In this article, you will learn how to discover backlinks of any website.
Backlinks are a crucial part of SEO and can be used to help you rank higher in search engines like Google. In fact, they remain one of the main ranking factors. There are many different strategies that work to discover new backlinks for your website, but which ones should you use? We'll answer that question and provide a list of methods for finding backlinks so that you can really take advantage of this powerful ranking factor.
What Are Backlinks In SEO?
Backlinks are formed when a website mentions another website on its site and links to it. It is the process of establishing connections through external websites. These connections help increase traffic to your website and improve its domain authority.
For example, let's say Business A writes a blog post about how to build credit. Business B, a major credit card company, links to this article on their website. For Business A, this link is a backlink.
A backlink refers to your website from another website. These links are also called inbound links or incoming links.
However, if you want a backlink to provide value to your website, it must be a natural link. There are opportunities that allow you to pay to get links to your website, but if you do so, you risk lowering your website rankings or being banned by Google. Stick to earning natural backlinks that will help you improve your website ranking and boost your domain authority.
It is also better to have a few high quality backlinks than many low quality backlinks. High quality backlinks will give your business better results and help you rank in search results.
Why Are Backlinks Important For SEO
To get ranked higher in Google search results, you need backlinks. Backlinks are external links pointing from one website to another. Search engine crawlers track these links and determine the importance or relevance of a particular page to other pages online by looking at the sites that link to it and how often they do so (i.e. "link juice").
The more authoritative websites that link to your website, the more likely visitors are to find what they are looking for on your site, which is why search engines use it as an indicator of relevance when ranking search results. Backlinks are still one of the most powerful ranking signals, if not the most powerful.
I used the word "still" here because some SEO experts claim that backlinks have become less powerful over the years due to black hat SEO techniques, and Google, in an effort to mitigate this, has decreased their strength. While backlinks are not as powerful as they were in the beginning, they are essential for competitive keyword rankings.
Since they are a reliable and logical method of evaluating the authority of a particular domain, Google has decided to keep them.
Domain authority can also be defined as being the expert in a particular industry. High quality backlinks help achieve this goal by creating a greater presence for your brand online.
In addition to domain authority, backlinks can bring you referral traffic. In simple terms, referral traffic is clicking on links pointing to your pages. The more relevant the link is, the more likely you are to convert your visitor.
Finally, link building can allow you to build valuable relationships with thought leaders, bloggers, and other tools.
However, more backlinks are not always better. You also need to focus on quality and relevance. The linking website should be more or less in your industry, have at least a few thousand visitors, and not be part of a PBN (Private Blog Network). Make sure you only create links that can positively contribute to your overall online presence.
Difference Between Dofollow and Nofollow Backlinks
If a webmaster decides to make sure that Google does not count a particular backlink (or inbound link) in the authority of other websites, he can assign a Nofollow tag to it. Essentially, this tag tells the search engine to ignore that link. Google has implemented this property in its algorithm to prevent spammy link building strategies, such as posting comments on hundreds of sites that link to your domain.
To further characterize backlinks, there are also UGC and sponsored attributes. UGC stands for User Generated Content, like comments, and sponsored tells the search engine that it is a paid link. These attributes behave in the same way as the Nofollow attribute.
However, they are only hints for the search engine. While it is generally accepted that Nofollow links have no power, this is not entirely true. Even unrelated mentions of your brand can be considered to count for authority, so Nofollow backlinks can have some impact. Google determines this based on hundreds of little things.
Referring Domains vs Backlinks
There is a major difference between getting multiple backlinks from the same domain and links from different domains. It's always better to have a diverse link profile consisting of many domains than hundreds of links from a handful of domains. Obtaining 10 links from 10 domains is much better than 100 links from 2 domains.
It is possible to get more than one backlink on a particular domain if you link to a different specific page each time.
Why Should You Conduct A Backlink Audit?
Short answer: data.
