How To Check Backlinks To Your Website? (Includes Video)

Check backlinks to your website

Last updated - October 11, 2023

Do you feel that your website doesn’t rank higher on Google and other search engines despite having the best team work at it and sincere SEO efforts? This can happen more often than not when your website lacks backlinks.

This blog post will guide you through the specifics of what backlinks are, why they are so important, and how to check backlinks to your website, and much more.

What are Backlinks?

Understanding backlinks

Backlinks are created when one website links to another website by mentioning it on their own. Backlinks are a great way of making mutually-benefitting connections through external websites. These connections increase the traction on your site while bringing in more visitors.

Let’s take the case where Company A posts a blog on ‘How to Improve Visibility of eCommerce Business’. Company B, a well-known eCommerce firm, has a relevant link on its website and links it to that blog. This hyperlink is a backlink for Company A.

In short, a backlink from another website that links back to your website and such backlinks are known as incoming or inbound links.

Why are Backlinks Important?

The authority of your page is determined by backlinks, which is why they are crucial to your website. Since it makes you appear in more relevant search results, you should have a high-authority domain.

When you begin to gain backlinks to your website, it simply means that other websites enjoy endorsing your content or products. And endorsements are a great way to increase your site’s traffic as well.

We have listed a few tenets on why backlinks are important for your website.

Rank higher on Google

Higher ranking on Google

Google’s algorithm will believe that you have relevant information that other websites might find worthwhile to link to if it notices that multiple high-authority websites have linked back to your pages. 

When high-authority websites start backlinking to your website, Google will decide that your website is valuable enough to link to. Therefore, placing your website higher in the search results in order for more people to find it.

Form Mutual Relationships

Building mutual relationships

Reaching out to high-authority blogs and websites gives you the chance to develop a mutually-benefiting relationship with them. You can start building your company’s trust through a long-term partnership with influential persons in your field.

Building relationships is crucial for your business as it enables knowledge transfer as well as promotes growth.

Gain Referral Traffic

Increasing referral traffic

When a high-authority website links to your website, it diverts relevant traffic to your website. An increase in traffic will eventually lead to an increase in sales. One of the best things about referral traffic is that they are all genuine leads and not due to click baits.
Studies have reported that 92% of users trust referral resources and B2B companies have a 30% higher conversion rate and a 37% higher retention rate with referral traffic.

Build your Own Brand

Building your own brand

Gaining backlinks enables you to position yourself as a high-authority business in your field. By acquiring more backlinks you are increasing the visibility of your brand. It’s an excellent approach to establish your expertise in a field and increase brand recognition.

Backlinks – a Two-way Street

Backlinks are a two way relationship

You now know that backlinks can do your website a great deal of good and it is the same with other websites who link to your. It is for this reason, backlinking is mutual and needs to happen from both ends of the business relationship. 

Earning Backlinks

Earning backlinks or incoming backlinks is when an external website links their content or products to your website. Incoming backlinks requests can be in two forms:

  • Paid backlink – the external website will agree to pay a sum of money for the backlink to appear in your website for a set period of time.
  • Collaboration – the external website will agree to add your content or product as a backlink on their website in exchange for the same.

Giving Backlinks

Giving backlink or outgoing backlinks is when you come across a high-authority website whose content is relevant to your business and wish for them to backlink your website or content to theirs. The paid and collaboration backlinks principles apply to outgoing backlinks as well.

What is Backlink Analysis?

An in-depth assessment of the number and quality of websites linked to your website is known as backlink analysis. Backlink analysis considers all relevant aspects of your backlinks, including their quantity, quality, anchor text, and recentness, as well as other elements that can help your SEO.

You can perform a backlink analysis on your website or even on a competitor’s website in order to learn how well each is doing in terms of obtaining highly sought-after backlinks and improving keyword ranking.

Significance of Backlink Analysis

Importance of backlink analysis

An analysis of your backlinks is quite valuable. 

First, a backlink analysis will give you an idea of how helpful the material on your site is to other people.

Usually, websites will link to yours if they value and respect your brand and your content. Having a significant number of backlinks may be a sign that your business or content has dedicated followers who want to spread the word about it

Second, one of your SEO goals might be defined by a backlink analysis.

You can find out how many high-quality backlinks you need to build to boost your SEO and outperform a top-ranking competitor by researching them.

Components of Backlink Analysis

Important components of backlink analysis

Although there are a lot of parameters in backlink analysis, there are four non-negotiable components that must be assessed.

  • Total links – check how many sites, in total, are linking to your website
  • Unique domains – check how many unique domains are linking, what they are, and how they can influence your business.
  • Quality of links – check how authoritative are the domains and websites linking to your website.
  • Anchor texts – check the keywords and phrases on your website the external websites are linking to

Executing these four components of backlink analysis can show you the comprehensive quality of your backlinks and provide insights on the areas that need improvement.

Backlink Analysis – a Proficient SEO Tactic

Best SEO tactics

Each and every SEO specialist should be capable of performing backlink analysis. After all, along with content and RankBrain, backlinks are still one of Google’s top three ranking determinants.

You cannot undervalue the significance of obtaining high-quality backlinks if you want to enhance your organic traffic. However, in order to do that, you must discover the sources of the backlinks your competition is building and the factors influencing their rankings.

