11 Best Backlink Checker Tools for Improving Your Link Profile

You probably know that building valuable backlinks is an essential component of a strong SEO strategy. But what about analysing your current link profile? This is where a backlink checker comes in.

If your site has already been around for at least a few months, you likely already have a backlink profile. Some of these links may positively impact you in rankings while others might pull you down in search results. 

You need to know either way whether your current backlink profile is helping or hindering your site. 

Want to know which is the best backlink checker for your site? If that’s a yes, read on and discover our ten best backlink checkers to try today.  

Best Backlink Checker Tools Worth Trying Out

1. SEMrush Backlink Audit Tool

An ‘all-in-one marketing toolkit’, Semrush combines several different digital marketing tools to help boost your SEO strategy. 

With one of the best backlink checkers available, SEMrush makes it easy for you to understand and analyse your backlinks to boost your rankings. 

Like other similar tools, you first need to enter the domain into the Backlink Analysis section. 

SEMrush will then pull up lots of relevant information about the domain and its backlinks. To uncover more in-depth information, the platform will generate detailed reports about each of the domains. 

SEMrush makes it particularly easy for you to discover low-quality backlinks that might be harming your rankings. The platform shows you how many links a page has directing users to your site.

In 2020, 2 new features were added to the Backlink Audit Tool; Target Pages report (allows one to perform full analysis of target pages on your site or your competitors site) and a Lost & Found report (helps in monitoring users' own and their competitors' backlink profile).

A page with too many links to your site indicates a spammy site with low authority in Google’s eyes. 

You can also use the tool to assess your competitors’ backlinks and figure out which high authority sites are linking to them. This information will help you build your own backlink outreach strategy so you can also build authoritative backlinks. 

Price: Pro Plans cost $119.95/month. A Guru Plan is $229.95/month while a Business Plan is $449.95/month. 

2. SEO SpyGlass (SEO PowerSuite)

SEO PowerSuite brings the fire to its SEO tools and its backlink checker SEO SpyGlass is no different. 

One of the best features of this tool is its ability to produce highly detailed reports on its backlink findings. These reports will improve your understanding of the nitty-gritty elements of specialised backlink data. You can automate these reports to analyse noFollows, doFollows and anchor text. 

SEO SpyGlass also deeply researches the quality of each of your site’s backlinks. Discover how 50 different factors like domain age and page authority impact how Google views your backlinks.

You can also compare up to 5 different competitors’ link profile side by side to see how your competitors might be beating your strategy. 

Price: A Free Plan includes all data although exporting or copying data isn’t enabled. A Professional Plan is $299/year while an Enterprise Plan is $699/year. 

3. Mangools LinkMiner

Unlike the other backlink checkers mentioned on this list, Link Miner is purely a backlink checker tool without any additional SEO features. 

Created by Mangools, LinkMiner has some pretty extensive backlink related features. You can filter your backlinks by new, noFollow, lost and deleted links. 

This is particularly helpful if you want to keep a list of deleted or lost links that you want to recover for your site. It’s also a handy way of seeing new backlinks straight away as they appear. 

To help you target competitors’ backlinks, LinkMiner allows you to create a list of favourite backlinks so you remember which ones are the most important ones to target. 

This is the best backlink tool if you’re strapped for cash and don’t need as many additional SEO features. 

Price: A Basic Plan is $29.90/month while a top tier Agency Plan is $79.90/month. 

4. SE Ranking Backlink Analysis Tool

When looking for a backlink checker, you want lots of data, a user-friendly interface, and affordable pricing. All of that is available with the SE Ranking Backlink Analysis Tool. It does everything from assessing the overall quality of your backlink profile to detecting the location of IPs and subnets you get those links from.

Simply enter the domain you want to research, and get access to

• Domain and Page Trust – SE Ranking’s proprietary metrics showing you how likely it is that your domain or page will rank high
• Backlinks – new and lost
• Referring domains – new and lost
• Alexa Rank – shows how popular your website is compared to other websites in the niche
• Nofollow/dofollow link ratio
• Most popular anchors
• Source – whether the link comes from text or image
• The most linked out pages
• First and Last seen – when the algorithm first and last saw the link
• Location – a map with your backlink distribution through IPs and subnets

You can certainly check any website’s backlink profile like this, which is very useful for competitor research. By seeing where they get backlinks from, you can get a whole list of resources to contact and arrange inbound links. Besides, by researching competitors’ profiles, you’ll see which websites aren’t worth collaborating with.

Price: There are 3 main pricing plans, but you can order a quote for a custom one. The Essential plan is $39, the Pro plan is $89, and the Business plan is $189. If you pay annually, you save 20% off the total payment.

5. Ahrefs

One of the big SEO powerhouses, it’ll come as no surprise that Ahrefs has one of the best backlink checkers. In fact, backlink checking is where the platform truly shines. 

With a staggering database of 22 trillion backlinks, Ahrefs has the second most active web crawler following Google. 

Enter any site, your own or a competitor’s and view all the backlinks that refer to that specific site. Once a list appears with all the links, take a look at metrics like the domain authority and the exact location of the referring website. 

Their own ‘Domain Rating’ shows you the value of each site that is linking to you, showing the number of backlinks and Dofollow links. 

Ahrefs is also great for showing you any backlinks you’ve lost. These may be links that are broken or links that the website owner has deleted from their page. 

