks.
With it, you’ll be able to see what’s affecting your website’s health before your organic traffic takes a hit.
Why Backlink Analysis Is Essential
You don’t have full control over your backlinks. Your site can acquire spammy links naturally, or maybe you’re the victim of negative SEO.
But while you can’t control your backlinks, you can track and take care of them. Analyzing your links regularly is critical to ensure that you don’t have too many spammy links, and to avoid Google dropping the hammer on you.
You can disavow those toxic links before they damage your rankings. Or if your rankings have already taken a hit, then finding and disavowing your bad backlinks will help your site recover lost ground and move back up the ranks.
More importantly, by analyzing your backlinks, you’ll know whether or not your link building strategy is working. You can develop a campaign that diversifies and strengthens your backlink profile, and gives your search rankings a boost!
5 Backlink Analysis Tools to Diagnose the Health of Your Link Profile
Manually reviewing your backlinks is incredibly time-consuming.
Instead, here are five of the best backlink analysis tools to automate the process of tracking your site’s backlinks, so that analysis is a breeze.
Let’s dive down the list, shall we?
Monitor Backlinks
As the name suggests, this tool will help keep your backlinks in check.
Upon creating an account and entering your domain, Monitor Backlinks will automatically gather all the links you have and their metrics.
On the Backlinks page, you’ll see the quality of each linking site by its Trust Flow, Citation Flow, MozRank, Domain Authority and Page Authority. The higher the score of the site for these metrics, the more valuable the backlink is that you got from them.
You can easily find your low-quality backlinks by filtering each of these columns from low to high, and carefully analyzing the backlinks at the top of the list.
Another cool feature of Monitor Backlinks is the ability to keep track of and analyze the backlinks your competitors are getting, so you can understand how they’re going about getting their links. Look at your competitors’ best links for inspiration, and try to get the same or similar links so that you can outrank them in SERPs.
You can also disavow low-quality links directly from the tool itself, as well as set up disavow rules to automatically filter out toxic links from particular sites.
Plus, Monitor Backlinks has a Free Backlink Checker that you can use for quick backlink analysis, even without a paid subscription.
Enter a URL in the search bar to gain access to hundreds of its top backlinks, along with metrics to help you analyze each link including the AC Rank, anchor text, nofollow/dofollow status and more.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs started out as a backlink analysis tool but has grown into something even bigger, and arguably better, ever since.
Upon entering a URL, you’ll immediately get access to its backlink profile data for the last three months.
What makes Ahrefs stand out is its vast features to choose from on the left. On top of backlinks, you can also see organic keyword rankings, competitors’ pages and domains, top referring content and more.
Another cool feature is the ability to check the best pages by links and their growth. You’ll get a look at site pages (whether yours or a competitor’s) that are getting lots of links quickly. This feature is a great way to determine site pages that are worth looking into.
For example, if your competitor has a page that’s getting more links than anyone in your niche, you can analyze the page and determine the factors that explain why it’s generating lots of backlinks. Maybe the content is in-depth and informative, or the layout is super-sleek and helps improve the UX.
Use your observations to build your content the same way in the hope of attracting the same amount of links.
SEMrush
Similar to Ahrefs, SEMrush is an all-inclusive SEO tool that not only lets you analyze your backlinks but also research for keywords, brainstorm for content topics and more.
Upon entering your URL in the search bar and clicking on the Backlinks option from the drop-down menu, you’ll gain access to a wealth of data for your site’s or competitor’s backlinks.
Aside from the actual backlinks, SEMrush gives you access to the anchors used for the links, competitors that share the same backlinks, referring IPs and more.
When comparing the backlinks of competing domains, the Backlink Gap will help you in this regard. Upon typing up to five websites (including your site), you’ll see domains that some of the sites have backlinks from.
The graph will show you the number of links that the sites have. Click on the site to reveal what those backlinks are, so you can try and find a way to get the same links for yourself.
If you added a site as a project, the tool’s Backlink Audit feature will show the toxicity score of your links. The higher the score, the more reason you should analyze it more carefully—you may need to disavow the link from your site.
You can do that from within the tool, as well, and can choose to either whitelist the domain and all its links, or delete the link from your list and disavow it.
Majestic
Majestic is one of the most dedicated link analysis tools on the market. What makes it quite unique is its Topical Trust Flow and Flow Metrics graph.
Topical Trust Flow is one of Majestic’s own metrics that shows you the percentage of links you have in each category assigned by the tool.
For example, if you have a site about computers, then the majority of your links should fall under the Computers / Software / Data Compression category.
If not, then that would explain why your rankings are low for your keywords. You need to get more relevant backlinks from sites under this category so you can boost your Trust Flow.
The Flow Metrics graph shows you a visual representation of your backlink profile. Ideally, you want to see the most links clustered at the top-right corner of the graph, which would mean that your linking sites have high Trust and Citation Flow.
Using these feature will help you unearth more insights about your backlink data, especially when comparing your site to your competitors.
Moz
Rounding out the list is Moz, another comprehensive SEO tool in the vein of Ahrefs and SEMrush.
Aside from Moz Pro, which requires you to have a paid subscription to use, their Open Site Explorer is a free tool that lets you check the backlinks of any website. If you’re simply focused on backlink analysis, then this tool should be enough to help you check and stay on top of your links.
Just enter the URL you want to track.
You’ll see each backlink’s Domain Authority and Page Authority, Moz’s propriety metrics for analyzing site quality.
You’ll also see the Spam Score of each page—the higher the score, the spammier it is. All these indices should help you get an idea of the health of your site’s backlink profile as well as your competitors’.
On the left sidebar, you can see more options to help you with your backlink analysis.
The Top Pages will show you pages from the sites with the most backlinks. Linking Domains will show you the Domain Authority of the sites linking to yours. Lastly, the Spam Analysis will show a graph that categorizes the linking domains based on their Spam Score.
Now It’s Over to You
Analyzing your backlinks is a lot like taking care of another person.
You need to check the vital signs to see if it’s working properly.
If your site has lots of toxic links, then you need to get it treated immediately before your organic rankings drop.
You also need to make sure that it’s getting the nourishment it deserves, and that you’re building high-quality backlinks to keep its health up.
A lot is at stake when taking care of your backlinks. It’s your site on the line.
However, these backlink analysis tools will make the job much more manageable, and help keep your site in top shape.
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