There are quite a few reasons why you need to know how to monitor backlinks effectively. For one thing, backlinks help drive traffic to your website, as well as make it more popular to your target audience. But more importantly, backlinks are crucial if you want Google and other search engines to give your site a high ranking.
If you want to monitor your backlinks but have no idea how to start, then you’ve come to the right place. Below are a few pointers that can help you check if your website has enough quality backlinks to keep it going. Also included are some of the tools that can help you out, and a few other stuff. Let’s get started!
Tips to Effectively Monitor Your Backlinks
Check Your Guest Posts
Despite what many SEO specialists say, guest posting still plays a huge role in making sure your website has good backlinks. By gaining backlinks from high-ranking websites, you can potentially boost your own site’s rankings significantly.
If you want to learn how to monitor backlinks effectively, you need to regularly check the backlinks in your guest posts. If any of them is not working, then contact the webmaster immediately and ask to have the link fixed. At the same time, you can have any of the bad links in your article permanently removed.
To make checking your guest posts easier, create a spreadsheet containing a list of the articles you created. Make sure each title comes with the link to the guest post. Doing this will help you know where you’ve linked in the past, present, and future.
Track and Report Suspicious Backlinks
Not every backlink your website receives is healthy and beneficial. As a webmaster and SEO specialist, you need to regularly purge your site of these bad backlinks. That way, you can protect its reputation and ensure its ranking on search engines.
To that end, you need to track and report any suspicious backlinks your website receives. You should especially watch out for websites that have been penalized by Google in the past. If they recently linked to your website, then your reputation will be in jeopardy. Additionally, you should steer clear from link farms, websites with stolen or plagiarized content, and those participating in shady activities.
If you receive any backlinks from these websites, then better have it removed ASAP. Thankfully, Google’s Search Console allows you to track any backlinks for your site, while their Disavow tool helps you remove it.
Focus on Your Core Backlinks
As far as backlinks are concerned, quality is more important than quantity. it doesn’t matter if you have a thousand links but none of them come from reputable websites.
If you want to keep your website afloat, then it should have a few core backlinks from high-ranking sources. And to make sure they stay live, you need to invest time and effort to regularly monitor them. Thankfully, you can easily accomplish this with the help of certain tracking software.
Now when looking for a backlink tracking software, you should go for the one that can help you routinely track your core backlink’s status. That way, you’ll know if they’re doing their job or if you need to have them fixed or removed.
Measure the Impact on Ranking Changes
Finally, if you want to learn how to monitor backlinks effectively, then you need to know how to measure its impact on your site’s ranking changes. That is, you need to know how each backlink helps raise (or lower) your website’s ranking on Google and other search engines.
Now while doing this, you should know that there are certain metrics you need to focus on. Take the linking domain age for example. How old the site that links to you matters. Generally speaking, older domains tend to pack more power than new ones. By having backlinks to these aged websites, you can improve your rankings dramatically.
Aside from this, you should watch out for the anchor text of each backlink. Google’s algorithm takes this into consideration when trying to understand what your site is all about. By making sure your website’s backlinks have anchor texts that match its niche, you’ll help Google and other search engines index and rank your pages more effectively.
Tools That Will Help You Monitor Backlinks
You can only go so far when monitoring backlinks manually. So now that you’ve learned a couple of tips when monitoring backlinks, time to discuss some of the tools that can greatly help you out.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs sets the gold standard as far as SEO tools go, and it can be of tremendous help if you want to know how to monitor backlinks effectively.
For starters, its free version allows you to track up to 10 backlinks and two domains per request. Meanwhile, its paid Lite version can provide a complete analysis for each backlink profile. Metrics checked include its anchor text, its dofollow or nofollow status, and any image backlinks, among others.
Aside from this, Ahrefs can also save your site in case it gets penalized by Google. It does this by crawling in your pages to detect defective backlinks. This allows you to have it fixed or removed accordingly, thereby resolving the issue with Google.
cognitiveSEO
cognitiveSEO provides several internet marketing tools to help propel your website to the top. But more importantly, it can help you track and monitor your site’s backlinks.