Armed with this data you can then approach the website manager and see if they can fix any 404 errors or perhaps re-include those links to your site. 

When you’re spying on your competitors’ backlinks you can filter them by link type and narrow down the domains you want to target for your own site. 

Price: Lite Plans are $99/month for 1 user. Plans are priced based on the number of users and projects with a full-blown agency plan costing $999/month. Yearly plans come with discounts. 

6. Moz Pro Link Explorer

Link Explorer is Moz Pro’s signature backlink checker and one of the best for developing a solid inbound link strategy. 

Compare up to 4 competitors with your own backlink profile to see what they might be doing differently in their strategy. Link Intersect allows you to see which sites are linking to your competitors but not you - making them prime sites to target. 

As well as reviewing each link, you can check out key details like the anchor text, spam score, page authority and domain authority. These metrics help you know which links might be holding your site back from topping those rankings. 

The Link Explorer also has a good intuitive dashboard that’s fairly visual. Results appear almost instantly after you hit enter, making it a quick and accurate backlink checker. 

Price: A standard plan is $99/month with other plans ranging in price up until premium costing $599/month. 

7. LinkResearchTools 

This backlink checker offers incredibly extensive research into each backlink, allowing you to assess every link through 97 different metrics. 

The tool is also integrated with data from 24 link backends. With these features in mind, LinkResearchTools is undoubtedly one of the best backlink checkers available. 

Analyse each with a full 360-degree view, adjusting the metrics and filters to help guide your research. Some of these original filters include impact, trust, buzz, power, and contact data. 

You can also use the platform to remove a Google Penalty, uncover link building trends, monitor your inbound links and discover further link building opportunities. 

Price: A Superhero Small Plan is $499/month while a top of the range Superhero Ultra Plan is $2,299/month. 

8. Majestic Site Explorer

Majestic Site Explorer is the best backlink checker for understanding where your current link profile stands. 

Providing standard metrics like the total number of external backlinks, you can also review other key stats like referring domains, referring subnets and referring IPs. These technical bits of information are essential for having a strong understanding of your current link strategy. 

More in-depth data is also presented in innovative charts and graphs to help you visualise how your site is doing. 

The backlink history chart will give you a clear picture of whether you are gaining or losing links over any given period of time.

An anchor text pie chart will also show you the most popular anchor texts used to link to your site - vital information for understanding how other sites are linking to yours. 

Price: A Lite Plan is $49.99/month and a top-level API Plan is $399.99/month. 

9. Linkody

One of the simplest and cheapest backlink checkers, Linkody will give you a full picture of your backlink profile while helping guide your future backlink building strategy. 

Instead of having to worry about manually checking your backlinks, Linkody automates the whole process to be faster and more efficient. 

All relevant backlink data is displayed on a user-friendly dashboard making it easy to understand the comprehensive backlink metrics. 

Your backlink profile is always changing so it’s important to know in real-time what’s happening. 

Find out when new backlinks are added or lost alternatively with the platform’s daily notifications.

If a link is added you’ll need to know if it’s a valuable addition to your site or alternatively it will have a negative impact on your rankings. 

You can use the platform to disavow any spammy or negative links to improve your site’s appearance in Google’s eyes. 

Price: A Webmaster Plan for 2 domains starts at $15/month. Plans steadily increase until the Agency XXL top plan at $160/month. 

10. Kerboo

Kerboo is easily one of the best backlink checkers out there due to its capacity to aggregate several data sources, resulting in accurate analysis of both web and link performance. 

Daily checks inform you of any new links or old links that are removed. The tool will also assess each new link a competitor site gains. 

Kerboo even uses its own LinkRisk metric to determine the real value of your backlinks. The tool creates a list of your most important backlinks that you need to preserve no matter what. 

Kerboo will then let you know immediately if one of these links goes down so you can then try and find a way to rebuild it. Any negative link you find can be removed and then tracked so it doesn’t reappear. 

Price: Plans are customisable to each user and business. Contact Kerboo for further details.

11. Monitor Backlinks

Monitor Backlinks is a great tool for snooping on your competitors’ backlink strategy.

If you want to discover more about which links are boosting your competitors’ rankings and which backlinks are pulling down your SEO efforts, Monitor Backlinks could be the best backlink checker for you. 

The link checker tool will tell you when you receive a valuable backlink, when a blogger reviews your product or when competing sites are racing ahead with their link building strategy. 

You can also view a ton of useful backlink related metrics to keep your strategy streamlined. See the number of referring traffic per backlink, external link count as well as page or domain authority for each backlink.

From the user-friendly interface, you can manage the rules of link disavowal so any negative or spammy links are efficiently removed. It’s also easy to spot those frustrating backlinks that offer your site no SEO value - ie. noFollow links. 

Price: A Start Plan is $25.00/month with the top 10D4C plan costing $187.42/month. 

Which Backlink Checker Tool(s) are Best for Your Business?

Understanding your complete backlink profile will take you a long way in forming a strong SEO strategy that boosts your rankings. 

Manually checking and evaluating your backlinks is always going to be a time consuming and boring process. Choose the best backlink checker for your site’s needs and allow it to automate the process for you. 

Whether your priority is spying on your competitors, cleaning up negative backlinks or finding new backlink opportunities, these backlink checkers will help you reach your SEO goals.