Monitoring the links you create during a link-building campaign is essential for assessing the effectiveness of your strategy. Without proper tracking, you won’t be able to gauge the success of your efforts.

Fortunately, there are numerous backlink monitoring tools available that can provide valuable insights into the links pointing to your website, and in some cases, even offer information on your competitors’ backlinks.

As an experienced link-building agency, we have extensive knowledge of these tools. In this article, we’ll introduce you to some of our preferred options. We’ll cover dedicated software designed specifically for tracking links, as well as versatile SEO tools that include backlink management features. These tools will empower you to make informed decisions and optimize your link-building campaigns effectively.

Why backlink monitoring is important

• Keep tabs on mentions and references to your website.
• Assess the value and credibility of incoming links.
• Track the evolving link landscape around your site.
• Be aware when a website removes a previously established link.
• Verify if a linking page is being acknowledged and cataloged by Google’s search engine.

The 7 Best Backlink Monitoring Tools

Ahrefs

Ahrefs, an all-encompassing SEO toolkit, not only provides robust capabilities for keyword monitoring and competitor analysis but also boasts a powerful suite of features dedicated to monitoring and managing your backlinks.

The Backlink Overview feature offers a comprehensive view of the inbound links to your website. It provides insights into the number of referring domains and pages that are pointing to your site. Additionally, it allows you to track the fluctuations in the quantity of new and lost referring domains on a monthly basis. This functionality makes it seamless to evaluate the impact of your ongoing link-building efforts and correlate this data with your website’s traffic performance.

Furthermore, Ahrefs offers a granular examination of your backlinks. The Backlink Checker supplies you with valuable metrics related to the referring pages. This information includes the domain rating of the referring page, the anchor text used, and the domain’s traffic. You have the flexibility to organize and filter this data based on the acquisition date of the links or narrow down the view to show links acquired within a specific time frame. This feature simplifies the process of assessing the quality and effectiveness of your newly acquired links.

In essence, Ahrefs empowers you with a comprehensive toolkit to not only monitor your backlinks but also to gain deeper insights into their quality and impact on your website’s performance, ensuring that your SEO strategies are yielding tangible results.

Ahrefs offers a comprehensive array of backlink tools that can greatly enhance your SEO efforts. Here are some of the key features at your disposal:

• Competitor Backlink Analysis: With Ahrefs, you can gain valuable insights into your competitors’ backlinks. This allows you to identify their link-building strategies and discover potential opportunities to improve your own backlink profile.
• Uncover Missing Links: A unique feature of Ahrefs is the ability to find websites that link to multiple competitors but not your own site. This can help you identify potential link-building prospects that you might have overlooked.
• Track High-Performing Pages: Ahrefs lets you pinpoint the pages on your website that attract the most backlinks. This information is invaluable for optimizing your content strategy and focusing your efforts on the pages that resonate most with your audience.
• Broken Link Detection: Another handy tool within Ahrefs is the ability to check for broken backlinks. This occurs when a link directs users to a page on your site that no longer exists. Fixing broken links is crucial for maintaining a seamless user experience and preserving your website’s authority.

The standout feature of Ahrefs is its comprehensive suite of SEO tools, combined with robust backlink monitoring capabilities. Whether you’re an individual user or part of a larger team, Ahrefs offers pricing options starting at $99, making it accessible to various budgets. To explore the full potential of Ahrefs, you can start with a risk-free 7-day trial.

Linkody

Linkody stands out as a specialized backlinks monitoring solution, equipped with a comprehensive suite of features tailored to streamline your campaign tracking needs.

Unlock the power of Linkody and experience a range of indispensable functionalities, including:

• Real-time Email Alerts: Stay in the loop with automatic notifications that promptly inform you whenever your website gains a new valuable backlink. No more missing out on important link-building opportunities.
• Intuitive Dashboard: Access an informative and user-friendly dashboard that presents crucial data at a glance. Keep tabs on both the acquisition of new backlinks and the unfortunate loss of existing ones.
• Top-Notch Metrics: Linkody seamlessly integrates with leading industry tools like Moz, Alexa, and Majestic, providing you with a wealth of insightful metrics. This integration ensures that you have a comprehensive view of your website’s backlink performance.
• Effortless Disavow Tool: Simplify the process of managing your backlinks with Linkody’s disavow tool. Easily create disavow files that can be effortlessly uploaded to Google, ensuring you have complete control over the quality of links pointing to your site.

