"Backlinks monitor" is a valuable SEO tool for your site, backlinks play an important role in your site's authority with search engines, the more high-quality links pointing back to your website, the higher your chances of achieving higher rankings in organic search results.
With backlinks monitor, you can analyze your cookie and see which websites are linking to you, you can also spy on your competitors and find link-building opportunities to increase your domain authority.
The only problem is that premium backlinks monitor tools require a monthly subscription and not every small business can afford that.
Fortunately, there are several free services that you can use to get the information you need, without having to sign up for a paid plan.
In this guide, we will rank the best free backlink tools for websites.
For each tool, you will learn how to check your links for free and what additional features you get if you decide to switch to a paid plan.
Semrush Backlink Checker
With the arrival of a fully revamped link database, Semrush has become one of the leading backlink analysis tools in the market, and their offering includes several backlink Analytics features for customers with free or paid accounts.
Semrush backlink analytics service provides users with access to the largest database of backlinks than any nearby competitor, and their database includes more than 43 trillion links, which is the A large database that you can find in the market.
You will also have the fastest link database compared to nearby competitors, so you can find the link information you need more quickly.
Some of the more exciting features of the Semrush backlink checker tool include:
- Live Updates: Constant updates at the top of your analytics report
- Link Building Tools: Access to an interface to manage your awareness campaigns
- Backlink Audit Tool: Detailed analytics for toxic backlinks
- Aggregate backlink analysis: Analyze up to 200 competing domains
- Google Integration: Integrate your entire Google Search Console account via integration
Free backlinks monitor
To sign up for a free account, all you have to do is go to Semrush and enter the domain or URL of the site you want to check into the search bar.
Semrush will ask you to create a free account with your email address, once your email is verified you will get 10 free orders per day, and with each order, you get 10 results.
Paid version backlinks monitor
The paid plan with Semrush Toolkit starts at $119 per month and gives you access to 5 projects, 500 keywords to track, and plenty of additional analytics, and you can also upgrade to more expensive plans for tools like Google Data Studio integration, historical data tracking, content marketing support, and more.
When you enter your website URL or a competitor’s URL, you will see the “Overview” tab, and here, you can see your site’s authority score, the number of total referral domains, and backlinks.
You can also click on the Referral Domains tab to get a detailed breakdown of the validity, the number of backlinks, and the IP address of each backlink.
Clicking the button to view the total backlinks for each website gives you a more specific view of the links that direct users to your site, and you'll also see "dofollow" or "nofollow" links.
Ahref Backlink Checker
Ahrefs is one of the leading names in backlink analysis, there are over 29 trillion known backlinks and 170 million unique domains accessible, ensuring that you get the most accurate data when you use the Ahrefs backlink tool.
Every day Ahrefs updates its backlink technology with new pages being crawled, and whenever you enter a URL into the search bar to check, you'll get a complete overview of page level and domain metrics for any target n This includes access to information about the domain ranking and URL rating The number of referral fields and more.
Some of the features of Ahrefs backlink checker include:
- Ownership Ratings: Check Domain, URL and Ahrefs Ratings for Each Link
- Monitor Growth: Offer an interactive view of referring pages and domains over time
- Backlinks: Users can see full backlinks filtered by things like domain rating, referral domain, and platform.
- Domain-level metrics: Check comprehensive domain-level metrics for each link
What do you get with the free package?
With the free version of the ahref backlink checker, you get 100 backlinks per check and unlimited checks per day, and you can use the tool without creating an account.
What do you get with a paid plan?
The paid plan, starting at $7 for 7 days, then $99 per month gives you up to 10,000 crawl credits, 500 tracked keywords and 5 projects. There's also a $179 per month plan for up to 50,000 crawl credits and 1,500 keywords tracked across 10 projects.
Entering a domain into Ahrefs Backlink Checker gives you a complete report full of useful information, and the overview includes your website's domain rating, the total number of incoming links, and your dofollow link percentage.
You can toggle the backlink layout to show the overhead anchor texts used for your links as well – this can be useful for full SEO analytics, in addition, you can search and analyze links for a specific URL, rather than just searching the domain in general.
Moz Link Explorer
Moz Link Explorer is a great example of a convenient backlink tracker that any company can use, and Moz has around 40 trillion links to search through, making it a very comprehensive tool.
