How to Track Backlinks to Your Website

Last week I wrote about how you can track your search rankings using Google Webmaster Tools. Well, there’s a lot more to Google Webmaster Tools than that, and another neat feature is that you can find out which websites carry links to your website (backlinks). I’ve been asked how you can find this out many times before, and although this isn’t the only way, it’s the best way to find out who links to your website.

When you log into your Webmaster Tools account, go to the dashboard and you’ll see a list of sites which link to yours (under ‘links to your site’). Click on the ‘more’ link and you’ll be taken to further information about your links. This information shows which sites link to you the most, which content is linked to the most and the text of the links pointing to your site. To download your list of links, go to ‘who links the most’ and click on ‘more’. From there you can view a full list of links to your site and you can download the list at the bottom of the page. The images below show this:

webmaster tools dashboard

links overview

website backlinks

Another way of finding out which sites link to your site is to use a tool such as SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer. A free account will give you limited information, so it’s not as good as using Google Webmaster Tools, which I would recommend using to track your own backlinks. However, if you want to do some research into which sites link to your competitors websites, then this tool is worth using for this. I previously used to use Yahoo’s Site Explorer, but it is about to be taken down. I’ve therefore had to research other backlink tools to replace the Yahoo tool and SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer is the best one I’ve come across.

The screenshot below shows the links it has recorded which point to forty-first.co.uk, but if you want to you can see some of the links to your competitors’s sites by just typing in their domain instead of your own. You won’t get a list of all their links unless you pay, but it can be useful as a guide as to what online marketing they may be doing and help you to research sites which may be worth approaching for a link to your own website. When you get a few moments, have a play around with the tool and see how it could be useful for back link research for your website.

SEOmoz Open Site Explorer

Backlinks play a very important part in how the search engines rank websites, so the more information you have about your own backlinks and your competitors, the better decisions you can make as to how you can improve your link popularity.

If you’ve had some recent success in generating new links to your site, please share how you achieved this in the comments below!

About Sam

Sam McArthur is an internet marketing consultant with 12 years in the industry. She helps professional service businesses with their internet marketing strategy, helping them to see significant results from their online marketing activities, particularly within the search engines. She also consults on the latest internet tools, technology and best practice techniques.