With Linkody, your campaign tracking becomes a breeze. Keep a close eye on your progress, and rest assured that your dedicated link-building efforts are yielding the results you desire. Elevate your SEO strategy with Linkody today!

We have discovered Linkody’s Link Profile Analysis tool to be an invaluable asset in our work. It plays a pivotal role in ensuring that the websites we manage maintain a well-rounded backlink profile. With Linkody, we can take proactive measures to enhance link diversity when needed.

This remarkable feature empowers us to:

• Analyze Anchor Texts: Linkody equips us to scrutinize the anchor text used when linking to our websites. This enables us to ensure that our backlinks appear natural and varied.
• Evaluate Spam Score: We can effortlessly assess the spam score of the links pointing to our sites. This is instrumental in maintaining the quality and reputation of our backlink portfolio.
• Measure Authority: Linkody provides insights into the page and domain authority of websites that are linked to our own. This information is crucial in understanding the strength of our link-building efforts.

One of Linkody’s standout qualities is its user-friendliness. Its intuitive functionality and array of tools cater to a broad spectrum of users, from beginners to seasoned professionals, who wish to monitor and manage their links effectively.

For agencies like ours, Linkody offers a range of features that streamline our operations:

• Multi-Site Link Tracking: We can effortlessly track links for multiple websites all from a single platform, simplifying our management tasks.
• Branded Reports: Linkody allows us to generate customized reports that incorporate our agency’s logo. This level of personalization not only enhances our professionalism but also reinforces our brand identity.

Here’s an illustrative sample report, showcasing the backlinks associated with Forbes, created effortlessly using Linkody.

What’s truly remarkable is the affordability of Linkody’s pricing. With plans starting at just $14.90 per month, covering two domains and accommodating one user, it proves to be an incredibly cost-effective tool for agencies and individuals alike.

Monitor Backlinks

Monitor Backlinks stands as a robust and indispensable asset in the realm of backlink tracking software, equipped with a comprehensive array of features that cater to both basic and advanced needs.

Within this platform, you can seamlessly accomplish the following tasks:

• Link Tracking: Effortlessly monitor and keep tabs on the links directing traffic to your website. This valuable feature aids in gauging the impact of your link-building efforts.
• Competitor Analysis: Gain a competitive edge by identifying potential link-building opportunities from your competitors. This proactive approach helps you stay ahead in the digital landscape.
• Disavow File Creation: Streamline your SEO efforts by generating disavow files that can be easily uploaded to Google. This ensures a clean and optimized link profile.
• Comprehensive Reports: Measure the effectiveness of your link-building endeavors with detailed backlink reports. These insights empower you to make informed decisions and refine your strategy.

Furthermore, Monitor Backlinks excels in notifying you when a backlink is lost, an invaluable feature for those who invest in purchased links. It serves as a safeguard, ensuring that your investments in link acquisition remain intact.

A standout feature of Monitor Backlinks is its robust keyword rank tracking functionality. This tool empowers you to uncover the keywords for which you or your competitors are ranking and monitor fluctuations in your link-building profile over time. This real-time insight is invaluable for refining your SEO strategy and staying ahead in the competitive digital landscape.

Leverage the power of Backlink Tracking in tandem with your link building strategy to gauge the tangible results it yields.

Monitor Backlinks stands out for its intuitive and user-friendly interface, making it a breeze to navigate and utilize effectively. Pricing options commence at just $20 per month for a single domain, and to sweeten the deal, they extend a generous 30-day free trial for individuals eager to explore the platform’s capabilities firsthand.

