Top 10 Backlink Monitor Tools to Use in 2024

Backlinks are a vital search engine ranking factor that helps your website to gain authority, and thus, you should know the total number of backlinks directed to your website. But that’s not enough! To boost your SEO, you need enriching web content.

You also need links from the leading websites to improve your search engine ranking, drive website visitors and generate leads. Professional SEO services can always help you acquire such links and escalate your search engine rank.

Once you research keywords, you should rank the domain on search result pages. Without a rich backlink profile, it gets almost impossible for you to rank on SERPs. However, backlink monitor tools help you to evaluate competitors and upgrade your SEO strategies depending on the acquired information. By targeting your competitors’ backlinks, you can target high authority domains as backlinks.

Backlink monitor tools always help you to fulfill your SEO objectives. You can learn where your web pages acquire backlinks (be it organic or outreach) and frequently assess the link qualities.

Unfortunately, you may not afford to use all tools as some of them are pretty expensive. The best tools are worth the money, but many marketers don’t have the budget for a premium plan. But you can always use or at least start using specific free monitoring tools that can help you achieve long-term SEO results.

So, here is a list of the best backlink monitor tools that you can use in 2024 without burning a hole in your pocket:

1. Ahrefs

Ahrefs has been one of the most popular backlinks monitor tools trending for over a decade. It comes with an advanced site audit and keyword research tools. But the most valuable element is the backlink checker. Though Ahrefs is an expensive tool, you can check backlinks free of cost.

Once you sign up for a free account, you can immediately check your websites to identify on-page SEO issues, new/broken backlinks, and many other relevant, valuable features. Ahrefs’ backlink monitor simplifies backlink monitoring. You can also analyze competitor websites, monitor their backlinks, and look for fresh link-building opportunities.

The app displays a history of all monitor requests and how many times users have visited your website and helps in exporting the data as a .xls file. Ahref’s backlink monitor helps you evaluate backlinks and delivers a report with updated data on the present backlink profile.

You can track backlinks and find out the broken ones in a few clicks. To do so effectively every day, you need to have technical knowledge. Even if you don’t have technical knowledge, you should use Ahrefs because of the following features:

• Page-level and domain metrics
• Clear reports of every backlink
• Traffic monitoring to refer and link domain
• Domain metrics to find websites linking to you in a report
• Interactive graphic representation to refer domain, web pages, and backlink profile
• Outbound links breakdown

2. SE Ranking

SE Ranking is an excellent backlink checking tool as it integrates with a range of marketing tools that are accessible with a paid subscription. However, you don’t need a paid plan to use SE Ranking as it is free for users and displays the latest twenty links. When you check the report every day, you get an idea of your link-building campaign performance.

The backlink monitor tool helps you to track your website’s backlinks, which gives you information on the ways to boost your backlink profile. The live backlink monitoring and insights help you to make sure that your website stays at the top of SERPs strengthening your profile. You can see all the latest and old backlinks with their relationships that notify you whenever there is any change in backlinks.

SE ranking plans start at approximately $20/month, including advanced rank tracking, competitor research, and keyword analysis tools.

Here are the key features of this backlink monitoring tool:

• Google Webmaster Tools data highlights incoming links to your domain.
• The significant backlink metrics create an elaborate link analysis report.
• Track backlink metrics.

3. Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free backlink tool with a free huge data allowance but restricted opportunities to analyze backlinks. It is a Google tool that helps webmasters to enhance their websites. Unfortunately, you can use it to evaluate your websites.

After you verify your ownership, you get access to various website high-quality dashboards, including the list of backlinks from the Google index. No matter how long the list is, you only see the top 1000 output. Though you can’t see analytics features and extra features, you can export and analyze data with other tools free of charge.

Search Console deletes poor backlinks from the lists and values only the important ones. One of the most unique things regarding Google Search Console is that backlink lists tend to be quite shorter than those from other backlink checkers. Due to this kind of vetting, you can’t use this monitoring tool to catch and remove spammy backlinks from your profile. However, you can acquire a set of backlinks that is a distinguishing quality of this tool.

Google Search Console is perfect to use as a source of original backlink data. You can export the data to SEO SpyGlass to analyze and add insights. You get free data allowance for approximately 1000 backlinks, but you can only monitor the websites owned by you.

