If you want your online business to succeed, you can’t rely on people finding your website by chance. You need an SEO strategy to ensure the quantity and quality of website traffic, and to increase exposure for your brand. This strategy should include generating backlinks through guest posts and monitoring backlinks of both your website and your competitors’ sites.
Backlink monitoring tools make this process faster and more straightforward. With these tools, you can track which sites have linked to you, check if the links are good or bad, and monitor the distribution of anchors to ensure that Google doesn’t penalize your website.
There are many tools available in the market. I’ve put together the best ten for those on a limited budget. First, here’s a quick summary:
| Software | Starting From | Best Thing About It | Biggest Problem |
| Backlinkseo.com | $10 a month | Detailed analysis of backlink profile | Can’t identify which anchors are best for each page (though this feature will be added soon) |
| OpenLinkProfiler | Free | Gives definition of each SEO term for SEO newbies | Limited number of backlinks displayed |
| SEO Spyglass | $124 a year | Works on any operating system | Not web-based; Needs to be downloaded |
| Rank Signals | Free | Displays site’s social sharing metrics and Alexa rank | Allowable daily query limited |
| MoonSearch | Free | Gives description of site with backlink | Technical terms not defined |
| Ahrefs | $7 for seven days | Does quick backlink analysis | Paid plans are expensive |
| Monitor Backlinks | $25 a month | Very user-friendly | Disavow tool doesn’t always work |
| Backlink Watch | Free | Allows monitoring of up to 1000 links | No option to export reports |
| SE Ranking | $39 a month | Gives dates backlink was first discovered, checked | Lags occasionally |
| GoingUp’s Link Diagnosis | Free | Free | Only basic information provided |
With that out of the way, we’ll look at each tool in turn to decide which one is the best overall. Let’s get started!
Backlinkseo.com
Backlinkseo.com is a great SEO tool. It gives a detailed analysis of your website’s backlink profile, allowing you to optimize your strategy. It analyzes link distribution, so you know which pages have enough links and which need some additional focus. Backlinkseo.com will also soon have an automated algorithm that can help you identify which anchors are the best for each page.
Backlinkseo also monitors the status of your backlinks. If a link changes from do-follow to no-follow or is removed, you’ll receive a notification.
The auto backlink import is a cool feature, too. You can connect to your Google Analytics and Google Search Console account, automatically importing traffic-driving backlinks.
Backlinkseo.com offers a free trial (though you do have to create an account.) It has four paid plans to choose from. The Solo plan, which monitors up to 1000 backlinks, costs just $10 per month. Then there’s the Startup plan ($25 per month for 2500 monitored backlinks,) the Business plan ($49 per month for 5000 monitored backlinks,) and the Agency plan ($99 per month for 10,000 monitored backlinks.)
For the features and detailed analysis on offer, Backlinkseo is excellent value.
OpenLinkProfiler
OpenLinkProfiler is a free link research tool. Simply enter the relevant domain in the search field and voila! OpenLinkProfiler tells you how many unique links from other websites point to your site, how many point to the homepage, and which are trusted links. It also gives an overall link influence score, which it calculates based on the quality and quantity of links.
OpenLinkProfiler will give you the specific anchor text and link destinations for each link. The quantity of no-follow and no-index links are also specified in the analysis. If you’re not sure what a term means, just hover the cursor over the word, and the tool will give you a short definition.
OpenLinkProfiler only allows you to track 100 backlinks in total. You also can’t see the full URLs of the pages that link to you unless you create an account. Fortunately, like the rest of OpenLinkProfiler’s service, creating an account is free.
SEO Spyglass
Although it’s new software, SEO Spyglass gives excellent results. This tool monitors the websites competing for your keywords and analyzes their backlinks using over 400 different search engines.SEO Spyglass calculates each link’s value and tells you which ones drive the most traffic to your competitor.
SEO Spyglass works on any operating system and can optimize sites in any language. The tool itself is also available in multiple languages.
You can download SEO Spyglass and analyze up to 1100 backlinks for free. You need to upgrade to the paid version to export your results. The SEO Spyglass Professional for website owners and webmasters costs $124 a year. The Enterprise edition, which costs $299 a year, is ideal for SEO experts and companies.
Rank Signals
Rank Signals is another free tool that can help with your link-building. Just type in the domain name of the site you want to analyze. You’ll see the page rank, unique domain links, and Alexa traffic rank. Rank Signals also shows the site’s sharing metrics across social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
You can use RankSignals to search out any bad or spammy links. It also tags the no-follow links that are discounted by search engines.
Once you exceed the daily query limit, you can get further access by setting up a free account. You can also download the useful Quick SEO Chrome extension.
MoonSearch
MoonSearch is a free backlink monitoring tool that gives you a list of all the sites which backlink to yours. There are two ways to view a website’s backlink profile: a standard SEO analysis, or a specific backlink analysis. I recommend using this second option if your focus is exclusively on backlinks.