Majestic

Majestic sets itself apart with its proprietary metrics, providing a swift and insightful evaluation of link quality and link profiles. These four distinctive ratings serve as a beacon for assessing the strength of your links and overall link profile health.

• Trust Flow: Trust Flow delves into the caliber of links directed towards a specific URL or website. An elevated Trust Flow score signifies the presence of high-quality links, indicating a robust link portfolio.
• Citation Flow: Citation Flow quantifies the sheer volume of links pointing to a website. A soaring Citation Flow score indicates a website’s link-rich environment, reflecting an extensive network of connections.
• Visibility Flow: Visibility Flow introduces a score derived from the presence of authoritative editorial links within a website’s link ecosystem. This metric underscores the importance of high-quality, trusted links for enhancing a website’s visibility.
• Topical Trust Flow: Topical Trust Flow offers insights into the thematic relevance of a website’s links. It gauges the alignment of a site’s link profile with its core topics, providing a measure of link coherence.

These metrics empower businesses to gauge the effectiveness of their link-building endeavors and make informed decisions when selecting websites for link cultivation. Whether monitoring their own progress or strategizing outreach efforts, Majestic’s metrics offer a valuable compass for navigating the dynamic landscape of digital marketing.

Majestic offers a valuable tool that provides insights into the placement of links on web pages. This tool not only reveals the link anchor text but also showcases the surrounding text, highlights images, and provides an estimation of the link’s position within the page. This feature proves particularly helpful in distinguishing high-quality editorial links from less valuable directory links.

Within the Majestic platform, you’ll find a wealth of features designed for in-depth analysis of your own or your competitors’ backlink profiles. These features include comprehensive metrics, such as link types, anchor text usage, and the ratio of follow to nofollow links.

Starting at just $49.99 per month for a single user, Majestic offers accessible pricing for those seeking to enhance their link analysis capabilities.

Linkio

Linkio is a versatile software solution designed with a primary emphasis on enhancing backlink outreach efforts. However, it offers a comprehensive suite of tools tailored to assist businesses in meticulously monitoring and optimizing their link building campaigns.

Among its robust features, Linkio empowers users to:

• Access Detailed Link Information: Linkio furnishes in-depth insights into each link within your campaign, revealing crucial details like anchor text, the context within the surrounding content, and whether the link is categorized as follow or nofollow.
• Harness Third-Party Metrics: The platform seamlessly integrates with third-party tools, notably providing statistics from Moz right at your fingertips. Furthermore, if you possess an Ahrefs account, you can effortlessly incorporate their metrics into your Linkio dashboard for a holistic view of your campaign’s performance.
• Evaluate Link Quality: Linkio equips you with the ability to assess link quality effectively. It offers a convenient way to discern which of your links are indexed by Google, aiding in the identification of valuable assets within your backlink portfolio.
• Real-Time Link Monitoring: Stay ahead of the curve with Linkio’s link monitoring capabilities. The software diligently keeps tabs on your links and ensures that your data remains up-to-date, promptly notifying you of any changes or developments in your link building landscape.

We particularly appreciate the Anchor Link Percentages feature offered by Linkio. This invaluable tool provides insights into the distribution of your links, categorizing them into branded, keyword-based, hybrid, URL-based, or natural anchor text. It simplifies the process of evaluating your link profile and empowers you to maintain its natural appeal as you continue to build links.

However, the standout feature that truly sets Linkio apart is its Outreach Automation capabilities. Linkio’s automation tool streamlines the process of creating prospect lists and executing outreach campaigns to engage with these targets effectively.

This functionality proves to be a game-changer, particularly when you’re faced with the task of prospecting a large number of websites within a tight timeframe. Moreover, Linkio offers additional resources such as keyword tracking and anchor text suggestion tools to further enhance your SEO strategy.

What’s even more impressive is that Linkio starts at just $19.99 per month, granting you access to these powerful tools for up to three websites. Additionally, you can analyze as many as 10,000 backlinks each month, making it an affordable and efficient solution for optimizing your link-building efforts.

