Best Backlink Checker Tools (Free and Paid): Backlinks are something that can make your website authoritative. It helps you boost traffic and gain better rankings. There are two main types of search engines – those that use a crawler to create an index (e.g., Google and Yahoo) and those that use people to create the index (e.g., Ask).
In the past, search engines were simple text-based websites with results based on keywords. But now, with improved algorithms, it’s quite complicated to rank. There are a lot of factors such as On-Page SEO and OFF-Page SEO, and to help you excel with these, we bring you a segment where we list down the Best Backlink checker tools in 2020.
What is a Backlink and why it’s important?
A backlink is something that you get when a page links to your website. In short its a link from a different website referring to your own website. In the eyes of a search engine, when multiple high authoritative pages are referring to your website via a link, it sees your website as a great resource, and it would like to show other people relevant search results.
But not all the links you get can be considered good, and some can even be from spammy websites or the ones with a really low trust scores. So you might want to filter out the ones you get from big websites.
After you are done with On-Page SEO, it’s time to make some authority via marketing or running off-page link-building campaigns.
With extensive research, features quality and quantity, user interface, value for money and considering other such factors, we were able to curate a list of best backlink analysis tools that can help you with competitor research and also in finding new linking opportunities. So let’s get started.
Best Backlink Checker Tools
There’s the thing with backlink analysis, the tools that are really good will burn your pockets as it costs a fortune for the companies itself to maintain their link database and keep track of changes that Google’s ranking algorithms go through now and then which again is a complete nightmare for both SEO companies and marketers.
But here we bring you some of the best-handpicked tools that we personally liked and can be used by anyone who is learning or fairly new with SEO and just wants to explore a website and do some competitor research along the way.
1. Ahrefs
Ahrefs core feature is backlink analysis. Recently it started providing other features such as keyword research. It’s loved by all the marketers as it gives you insights on what your competition is doing.
There are a lot of things that can be done with ahrefs, and the quality of data it provides along with link analysis stands out. Like Moz, it gives you an overview of your primary domain and then you can dig more to get deeper insights.
It also makes it easy to track newly gained and lost backlinks. A great feature to look for is Best by links. It shows the pages with most backlinks for your domain. It helps you formulate a content strategy as you will know what is working in your niche.
Using Best by link Growth will give your results of pages that are acquiring new links in the current period. While doing competitor analysis, you can filter the results with link types.
Using Ahrefs, you can identify broken links or the ones that give 404 errors and fix them easily. Internal linking features will list down all the no-follow links which you can make do-follow for better authority. Furthermore, it shows you, Anchor text distribution, No/Do-follow backlinks, Domain rating (Just like Moz Domain Authority) which helps you make better decisions for your link acquisition efforts.
Pricing:
Along with a strong Backlink Analysis service, you get a keyword explorer tool to help you out with On-Page analysis. They offer a $7 trial for 7 days, and then the subscription cost starts from $99-$999 per month. They also offer a free version with unlimited queries which doesn’t require signup, but limits result up to 100 backlinks. It’s great for a newly launched website.
Get Ahrefs from here.
2. Moz Pro
One of the oldest tools that helps you find backlinks. It has also come up with its suite of different SEO tools, making it quite feature-rich. They give you a tool named Link explorer. It helps you get a complete overview of your backlink profile. You can use it to compare with up to 5 different domains, and this will get you an idea on what your competitors are doing differently.
One of the best features that you get along with a link explorer is ‘Link Intersect’. Once you put your domain along with five other competitors, it will display all the websites that link with your competitors but not with your primary domain. It comes in handy when you plan to reverse engineer some domain to find loopholes in your own.
With a data of around 100K links, it would be quite difficult to know from where to start, but with Link Intersect you can plan your link building strategies effectively by getting data of the sites that are most likely to link with you.
Apart from that, Moz also keeps track of the backlinks that you lose, which makes it convenient for you to replace the lost ones at any stage. Another great feature that you come across while using Moz Pro is of Domain Authority. Recently after a huge update in its algorithm, now you can identify and filter out spammy backlinks which saves you a lot of time while surveying individual links.
Pricing:
You get keyword explorer, on-page grader, rank checker and other SEO tools along with Link Explorer for a monthly subscription ranging from $99-$999. They also offer free access to their Link explorer tool where you can check up to 10 queries every month. There’s also a free trial of 30 days where you get complete access to all the tools available on Moz Pro.
Get Moz Pro from here.
3. SEMrush
SEMrush started as keyword research and tracking tool. Recently it has added a robust backlink analysis feature in its suite of SEO tools. With its plethora of different features, it can be your next all-rounder SEO tool that does everything for you. It has a vast database, and with daily updates, you can be sure to get accurate results to your SERP and backlink analysis. A feature that we are interested in is named ‘Link Building Tool’.