Top Backlink Checking Tools

Ahrefs

ahrefs logo

Ahrefs is an incredible and perhaps the most effective backlink analyzer for your business. Some of the top businesses frequently turn to Ahrefs when trying to find a trustworthy backlink checker tool. You can regulate and obtain backlinks with the help of Ahrefs, which offers a wealth of data.

You can view new, broken, as well as abandoned links to a site using Ahrefs. You can begin building a relationship with those websites as a result of new links in order to obtain additional links in the future. 

When links are broken or removed, you can try to get them restored by getting in touch with the websites that originally connected to you.

You can keep track of backlink rankings with the help of Ahrefs. Along with the organic traffic to each page, you can watch the growth and decline of your backlinks. With its ‘Most linked-to Pages’ feature, Ahrefs also aids in revealing which pages are most successful.

Moz Link Explorer

Moz link explorer logo

Moz Link Explorer, just like Ahrefs, is an efficient backlink checker you can use to enhance your business. With this impressive tool you can find useful information on how to create better backlinks.

You can also quickly monitor the backlinks and receive relevant data pertaining to them. Moz Link Explorer lets you generate data about any website by simply entering a website in the search bar.

This backlink analyzing tool provides an array of opportunities to:

  • Fix damaged backlinks to your site
  • Executing backlink prospecting
  • Search new as well as lost backlinks
  • Analyze competitor’s backlinks
  • Explore opportunities for link building
  • Assess anchor texts used in backlinks, etc

Semrush

Semrush logo

This is yet another great backlink checking tool that can be used to exert the full potential of backlinks. With daily updates, Semrush maintains a significantly large library of data. You may examine the backlink data for your company with accuracy thanks to the consistent update of data.

It assists you in figuring out how to outperform your competitors in the search engine results. You can keep tabs on several competing sites simultaneously and discover who is linking to them.

You may learn who is linking to your page and the authority of those sites with the aid of Semrush. You can also use this tool to see if your backlinks are passing any link juice to your website.

Now, link juice is the value transferred from one website to another. Semrush will enable you to check to see whether high-authority websites are linking to your page and giving you additional link juice.

Use Google Search Console to Check Backlinks

Google Search console logo

Did you know that you can use Google to check backlinks? Yes, Google has come up with their own backlink checking tool known as Google Search Console. It is a free tool that can be used to effectively improve your websites ranking in the search results.

Google Search Console lets you to keep track of and maintain your website’s presence in the search engines.

By using Google Search Console, one can check whether Google can crawl your website. Crawling is crucial in  order for Google to prioritize your site in the search results, since it enables Google to comprehend the contexts of your domain.

Google Search Console allows you to correct indexing issues that might have hindered sites from accessing your website and connecting to it. You can also use this tool to access search traffic information for your website and see how frequently you show up in Google search results. Additionally, you can observe which search terms lead to your website in the search results.

What are Toxic Links?

Understanding toxic links

Any backlink that may be classified or identified as the wrong type, which can deteriorate your site’s organic ranking and performance is known as toxic, spammy, bad, or unnatural links. 

More elaborately, if any backlink attempts to manipulate the search ranking by violating the Google Search Essentials, formerly known as Webmaster Guidelines will be deemed as toxic links. 

These toxic links, if unnoticed, can do irreparable damage to your website. Therefore, it is highly advised to execute timely checks for toxic links on your website and eliminate them as quickly as possible.

Common Signs of Identifying Toxic Links

There are several signs that help identify toxic links and we have listed them below

  • Links that are redirected from sites that are setup only for linking out.
  • Links that come from websites or pages that are irrelevant
  • Links that come from websites that are not indexed by Google
  • Links that do not fit the content and are forcefully placed
  • Links, whose content is present in every page of a website 

Checking and Eliminating Toxic Links

Check and eliminate toxic backlinks

When it comes to toxic links, you need to first check and identify them and then eliminate them, and here is how you do it.

Semrush is one of the best tools you can use to identify toxic links. Follow the step-by-step procedure to efficiently identify toxic links.

Open and Setup the Semrush Backlink Audit Tool

Semrush setup dashboard

To do this you need to select your domain and define your brand name, domain category, and target country/region. This will help Semrush to find and eliminate any toxic links.

View the Analysis of the Toxicity of your Site’s Links

Semrush view analysis dashboard

Once the audit tool has run, it will display a comprehensive analysis and statistical insights of the toxicity of your website’s links. 

It is at this stage that you must focus on the overall toxicity score, prospective toxic and non-toxic domains, and the breakdown figures of the toxicity levels.

Audit the Toxic Links on your Website

Semrush audit toxic links dashboard

Once you’ve viewed the full analysis of the toxicity of your website’s links, click on the ‘Go to Review’ button below the Overall Toxicity Score. This will display the page with links that have been marked as toxic.

At this stage you can take one of three actions displayed on the right side:

  • Move to Whitelist
  • Move to Remove list
  • Move to Disavow

Summing Up

One of the SEO fundamentals you ought to learn is how to locate the backlinks referring to a particular website. But when you have the correct tools, you can concentrate your efforts on using the information at your disposal to reduce the link gap with your rivals, generate new connections, or make sure you don’t have any poisonous links that might be compromising your site’s organic visibility.

Further Reading

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