Here are the key features of the free backlink monitoring tool:

• Backlink data analytics
• Data display with top anchor texts, linked websites and pages
• Direct accurate Google data
• Live URL examination tool

4. SEO Spyglass

SEO Spyglass is a backlink monitoring tool that offers you all you need to complete your work. This tool provides a comprehensive dashboard that his you to analyze and manage backlinks. You can find linking and linked web pages, anchor text, anchor URL, do follow and no follow attributes, link source domain, page authority, penalty risk, and others. You can sort and filter the identified backlink data using a backlink parameter.

The total number of backlinks you view without cost is up to 1100 per domain. But you can check unlimited domains and research your and competitors’ websites.

To get certain extra data, you can connect  SEO SpyGlass to Google Search Console and Google Analytics. After the connection, you can easily retrieve your backlink details from Google tools, add that to SEO SpyGlass, and process data through the SEO SpyGlass dashboard for free of charge.

When it comes to finding new backlinking chances, SEO SpyGlass offers a feature known as Domain Comparison. Include some of your competitors and discover websites where the backlinks intersect.

Such websites are your lucrative leads. As these websites link to two or more competitors, they don’t have a specific exclusive association and tend to agree to link to your website. SEO SpyGlass is the perfect choice as a home base to research and manage backlinks. It performs the best with advanced analytics and the biggest data allowance on this list.

SEO Spyglass allows approximately 1100 backlinks per domain, limitless backlink analytics, and domain checks.

Here are the key features of this backlink monitoring tool:

• Identify all backlinks directing to your website
• Discover your competitor websites’ link building strategies
• Find traffic-generating backlinks
• Build clear and catchy backlink reports
• Protect your website with premium safety features
• Ensure customizability and flexibility
• Function on various platforms and communicate in multiple languages

5. Google Backlink Checker

Google Backlink Checker is perhaps the most accurate backlink checker. The tool offers everything that helps you to track your and competitor backlinks. Unfortunately, it’s not that user-friendly and helps to assess links to your own website. The tool offers everything that helps you to track your and competitor backlinks. The tracking allows you to understand if it’s possible to position your website there.

Source: Google Chrome

The backlink checker gives weekly updates for a website and those of your associates which helps you to take your website to the top of SERPs. You can check backlinks on a page and find broken links, unverified links, follow links, no-follow links, internal and external links.

The on-page link code browser helps you to see the correct source code of a link on mouseover to quickly identify issues.  The tool highlights links and no-follows from your projects and supports powerful user features.

Google finds or recognizes backlinks in Google Search Console that are quite different from the profile on other tools. Google ignores numerous links if it considers them as low quality or spammy backlinks. Several backlink tools list all the links they discovered, including links that the search engine algorithm doesn’t register or ignore.

Here are the key features of Google Backlink Checker:

• Track and analyze backlinks fast
• A summary page displaying the total number of backlinks, no follow links, and Google indexed pages
• Save all checked URLs at the bottom of your home screen

6. Moz Link Explorer

Moz, created by Rand Fishkin in 2004, is one of the authentic SEO tools. They have created many SEO terms that are relevant today and metrics (Page Authority and Domain Authority). You can use Moz’ Link Explorer free of cost for a maximum of 10 searches in a month. Though the metrics are proprietary, you can trust their authenticity to compare websites depending on PA or DA. The comparison always helps in building and monitoring backlinks.

Moz Link Explorer is a backlink checker tool that helps you monitor website mentions on the web. You can get details such as the total number of mentions, their locations, and used anchor text. It also helps you to export the outcomes for a more in-depth analysis.

As the interface is simple yet robust, you can easily monitor links and receive detailed reports regarding the latest happenings. The link explorer tool delivers a spam score report that helps in finding link opportunities and potential poor-quality links.

Here are the key features of Moz Link Explorer:

• Full analysis of backlinks referring to the domain
• Precise link indexing
• Comprehensive competitive backlink research
• Monitor new and lost links

7. SEMRush

SEMRush is growing popular as a robust online marketing tool that helps you to track competitors’ search engine marketing tactics. It started as a backlink and keyword tool but has evolved into a full marketing suite. Today, it is one of the top backlink checker tools. SEMRush costs quite similar to Ahrefs, but you can go for only ten free checks before you need to subscribe to a plan.