This platform features a comprehensive backlink analysis tool that’s quite powerful (even if it’s not as popular as Ahrefs or other well-known tools). For example, it features an alert system that will notify you immediately if your site receives a backlink. The link profile will be sent directly to your email, allowing you to read it at your leisure.
If you’re looking for a tool that provides an easy way to track backlinks, then cognitiveSEO is perfect for you. Through it, you’ll enjoy real-time data, growth trends, historical information, and much more.
Monitor Backlinks
Alternatively, you can use Monitor Backlinks to track your backlink’s profiles. Despite being recently made, this is one of the most popular tools out there.
According to many users, Monitor backlinks is ideal for small businesses. Indeed, not only can it help them detect spammy backlinks, but it also provides them with a detailed analysis for each link. It also analyzes the link’s domain, giving you an overview that contains its SEO metrics, anchor text reports, keyword rankings, and more.
But more importantly, Monitor Backlinks help you remove low-quality backlinks from your website. It even has features that allow it to automatically report any defective links to Google Webmaster Tools. This allows Google to disavow the links without penalizing your website.
Majestic SEO
Majestic is one of the biggest names in the online marketing industry and for several good reasons. One of these is that they offer a simple yet great tool to monitor backlink profiles.
All you need to do is visit their platform and type your website’s (or another’s) URL into their search box. From there, Majestic will analyze the URL’s backlink profile. Key details included in the final report include the link’s referring IPs, referring domains, referring subnets, and more. This information will help you determine the quality of the backlink.
Majestic will also create a history chart for your backlink to help you know whether or not the link is losing or gaining steam. This allows you to respond accordingly, whether it be removing the link or keeping it.
Majestic comes in both free and paid versions. If you want to fully enjoy its features, then better go for the latter.
Sitechecker
Last but not least, there’s Sitechecker. Ideal for SEO and marketing specialists, it’s a great backlink tracker, with features capable of monitoring and analyzing any backlink profile.
One of the best things about SItechecker is that it can provide you with a detailed report that’s easy to read. The tool basically provides all the information you need to determine the quality of your website’s backlink. This helps you adjust your SEO strategy accordingly, ensuring it’s trained to gain more quality links in the future.
Sitechecker also helps you know the most used anchor texts in keywords. This can greatly help increase your backlink quality, as it allows you to use the anchor texts Google’s algorithms understand.
Other Things You Should Know About Backlinks
In case you have some unanswered questions, below are three of the most frequently asked questions regarding how to monitor backlinks effectively. The answers below will help provide you further insight into backlinks and how to manage them.
Why are Backlinks Important?
Because it helps your website gain more traffic as well as boost its reputation on the internet. This allows it to become more popular, thereby increasing your chances of converting them into customers.
Additionally, Google needs backlinks when ranking a website. By having high-performing websites linking to your, your rankings on Google and other search engines will subsequently increase.
Can I Monitor My Site’s Backlinks Manually?
Sure, you can! All you need to do is use either Google Analytics or Search Console. When using Google Analytics, go to the Referrals section. Alternatively, you can track backlinks at the Links section of Search Console.
Keep in mind that monitoring backlinks can be a tedious business. If you don’t have the stomach for it (or the time), better invest in tools that will make the entire process easier. Try the ones mentioned above.
How Can I Detect Bad Backlinks?
You can either do that manually or with one of the tools above. For manual checking, list all the backlinks in your website that have unindexed domains. If any of them isn’t helping to boost your website’s rankings, then they’re defective. Report them immediately to have them fixed or removed.
Learn How to Monitor Backlinks
Learning how to monitor backlinks effectively can be challenging and tedious. But if you want to excel as an SEO specialist, or you want your website to rank high on Google, then it needs to be done. By following the tips and getting the tools above, monitoring backlinks will be a walk in the park.