Long answer: such an audit provides you with information about your competitors and your own backlink profile, allows you to discover new backlink opportunities, gives you insight into how your competitors are building links, and helps you discover areas where your website might be lacking.
There are many areas where your backlink profile may differ from your competitors, such as the quality of unique referring domains, anchor texts, the ratio of Dofollow to Nofollow, the presence of toxic backlinks, and much more.
Nevertheless, the most important advantage of exploring backlink profiles is the fact that you can get huge amounts of opportunities from your competitor's website.
How to Discover Backlinks of Any Website and Analyze Them?
For this, you will need tools, more precisely a backlink checker. There are several of them, the two most notable being Ahrefs and SEMRUSH. These two are entire suites, which can be very expensive, as they are much more than backlink and competitor analysis tools. I myself use RankWatch because of its ability to filter results and export them into an easy-to-read spreadsheet. It's also interesting to note that RankWatch only gives you the number of referring domains, which in the end is what matters most.
You can also use a free backlink checker like Ubersuggest or Google Search Console, but it won't give you as in-depth an overview of your backlinks. Generally speaking, it is only useful for checking your competitor's backlinks and discovering new opportunities.
Here's how I do it with RankWatch Backlink Checker:
Checking backlinks through the RankWatch Backlink Checker tool is as easy as 1-2-3. All you have to do is enter the URL of the domain whose backlink profile you want to check and click "Explore Backlinks". That's all you have to do.
Pro tip: If you want to perform a backlink analysis of your competitors, just enter the URL of your competitor and click "Explore Backlinks". By doing this, you will be able to spy on your competitor's backlinks and replicate them for free.
Discover and perform a detailed backlink analysis of any website using the RankWatch backlink checker. Enter a domain and discover actionable SEO metrics.
Backlink Snapshot
The Backlink Snapshot dashboard provides you with a summary of your backlink profile, which includes:
- Total number of backlinks (up to today)
- Total number of active and deleted backlinks
- Overall trust and citation score
- Backlink acquisition trend
Referring Domains
Get comprehensive information about the unique number of referring domains that point to your website over time.
Find out the industry of your referring domain, as well as the Trust Score, Citation Score, Alexa Rank, and the total number of backlinks pointing to each referring domain.
Anchor Text
Access the Anchor Text report to get the most comprehensive breakdown of anchor text associated with your backlinks.
Analyzing your anchor text can help you formulate better SEO strategies to optimize keywords based on user intent.
In-Depth Backlink Analysis
RankWatch Backlink Checker tool gives you one-click panoramic access to your entire backlink profile with its source website, category, anchor text, link type (Nofollow and Dofollow), and history.
When a website removes a link to your domain, chances are you won't always be informed. But, with the RankWatch backlink analyzer, you can check if a link promised in a guest post is still active or deleted.
FAQs About How to Discover Backlinks
What are SEO backlinks examples?
Backlinks are links from one page of a website to another. If someone links to your website, you get a backlink from him. If you link to another website, they have a backlink from you.
Are backlinks expensive?
High quality backlinks are expensive because they are hard to get. The reverse is also true. Low quality backlinks are cheap because they are easy to get.
How much is a backlink worth?
Ahrefs finds that the average cost to purchase a backlink from a website is $361.44 (excluding labor and outreach costs) - See here.
Are backlinks overrated?
The truth is that backlinks are overrated because we don't need them to rank like we need the other elements of SEO. Does that mean they don't matter? No. It just means that they are not as important as some people think.
How Important Are backlinks for Google rankings?
Backlinks are important for SEO because they signal to Google that another resource finds your content interesting enough to reference it in their own content. As a website gains additional backlinks, search engines deduce that the website has valuable content that deserves to rank well in the SERPs.
How to Discover Backlinks Summary
Knowing how to discover backlinks pointing to a website is one of the SEO basics you need to master. However, with the right tools, you can focus your efforts on using the information available to you to close the link gap with your competitors, create new links or make sure you don't have any toxic backlinks that could hurt your website ranking.