Link Research Tools

Link Research Tools is a comprehensive suite of backlink analysis utilities that offer profound insights into your website’s links and the efficacy of your link-building endeavors.

Each tool within this arsenal operates as a diligent crawler, fully customizable to your specific objectives. You can designate the target website, individual pages, or even subfolders for scrutiny. Subsequently, these tools compile exhaustive reports containing all the invaluable data they’ve unearthed.

The backlink crawler emerges as a standout feature, delivering a wealth of actionable intelligence. It shines a spotlight on critical aspects, including:

• Anchor Text and Link Profile Details: Uncover the precise text used as anchor links and delve into the intricacies of your website’s link portfolio.
• LRT Power Score: This metric serves as a litmus test for a website’s potency, evaluating it based on the sheer volume of incoming links.
• LRT Trust Score: Trustworthiness of a domain is assessed by scrutinizing the quality of the inbound links. The LRT Trust Score paints a reliable picture of this crucial aspect.
• Link Gain and Loss Tracking: Stay in the loop about the ebb and flow of your links – be it new link acquisitions or those that have slipped away.

We particularly appreciate the platform’s ability to identify and highlight potentially high-risk links, a feature that sets it apart. It goes the extra mile by issuing warnings when you receive links from websites it deems as potential members of private blog networks (PBNs), along with offering guidance on what steps you can take in response.

Link Research Tools offers you the flexibility to run these comprehensive reports not only for your own website but also for your competitors. This feature can be a game-changer when it comes to identifying valuable backlink opportunities.

One of the standout attributes of Link Research Tools is its commitment to going beyond data provision. It doesn’t stop at merely presenting information; it empowers users with actionable recommendations to enhance their websites, address any issues, and capitalize on emerging opportunities effectively.

However, it’s important to note that the power and sophistication of Link Research Tools come at a cost. The entry-level plan starts at $499 per month and grants a link crawl budget of 1 million, making it a premium investment in your digital strategy.

Moz

Moz and Ahrefs share a common ground as comprehensive SEO tool suites. Moz’s arsenal includes a noteworthy backlink analysis tool known as Link Explorer, which opens the door to a wealth of valuable insights into your website’s or your competitors’ backlink landscapes.

Within Link Explorer, you can:

• Uncover the total count of inbound links directed to your website, offering a clear view of your link-building efforts.
• Track the ebb and flow of links over time, enabling you to monitor gains and losses, thus facilitating a dynamic strategy.
• Dive deep into the nuances of your link profile, discerning the balance between follow and nofollow links, scrutinizing anchor text usage, and evaluating the authority of the domains that have linked to your site.

We particularly appreciate the Link Profile Comparison tool, a standout feature that empowers you to assess your website in comparison to your competitors, unveiling valuable opportunities for enhancement. Simply select two domains, and witness the disparities in their link profiles.

This versatile tool isn’t limited to domains alone; it extends its functionality to pages and subdomains as well. Consequently, you can scrutinize any segment of your website in juxtaposition to your competitors’.

Additionally, Moz Pro offers an invaluable feature known as the Spam Score. This Moz metric meticulously evaluates your backlink profile, bestowing it with a quality rating based on the level of spam associated with the sites linking to you.

This score serves as a vigilant sentinel, enabling you to unearth potentially detrimental links that may harm your website’s credibility. You can then take decisive action by disavowing these links.

Moz Pro’s pricing structure commences at a reasonable $99 per month, affording you the capacity to establish three campaigns. Moreover, there’s a complimentary account option at your disposal, allowing you to explore and test all the tools within Moz Pro’s arsenal.

The Best Backlink Monitoring Tool Depends on Your Needs

The choice of the ideal tool ultimately hinges on your specific needs and objectives. In the realm of SEO, individuals often have access to robust solutions like Ahrefs or Moz. In such instances, you might discover that the comprehensive monitoring capabilities these platforms provide suffice for your purposes.

However, should your requirements extend beyond monitoring and venture into specialized link-building tasks, you’ll find that one of the platforms we’ve discussed may align perfectly with your goals.