A quality link profile still plays one of the key roles in achieving high positions in search results. Therefore, it is important to regularly monitor links to understand from which sources they come, how relevant they are to your topic, and how they affect the ranking of the site. As an online marketing agency, we know for sure what impact links have on your sites.
In this article, we suggest you consider in more detail what external links are and what their importance is for Google, why you need to analyze them, and how to do it.
What are backlinks, how do they affect SEO
Backlinks (backlinks, external links to the site) are hyperlinks that lead to your site from other resources on the Internet. They are one of the ranking factors in search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. The set of all external links that lead to your site is called a link profile. In the promotion strategy, working with links is an external optimization of sites. By the way, you can learn a little more about what is SEO site promotion in principle in one of the previous articles of our blog.
Search engines consider the number of sites linking to your site as a kind of vote of confidence or recommendation for the target site. The more high-quality and relevant links point to your resource, the higher its authority and trust from search engines.
However, not all links are equally useful for SEO. Search algorithms take into account many factors when evaluating the importance of a link, including:
Authority and trust of the link source (donor site)
Relevance of the topic of the link source to your site
Quality and usefulness of the content on which the link is placed
Link attributes (dofollow/nofollow, anchor text)
Naturalness of the site's link mass
A large number of low-quality or irrelevant links can harm your site's search engine rankings. Therefore, site promotion with links should be thoughtful and balanced.
Why look for external links?
Regular monitoring of links from other Internet resources and on competitor sites has several important reasons:
You can control how many new links your site has received over a certain period, from which sources they come, and how this affects search visibility.
The number of links may include spammy, irrelevant, or malicious links that must be rejected to avoid sanctions from search engines.
By studying the links of competing sites, you can find new opportunities for obtaining links and applying successful promotion strategies.
Checking the link profile allows you to obtain valuable information about the success of the link strategy, which ultimately helps to make informed decisions and changes. This is especially important to do at the start of work, when it comes to promoting a young site in search engines, because in this case, it is important to get not only an effective but also a safe external promotion strategy.
How to find external links for free
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free tool that allows webmasters to manage their site and track its performance in search results. With it, you can quickly find all the links to the site. To do this, go to the "Links" section using Google Search Console.
Here you will find information about the links leading to your site, including the number of links and a list of donor sites. Use the information provided to evaluate the links leading to your site and identify potential problems.
Neilpatel
Neilpatel.com offers a free link analysis tool that allows you to quickly check the number of links to your site and assess their quality.
To use:
Go to neilpatel.com.
In the "SEO Analyzer" section, enter the URL of your site.
View the report: you will receive information about the number of links, as well as the domains from which they lead.
How to find links to a site using paid services
There are many paid tools on the market to find out everything about the links that lead to a site, which provide extended data and additional functions. With their help, you can not only simply check the number of links leading to the site, but also fully analyze their quality. Let's consider some of the most popular:
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is one of the leading SEO analytics tools, widely used by marketers and optimizers around the world. In the Backlinks section, you can get detailed information about links, their sources, anchors, posting date, etc.
Ahrefs Advantages:
Large database of backlinks
Filters and grouping of links by various parameters
Donor Analysis
In addition to providing detailed data on the site's donors, Ahrefs also offers additional features for a comprehensive analysis of those who link to your site:
Monitoring new and broken links
Filtering and grouping links by various parameters (link type, metrics, anchor text, etc.)
Comparing link profiles with competitors
Automatic identification of potentially low-quality links
Ahrefs also allows you to track the growth or decline of link weight over a certain period of time, which helps you evaluate the effectiveness of your link-building strategy.
Serpstat
Serpstat is a comprehensive tool for monitoring SEO strategies, which includes a module for finding links to the site.
In the Backlink analysis section, you can find a whole set of useful tools that will allow you not only to check links but also to get detailed data about each of them: link source, type (dofollow/nofollow), anchor text, discovery date and much more.
In addition to link data, Serpstat provides a number of additional functions for in-depth analysis:
Visualization of link weight in the form of graphs and charts
Automatic identification of potentially spammy or low-quality links
Tracking changes in the link profile over time
Integration with other Serpstat modules for a comprehensive SEO audit
Serpstat also allows you to export link data to various formats (CSV, Excel, etc.) for further analysis.
Seranking
Seranking is another popular service for a comprehensive SEO audit, which includes a module that allows you to check for links leading to the site. In the Backlink Checker section, you will find all the information about the most frequently linked pages.
Advantages of Seranking:
Large database of links
Visualization of the link database
Comparison with competitors
Filtering and grouping of links by various parameters
Semrush
Semrush is one of the most famous and multifunctional SEO tools on the market. It also contains a large module for checking the number of donors and the quality of links.
What can Semrush do:
Track the presence of external links on the site — new and lost
Evaluate the quality and authority of links
Visualize the backlink profile
Analyze competitors' links
Majestic
Majestic is another reputable analytics tool. It also allows you to comprehensively check your link profile by examining a number of metrics, some of which are unique to this service. Some other features of the platform include:
Visualization of backlink profile in the form of an interactive map
Link filtering by various parameters (link type, anchor text, source region, etc.)