It's also incredibly easy, with an intuitive set of reports to explore, and Moz was also the first company to use link data to generate a domain authority score, a metric that predicts how well a website will rank in search engines.
To check backlinks for your website using MOZ, simply enter the URL of the page you want to get link data on, and Moz will generate your report for you.
Moz Link explorer shows links to any site, so you can see why your website is ranking in a particular position, and you can also compare your competitors' link profiles with your own, so you can improve your chances of outstripping them.
Some of the features of Moz link Explorer include:
- Broken Link Checker: Insight into broken links on your site, for link equality
- Top- performing content: Find top-performing pages and content
- Dozens of spam: Check the spam score of incoming links and remove them from your site
- Monitor new and lost links: Monitor when content gains or loses links over time
What do you get with the free package?
With the free plan, you get 10 link queries and 50 rows of data per query each month.
Start by entering the URL you want to check in the search bar, after that, create your Moz account to access the free SEO tools offered by the company, you will receive an email notification with a link to confirm your account and view your reports.
What do you get with a paid plan?
If you upgrade to the Moz Pro plan, you can create custom reports, track more information about your website visitors, and access a wide range of backlink insights.
Prices start at $99 per month paid per month, or you can save 20% on annual plans.
Moz answers all the basic questions most companies ask about link authority and backlink opportunities, and instead of just checking the validity of the links on your website, you can also look for broken links, spam, and lost links over time.
Finding the best-performing content helps you plan for your SEO and content marketing strategies.
You can also analyze your link text to get a better idea of how other people refer to your company, it's a great comprehensive tool to help understand your backlink strategy.
WebCEO Backlink Checker
WebCEO is one of the best backlink-checking tools for users on a budget and helps you check backlinks quickly, to make sure your links are relevant, strong and diverse.
WebCEO gives you a comprehensive overview of your backlink profile, with great emphasis on the concept of “diversity” for better SEO positioning.
You will see which link domains in your backlink portfolio give you the most influence online, and which ones might harm your domain's authority.
Linking to a backlink domain gives you a comprehensive overview of things like Alexa Traffic Ranking, Domain Citation Flow, and even Domain Trust Flow.
Some of the WebCEO backlink checker features include:
- Comprehensive metrics: Check metrics you won't get elsewhere, like citation flow from the domain
- Analyze your profile: The visual inspection tool helps you analyze your profile faster.
- Scheduled Scan: Users can set up automatic scanning so that they keep your profile updated
- Majestic data: The world-famous backlink data from Majestic
What do you get with the free package?
There is no free lifetime version of the Web CEO backlink tracker, but you can try the full functionality for up to 14 days without a credit card, just click the Sign-Up button to enter your details and start reporting.
What do you get with a paid plan?
When you're ready to upgrade to a paid package, there's a 'Solo' plan for $35 a month, which can analyze a single website and track up to 50 keywords, and you can also try a 'Startup' for $99 a month for 5 projects and 200 keywords...
An unlimited package at $99 per month allows access to unlimited projects and keywords, but there is an additional “scanning fee.”
You can check a lot of information about your backlinks that you may not see in other free backlink trackers.
For example, there are insights about URL trust, quote flow, link status, target page information, and more, and everything is laid out in an easy-to-view and consume format, so you won't be confused with data overload.
Ubersuggest Backlink Analyzer
Ubersuggest is a great tool for getting basic insights into your backlinks and is one of the best-known options for free analytics.
Like most free tools, it works by checking the link data of the URL you add in the search bar, and you'll get a lot of useful data for competitor analytics with Ubersuggest, so you can look for areas where you're missing out.
The advanced link filtering system means that you can also check links according to various factors, for example, you can look at links specifically according to region, domain score, link text and page score, and there is also an option to choose if you want to see only unfollow links.
Some of the features of Ubersuggest Backlink Analyzer include:
- Competitive Analysis: Check Your Page Results Against the Competition
- Backlinks Overviews: A quick and simple overview of your backlinks niche
- Free Keyword Analysis: Find keywords while checking backlinks
- Traffic Insights: Free traffic insights built into our backlink tracker
What do you get with the free package?
The free version of Ubersuggest allows you to perform 3 daily free searches (without having to sign up for an account).
For each search, you can see the top 100 links pointing to a domain, and to test the full product, you can sign up for a 7-day free trial.
What do you get with a paid plan?