Link Building Tool by SEMrush does exactly what you could imagine. It helps you find link opportunities. You get a list of all the links from where you can try to get a backlink. Furthermore, it even ranks all the links on a scale of 1-5, where 5 is the juiciest of all the links. It lists the sites from where it’s easy to get backlinks. They do it by estimating the number of external links that page have.
Furthermore, it is super easy to go around and play with SEMrush user interface. You can even tag emails with the links and send them an outreach mail directly within the platform, which makes your job easier. Just like Moz DA and Ahrefs DR, SEMrush offers an Authority Score to find best backlinks.
Since it is based only on links, it is easy to manipulate by creating an insane amount of links via blog comments and other spam to boost the score, but they don’t just see links. While evaluating a backlinks authority score, they look at the traffic that they get from that link and even the number of keywords that site rank for and hence giving you a closely accurate result.
Pricing:
SEMrush will cost you between $99-$399 every month. Do remember that it was built as a keyword research tool, and only recently, they started their journey with link building features. It can be the best suite of SEO tools if you wish to get keyword research and Link Building under one roof. Other great features are content benchmarking, site audits, SERP tracking and other common features which you might want as an SEO specialist.
Get SEMrush from here.
4. Majestic SEO
Majestic is another promising contender in the best backlink checker tool category. It claims to have the largest index with over more than a trillion links in its database. It has two different links, one being the fresh index and the other one is the historical index. In the fresh one, you get data of all the newly acquired links over a certain period of time and in the historical one you can see all the past backlinks that are currently present. You can even actively track lost backlinks as well.
Unlike regular backlink analysis tools that check domain authority, or rating and even score on the basis of links, with majestic it’s a different story. It is a firm believer in the relevancy of links. You get Majestic’s own Topical Trust Flow.
A metric completely based on relevant links pointing to your domain. It shows you the topics covered by any website and that way, you can make sure that it matches your industry or niche, and then you can further target those websites for your link building campaigns.
Another feature they give, which is similar to all other tools is the regular Trust Flow. In this, you can see websites rank on the basis of link authority and number of links they get from edu, gov and other authoritative domains. There’s also a link context feature to filter out editorial, directory and other types of links.
Pricing:
You can try Majestic SEO for free, but the additional features that fuel the actual purpose of link building such as competitor analysis, seeing historical data, etc. comes with a pro plan which you can upgrade to from $50 per month. Recently it has also added a keyword research tool which you get with the link building suite. If you are in the hunt for a budget backlink analytics tool, then this could be your best bet.
Get Majestic SEO from here.
5. Link Miner
Next on the list of backlink analysis tools is Link Miner. It is a tool offered by mangools along with its major different SEO tools such as keyword research and SERP tracker. But here we will focus only on the link miner.
So the first thing that you must know about is the Link index. Here, link miner uses Majestic API to get its link database from Index generated by Majestic. As we all know that it hosts the largest database of link index, you can be sure of getting accurate information.
If we look at the features, they are similar to every other backlink analysis tool. You get data of newly acquired and lost backlinks quite easily. Just like MOZ DA, and Ahrefs DR, they offer their own metric known as the Link Strength.
It is evaluated on the basis of Citation flow, Trust flow, No Follow vs Do FOllow attributes, and it even considers social signals and Alexa rank, which makes it quite a powerful score. It quickly gives you an idea of the websites that you must pursue your link building campaigns.
Pricing:
Herewith Mangools, you are not only paying for Link Miner, but other tools such as KWFinder, SERPChecker, SERPWatcher, and Site Profiler are included in your basic annual plan that starts with $29 per month and goes up to $79 for agency plan. This is by far the cheapest of all the backlink analysis tools, plus you get a complete package of other tools that might come handy.
Get Link Miner from here.
6. SEO SpyGlass
SEO SpyGlass from Link assist claims to find new backlinks faster than any other tools out there. It has got its own index of 2.7 trillion-plus links. For backlink analysis, you need to download its tool that works on Windows, Linux and macOS. It might be considered as a turn off for some marketers who don’t want cross-platform functionality and easy access from smartphones to pull up analysis reports. Apart from that, it’s a great tool with a super-intuitive user interface. If you are a power user and want highly customisable reports, then you must definitely try this one out.
A feature that might get you excited is penalty risk which you can use to filter out spammy links. You can deeply dive into competitor research with this tool. It will let you know from where they are buying links if they are buying site-wide links or to any specific pages. Apart from that, it also shows you what anchor text and headings are generating better rankings.
There’s also an option to know keywords which you can rank for easily by making some links. It can also check social media influence over rankings of any particular SERP’s.
It also has all the standard features that other tools offer which are seeing all the traffic generating links, knowing Alexa rankings, and other usual backlinks related analytics you could think of.
Pricing:
SEO SpyGlass has a bit of an unusual pricing strategy which is utterly crazy and attractive. If your sole purpose is link building, then you must have this tool as over time it will be the cheapest of all the tools that ever exist. It costs you 124$ for a year and then after your yearly subscription you can choose the $4 monthly plan. Alternatively, there is even a 7 days free trial for you to hop on.