The backlink results are sorted from highest to lowest Moon Rank. You can also choose to sort them based on PageRank or Alexa ranking. MoonSearch tells you the reputation of each result based on Yahoo and Dmoz catalogs. If you click on a result, you get a useful description of the website and its provider.
MoonSearch is simple to use, and its at-a-glance results chart makes it ideal for SEO newbies and professionals alike.You can track your link acquisition so you can make money blogging.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is one of the most popular backlink monitoring tools on the market. It can crawl 4.1 million pages per minute, meaning you can see lost, new and broken backlinks almost immediately. Unlike any other tool on this list, Ahrefs can detect backlinks in JavaScript as well as traditional HTML.
There’s also no need to guess why some backlinks suddenly dropped out of your site – Ahrefs gives you the reason so you can make the necessary adjustments. If you’re new to SEO, Ahrefs offers a comprehensive library of free resources and learning materials.
Ahrefs offers a 7-day trial for $7, and when your trial is up, you can choose between the Lite and Standard plans. The Lite plan is ideal for solopreneurs and freelancers and costs $99 per month. The Standard plan is best for SEO consultants and in-house marketers and costs $179 per month.
Monitor Backlinks
Monitor Backlinks is a user-friendly tool and provides all the backlink analysis information you need in a simple dashboard. This tool makes it easy to identify websites to contact for outreach and link-building. And if a site removes your link, Monitor Backlinks will let you know.
Monitor Backlinks will notify you of new links to your site, meaning you can disavow the spammy backlinks that can harm your SEO. However, some users have complained that the disavow tool doesn’t always work. This tool can also show how changes in your backlink strategy affect your Google ranking over time.
Monitor Backlinks offers three paid plans. The Starter plan allows you to monitor 2500 links and one domain for $25 per month. The Plus plan, at $47.40 per month, lets you monitor up to 12500 links and two domains. The Professional plan is $89.91 per month and allows you to monitor up to 25000 links and four domains.
Backlink Watch
You can monitor up to 1000 links for free with Backlink Watch. Unfortunately, this tool doesn’t allow you to export or save your backlink reports.
Otherwise, Backlink Watch performs well. It provides information about the quality and quantity of links pointing to your website as well as specifying anchor texts, PageRank, and total outbound links on a page.
Backlink Watch is a great starting point for beginners who are just starting to get the hang of SEO. But if you’re an SEO specialist, you’ll be better served by other tools that provide more in-depth reports.
SE Ranking
SE Ranking specializes in keyword research, giving you real-time rankings of your website’s keywords across search engines. It also offers a backlink checking and monitoring tool that performs well, although it lags occasionally.
SE Ranking analyzes each backlink across 15 SEO parameters. These include the anchor text, the IP address of the linking site’s server, the number of no-follow and do-follow links on the page, and the Alexa rank. This tool can also tell you the date a backlink was first discovered and the date of the last backlink check.
SE Ranking offers a 14-day free trial (you need to create an account first.) It has three paid plans: Optimum, Plus, and Enterprise. The Optimum plan costs $39 per month and allows you to monitor up to 5000 backlinks for ten websites. The most popular plan, the Plus plan, costs $89 per month to monitor up to 25,000 backlinks for an unlimited number of sites. The Enterprise plan costs $189 per month and covers 75000 backlinks for an unlimited number of websites.
GoingUp’s Link Diagnosis
GoingUp’s backlink monitoring tool is free, but you need to create an account. This tool will keep track of all your inbound links and check where they’re coming from. Just enter the URL of the site you want to analyze, and you’ll get relevant information such as PageRank, anchor text, link strength, and link location.
Link Diagnosis has relatively limited functionality. It’s okay for a basic backlink check, but if you’re doing more in-depth SEO analysis, you’ll want to look elsewhere. SEO professionals will not find this tool sufficient for their needs.
And the Winner Is…
Now that we’ve looked at the ten best backlink monitoring tools on the market, I’m sure you’re wondering which is the best one overall.
After looking closely at all of these tools, I’ve concluded that Backlinkseo.com is the best backlink monitoring tool. Although many of the listed tools are free, they provide only limited information or only allow you to monitor a limited number of links.
Backlinkseo.com provides all the data you need to improve your SEO efforts. Its detailed analysis is second to none, and the integration with Google Analytics and Search Console is particularly useful. And for just $10 per month to monitor up to 1000 links with the Solo plan, Backlinkseo is excellent value.
You must decide which tool is the best for your needs. But whether you’re an SEO professional or just starting, Backlinkseo is the one I would recommend.
For more useful tools for online business owners, check out our guide to thebestaccounting software, and the bestblogger outreach software. You might also want to check out our roundup of thebestblog title generator.
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