With SEMRush, you get a comprehensive analysis of competitors’ backlinks, SEO, keywords, and relevant factors. The backlink monitor helps you to track the total number of backlinks that your competitors have on their websites. It is an excellent way to analyze your backlink strategy and you can now easily monitor all the new backlinks that your website receives.

Here are the key SEMRush features:

• Backlink audit tool with full backlink profiles
• Backlink analysis and capture possibilities
• Live track of competitor backlinks
• Backlink gap visualization between a backlink profile and competitors.

8. Seobility

The Seobility Backlink Checker is a free tool that helps you to find which websites link to your web content. You can discover the backlinks to any website by simply entering the domain name or URL of a page on your/competitor’s website or that you want to assess.

The Backlink Checker delivers you a detailed backlink profile, such as the total number of referring domains and the ratio of follow to no-follow links. The tool uses this data to calculate the website’s DA that allows you to assess the quality of your link profile.

You find that web page’s top backlinks, and details regarding the link qualities, such as link type(text, image, follow and no follow), link text, link rating. You can analyze both backlinks and competitors and identify link-building opportunities easily. The results indicate your rival brands’ link-building strategies, and you get a list of websites that you contact yourself.

Without registration, you can use this free backlink profile checker that you can access up to three times a day. You can check full domain profiles and backlinks directed to single URLs. Sign up to get some more checks in a day than what the free version offers.

Here are the key features:

• Full on-page SEO audit
• Backlink analysis
• Link Building tools
• Rank tracking

9. SEOProfiler

SEOProfiler is a free tool with an intuitive interface that helps you to filter links depending on various criteria. You can filter by anchor text, type of link, link quality, destination URL, and others.

The Link Influence Score helps to determine the link power. Domains with several high-quality links directed to them score higher. Thus, you can sort or filter links depending on quality. To use SEOProfiler, you need to create an account.

The Link Manager in SEOProfiler simplifies link-building campaign management. It is integrated with all SEOProfiler link-building tools, which automatically retrieves the most significant link metrics and contact details for every website. You can track communication with link partners and check if other websites are still direct to your website. You can also create reports for your superior and clients like all other SEOProfiler tools.

The Link Manager tool helps you manage link-building activities easily. Here are the key features of SEOProfiler:

• Track ranking
• Automated website audits
• Website optimization
• Backlink building
• Social media tracking
• Reporting and analytics
• Project management

10. Rank Signals

RankSignals is a 100% free backlinks checker that gives you full access and delivers limitless results. It offers high-quality link-building tools that you can use as and when required without restrictions. You can identify competitors’ leading links, which is one of the most potent link-building strategies. You can also reclaim removed/changed links which are marked along with error codes.

Link profile maintenance is essential for your website to rank high on SERPs. Link signals and metrics such as Alexa Rank, Page Rank, Internal and External Links ratio help to determine the link value and quality. Rank Signals helps you to identify spam and poor links.

With the link explorer, you can identify and tag the no-follow links that search engines tend to discount. You can also check social sharing metrics across leading social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

The quick SEO Chrome Extension helps you to get instant access to key SEO metrics in your web browser. You get immediate access to Rank Signals backlinks checker and data such as Alexa Rank, Page Rank, and traffic estimation.

The Home page shows a backlink checker so you learn that Rank Signals seriously check backlinks. Though Rank Signals offers free service, you need to create an account to use the tool. Backlinks get displayed with lucrative link metrics such as no referrer, no opener, and no-follow.

Rank Signals also display when a link was deleted also for new accounts.

Here are the key features of this backlink monitor tool:

• Competition analysis
• Identify poor, spam, broken, and deleted links
• Evaluate link value and quality

The Bottom Line

SEO is not as complicated as it seems. There are no hard and fast rules for success but you can do certain things to maintain a healthy link profile.  In today’s digital-savvy world, you don’t need to strive hard to find the best backlink monitoring tools. The more high-quality links you earn, the more success you get in SEO.

Start using these tools mentioned above for free this year yet achieve long-term success in the crowded marketplace. All the best!

Frequently Asked Questions