Get SEO SpyGlass from here.
7. Linkody
Linkody specialises in backlink tracking. Well, you might say that it has to be the primary feature of any given tool, but with Linkody, they take it a step further. It has got the goodness of some top tools which they package and sell it under one roof.
When you put any domain in Linkody, it will show you backlinks with Moz Domain Authority, Spam Score, its Alexa rating, type of backlink (the rel attribute), it’s anchor text, Trust Flow and Citation Flow. Now taking all these parameters, it can rank links on the basis of the ones that really matter.
With this tool, it’s easy to automate the whole process. Majorly, it will be a one-time setup for anyone who chooses to go on creating a link building campaign. You can set to receive notifications for the links that you lose and even for the ones that you gain. It is even easy to identify spammy backlinks, and there’s even an option to generate the disavow list.
Unearthing competitor data to see what links point to both of you and the ones that only go towards them will help you make the correct decisions to acquire links from other sources that can compete with your competitor. Apart from this, you can even connect Linkody to ahrefs and google analytics. Plus sometimes it is hard to find links, so with this tool, you can visually locate it on the source code.
Pricing:
Finally, something that you can utilise at full potential. You pay only for what you require, unlike other tools that offer a lot of useless things. The basic plan starts for $14 per month where you can monitor 2 domains and 3 competitors plus track 500 links which honestly is more than enough for starters.
Here you even get notified when your competitors gain a new link. They offer 30 days free trial which you must try out plus there’s no credit card required, so it takes away all the signup friction. Furthermore, they even offer a free tool which shows you up to 100 backlinks.
Get Linkody from here.
8. CognitiveSEO
cognitiveSEO comes with a suite of powerful SEO tools that helps you with on-page and off-page strategies. We are going to focus on the Backlink analysis tool that it has to offer. Now it’s not exactly known from where it extracts its link index, but it says that they get it from a trustworthy database source.
You get cool side by side comparison features with your own domain, and it has in-depth analysis for you to figure out about your own link building strategies. It actually links with its other tools such as content planning and keyword analysis based on your competition.
It can help you get out of any penalties that you scored with bad link building practices such as generating spammy links to gain more authority over some metric which generally backfires. There’s an unnatural link detection tool that identifies and suggests you on what links you need to disavow. It also gives you historical data which you can use to understand the trends and growth of any website.
You can further identify link opportunities by studying your competitors and the suggestions that you get from cognitiveSEO. Surprisingly, data is very accurate, and you can actually go on about taking actions from the insights it throws at you.
Pricing:
As we said, you get a complete suite of SEO tools such as content planner, keyword explorer, on-page audits, etc. all for a price of $129/ month. You can get a seven days free trial to give it a spin before committing to cognitiveSEO.
Get cognitiveSEO from here.
9. Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is an SEO tool offered by famous marketer Neil Patel. It started as a free keyword research tool and later with the 2.0 update it had backlink analysis feature added to its set of free SEO tools. Later they did monetise it considering the costs they had to pay. It’s not actually known from where it extracts its backlink index database; regardless you can bet on its accuracy at any given day.
With backlink analysis in Ubersuggest, you can freely check a limited number of backlinks. It Provides you with domain and page score and the type of link. But it misses on certain competition research features like side by side comparison or link intersect type features as found in the other tools.
Pricing:
Ubersuggest is ideal if you just want to track your own domains backlinks. You can do competitive research, but it would include a lot of manual labour instead of automation that is found with other tools. The basic plan of Ubersuggest will cost you $29, and it also offers a lifetime subscription at $290. Along with backlink analysis, you get content and keyword research tools.
Get Ubersuggest from here.
10. OpenLinkProfiler – Free Site Explorer
Open Link Profiler is one of the few best free backlink checker tools available at anyone’s disposal. It gives in-depth details of backlinks right from historical data to newly acquired or lost links. You can even put advanced filters where you can put in the anchor text, source and destination URLs, top-level domains, etc. It also comes with Link Disinfection tool that helps you to disavow risky or spammy links.
Further, you can see pages that have most backlinks, link contexts that generally tell about if the link is coming from a blog, forums, review, etc. There’s also a LIS distribution which is short for Link influence score which shows how much trustworthy a link is and then you can put those in your link building campaign as well.
In all, it’s a great tool that sometimes works like premium one obviously for small sites, but then again for bigger ones, there always be a limitation to what can be done.
Get OpenLinkProfiler from here.
Conclusion
What we understand by doing analysis of all the mentioned tools, there’s an X factor with everyone. Some are good with link indexes. They might detect a backlink faster than anyone else. While some may report highly accurate data on what links are really good and must be pursued.
So we strongly suggest you opt for a free trial of any tool before committing to any specific one. Reviewers are generally professional marketers, and they generally can’t provide you with accurate usability as they will find all tools easy to use. But, it’s different when it comes to normal users. Do let us know in the comments section below on what backlink checker tool that you prefer.