Analysis of historical link data over long periods of time
Majestic also provides detailed information about IP addresses and domain owners, which can be useful when detecting networks of spam sites or related links.
Link Research Tools
Link Research Tools is a specialized platform for comprehensive backlink analysis and management. Its advantages and functionality:
A large database with billions of links, regularly updated
Link filtering by many criteria (authority metrics, site types, anchor texts, etc.)
Automatic identification of potentially low-quality or spam links
Monitoring of changes in the link profile and notifications about new/lost links
Ability to send requests to remove malicious links from the database
How to do a competitor link analysis
Analyzing the links of competitor sites can provide valuable ideas for obtaining new backlinks and improving your own link strategy.
Here are some steps to analyze the backlinks of your competitor sites:
Identify who your main competitors are. Make a list of relevant sites that you compete with in search results.
Analyze their link bases using an SEO tool that is convenient for you. Pay attention to which donors this array of links to the site came from, as well as what anchors are used there.
Identify promising sites. Filter out links that seem potentially useful to you for your site, and add them to the list for further work.
Study the content and requirements of these sites. Determine what content and promotion strategies can help you get links from these sources.
Evaluate the quality and authority of the links. Not all links that competitors receive may be useful for your site. Focus on the most relevant and high-quality sources.
Develop a link-building strategy based on the ideas you receive and start implementing it step by step. Remember that the increase in links to the site should look natural to the search engine.
Analysis of the link weight of competitors can be a valuable source of inspiration for your own link strategy, but you should not blindly copy their approaches. It is important to adapt the ideas received to your topic and objectives while maintaining the uniqueness and naturalness of the backlink profile.
How to assess the quality of links
When analyzing external donors, it is extremely important to pay attention to their quality, not just quantity. Low-quality and spammy links can not only not be beneficial, but also harm your site's ranking in search results.
Here are some criteria by which you can check the links leading to your site:
Relevance of the source. Links from sites close to your topic are usually considered more valuable than links from completely irrelevant resources. That's why it's so important to evaluate where links lead to your site.
Source authority. Links from high-authority, well-ranked sites are more valuable than links from little-known or spammy sites.
Content quality. Links placed in high-quality, unique, and useful content are usually more valuable than links from low-quality content.
Link attributes. Links with a relevant anchor and a dofollow attribute are usually more useful and high-quality.
Traffic source and visibility. Links from sites that receive organic search traffic and have high visibility are usually more valuable than links from resources with low traffic.
The tools we reviewed above provide various metrics and indicators to evaluate the quality of links. Here are some of them:
URL Rating (UR) and Domain Rating (DR) in Ahrefs. These metrics reflect the "strength" of a link or domain based on the number and quality of inbound links. The higher the UR and DR values, the more authoritative the linking source is considered.
Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) from Moz. Similar to Ahrefs metrics, DA and PA also assess the authority of a domain and an individual page, respectively, based on the link profile.
Authority Score in Semrush. This is an overall indicator of the quality and authority of a link, taking into account various factors such as source relevance, toxicity, etc.
Spam Score. Some tools provide an estimate of the likelihood that a link source is spammy or of poor quality.
Trust and Citation Flow in Majestic. These are metrics developed by Majestic to assess the trust and authority of a linking domain.
In addition to using these metrics, it is also important to manually analyze the source sites of the links. Pay attention to the quality of the content, design, usability, the presence of advertising, and other factors that may indicate the reliability and authority of the resource.
Don't rely on just one metric or tool. A comprehensive approach that combines different methods of assessing the quality of the sites that link to you will help you make more informed decisions about your linking strategy.
How to Disavow Low-Quality External Links
If your analysis reveals low-quality, spammy, or potentially harmful links pointing to your site, it's important to take steps to disavow them. Having a large number of such links can negatively affect your site's ranking in search engines.
Here are some ways to disavow unwanted links:
Disavow Tool. This is a separate tool from Google that allows you to create a file indicating the domains and URLs from which you want to ignore links. After sending this file to Google, the system should stop taking links from these sources into account when ranking your site.
Contact the webmasters of the link-donating sites and ask them to remove the unwanted links. This approach can be effective, but it requires significant effort, especially if there are a lot of such links.
Ignore links. In some cases, if the number of low-quality links is small and they do not have a significant negative impact, you can simply ignore them. The main thing is to focus on obtaining quality links from reliable sources.
Conclusions
Working on the quality of link weight is an important aspect of any potentially successful SEO strategy. Having high-quality and relevant inbound links not only helps improve a site's ranking in search engines, but also increases its authority, and can also work as "word of mouth".
Remember that backlinks are just one of many factors in SEO. To achieve the best results, it is important to have a comprehensive approach that takes into account all aspects of search engine optimization: content, technical optimization, usability, and much more. However, not all site owners can fully immerse themselves in the process of external promotion, especially if it is a complex niche or a large site, for example, if it is SEO promotion of an online store. The best solution would be to turn to professionals. High-quality SEO website promotion from the Idea Digital Agency team is the best investment of money and time.