Ubersuggest offers three paid plans starting at $29 per month, premium accounts come with either 100, 300 or 900 reports per day, access to multiple projects, and 100-200 tracked keywords with daily updates.
Ubersuggest is a relatively straightforward tool for checking backlinks, so you won't have a problem knowing what you're seeing in the reports, as the checker makes it easy to analyze competitors and understand their link-building strategies.
With access to basic SEO data, such as keywords and traffic metrics, you can also learn how to improve your website with more than just backlinks.
SERanking Backlink Analysis Tool
SERanking promises users a simple and reliable way to develop a data-driven backlink strategy n you'll see your competitor's backlink profiles arranged in easy-to-read graphs.
Or you can research your website and learn more about the dofollow/nofollow link ratio, page trust, and referral domains.
SERanking takes a holistic approach to study backlink opportunities, and you can see things like which of your pages are losing and gaining links over time.
You will also have insight into the keywords used to refer to your website, and which of your pages are getting the most links.
SERanking backlink analyzer features include:
- Text Image Insights: See if the link comes from an image or a block of text.
- Page Trust: Check the trust level of your Page according to the specific property ratings.
- First/Last Seen: See the dates a link was last spotted by the SE Ranking crawler
- Metrics: Track Alexa Rank, Domain Trust, and other in-depth metrics
What do you get with the free version?
With the free version of SERanking, your information is very limited n and you'll only see a few visual displays of things like your page and domain trust scores, as well as the most recent 20 backlinks (one for each domain).
If you want to know the actual status of your backlink, whether it is indexed by Google or more, you will need to sign up for a 14-day free trial or premium account.
What do you get with the paid version?
Switching to a paid plan will give you access to comprehensive backlink insights and data about referral domains, and you'll be able to get information about anchor text, IPS, subnets, and more.
SERanking offers three paid plans starting at $29/month. They also offer a Pay As You Go plan that costs $1 per site and $0.0015 for a detailed analysis of one backlink.
Mangools
Mangools' LinkMiner is a backlink checker with a huge database, designed to give you better insights into all your links.
Interestingly, Mangools allows you to switch between viewing information about all your links, only new ones, or missing links.
Everything is organized in an easy-to-use dashboard, so it's easy to control what data is available, and you can check things like domain authority and compare your back-cookie to your competitors.
Some of the features of Mangools LinkMiner include:
- Comprehensive Domain Scores: Check a range of metrics for each domain associated with your site
- Easy interface: Check new, missing and current links with a visual interface
- Reach Tracking Tools: There is access to tools to track keyword growth over time
- Lots of SEO tools: access to keyword suggestions and traffic information
What do you get with the free version?
Visit the Mongols LinkMiner page and enter the URL to get started, you'll need to create an account with Mangools, even to access only the basic features, and once you confirm your email address, you'll get a free ten-day trial.
The free trial gives you access to the LinkMiner experience, so you can check your dofollow and nofollow links, check domain authority, and even record your trust levels.
What do you get with the paid version?
To continue using the service, you will need a paid package, the basic package of $29.90 per month allows 100 keyword searches, 200 keyword suggestions and 25 competitive keyword searches, and you will also be able to track up to 200 keywords per day.
Mangools instantly shows you the current domain authority of your website, your quote flow, trust flow, referring IPs, and referring domains n and you can also click on different tabs to see which of your backlinks are the newest, and which ones you may lose over time the time.
The whole experience is straightforward, it is similar to using Site Profiler, SERP checker and keyword research tools available from Mangools.
Why are backlinks important to your website?
Backlinks are very important to SEO because they tell Google that another resource also considers your content valuable, and the more high-powered websites give your website their seal of approval by linking back to you, the better your authority will become.
As a website gains new backlinks, search engines start to assume that your content is more valuable.
Beyond improving your organic SEO ranking, backlinks also help you improve your authority with potential customers.
Sometimes backlinks can attract more backlinks, so if writers see your website as an authority because other companies link to it, they will want to link to you as well.
Crucially, the key to success with backlinks is not only in attracting the right links from higher authority sites, you will also need to ensure that all backlinks are of high quality.
Poor quality incoming links lead to Google linking you to unwanted and untrustworthy websites, which could result in you being penalized.
Using a backlink checker can help you find new backlink opportunities, as well as identify the links you need to get rid of.