A backlink, also referred to as an incoming link or inbound link, is a link from one website that points to another website. It acts as a vote of confidence for the linked website and informs Google and other search engines that the linked website content is relevant to the topic and a valuable one. Google considers these links as a mark of authority and thereby increases the value of the website.  

Backlink checker tools are the most important part of any site owner’s SEO strategy. With the right tool, you can find link-building opportunities, know how your competitors are getting quality links, etc. Acquiring high-quality backlinks will help you with faster indexing of your website, increase in search engine rankings, improved referral traffic, and enhanced branding for your business. 

Since there are so many backlinks analysis tools available online, it can be difficult to choose the best one for your business. Don’t worry, we are here to help! 

In this post, we will cover:  

Understanding Backlink Analysis 
Analyzing backlinks using Backlink Research Tools 
Identifying the top 5 Backlink Analysis Tools 
Introduction to the 5 Best Backlink Checker Tools 

Let’s get started! 

What is Backlink Analysis? 

Backlink Analysis is an in-depth evaluation of your link profile. Performing this analysis not only helps in identifying the competitor’s linking profile but also identifies the new link-building opportunities to stay ahead of the competitors in the market. Furthermore, it helps you to focus on the high-quality links that are adding value to your site and alerts you if your business has any spammy or toxic links.  

In the below sections, we have mentioned the best tools for backlink analysis online and what makes them stand out from their competitors. With their help, you can monitor the health of your backlink profile.  

How to Analyze Backlinks from Backlink Research Tools? 

Follow this simple 5 step process to analyze your link profile using backlink analysis tools.  

Pick the best backlink checker tool listed on this page.
Choose the website(s) you want to analyze. 
Gather the link-building data of the domains by entering one after the other. 
Examine the metrics like backlinks strength, referring domains, and the ratio of do-follow and no-follow links. 
Analyze what your competitors are doing, where they are getting links, and implement their strategies.  

Now that you got an idea of how to analyze the backlinks using the tools. Let’s get started with the best backlinks analysis tools and improve the domain authority and rankings of your business.  

5 Best Competitor Backlink Analysis Tools:

SEMrush 

SEMrush is one of the highly robust backlink checker tools that millions of people use around the world. The best thing is they will add new features every now and then to accurately monitor your site’s backlink profile.  

Did you know? SEMrush crawls over 17,280,000,000 URLs on average per day. This is due to its huge backlinks database that consists of over 41,263,000,000,000 total backlinks. One can also find new and lost backlinks and find new opportunities to improve the backlink profile.  

From the dashboard, one can get plenty of reports summarizing the backlinks profile.  

Backlinks by industry, country, type, etc.  
Authority score 
Referring domains, Referring IPs 
Indexed pages 
Competitors of your domain 
Backlink history (over five years).  

How much does SEMrush cost (as of now)?

Pro plan: $119.95 per month (5 projects) 
Guru plan: $229.95 per month (15 projects) 
Business plan: $449.95 per month (40 projects) 

SEMrush also has a free plan where you can check only 5-10 backlinks for each domain.  

Ahrefs

The next top-rated backlink tool in the line is Ahrefs. On average, it crawls over 6.5 billion pages per day.  

Features: 

Discover the Ahrefs rank of the domain. 
Find the total number of backlinks and referring domains of any website. 
Discover new and lost backlinks and broken links. 
Finds key metrics like Domain rating, URL rating, backlinks by type, etc. 
Finds the most linked pages that help you discover which type of link attracts your visitors.  

Ahrefs pricing plan (as of now):

Lite plan: $99 per month (for beginners) 
Standard plan: $179 per month (for bloggers) 
Advanced plan: $399 per month (for SEOs) 
Agency plan: $999 per month (for agencies)

Moz

Moz Link Explorer helps in discovering the backlinks of any website. With its huge backlink index (over 40.7 trillion links), you can easily find your competitors’ links too.

Along with this, you can get access to major metrics like DA, PA, linking domains, Inbound links, spam score, broken links, and new and lost links of your domain.  

Pricing plans of Moz (as of now):

Standard plan: $99 per month (for beginners) 
Medium plan: $149 per month (Will have access to keyword research tools) 
Large plan: $249 per month (suited for agencies) 
Premium plan: $599 per month (for big agencies/ in-house teams) 

Ubersuggest Backlink Checker by Neil Patel

Ubersuggest backlink checker tool by Neil Patel is probably the best one for your link audit. One can also find the backlinks of their competitors and their link-building strategies with this tool.  

Features:

Backlinks analytics metrics like source page title and URL, DA & PA of website, Spam score, Anchor text, etc. 
Discover backlinks over time.  
New and lost referring domains. 
The date the backlink was first and last discovered. 

Pricing plans (as of now):

Individual plan: $120 (for a lifetime) which is suited for those managing 1 to 3 websites. 
Business plan: $200 (for a lifetime) which is suited for those managing 4 to 7 websites. 
Enterprise plan: $400 (for a lifetime) which is suited for those managing more than 8 websites. 

Ubersuggest also has a free version that can be used by logging in from any Google account. If you want to access its advanced features, go with the premium version.  

BuzzSumo 

BuzzSumo is one of the highly preferred backlink finder tools in the market. From the backlinks tab, you can discover who is linking to the topic or keyword and get insights on it. This helps you create better content as per your target audience.  

The tool also helps in analyzing the brand mentions, and your own content performance and tracking the content and strategies of your competitors. The tool has a free version too but with limited features compared to the paid version.  

How much does BuzzSumo cost (as of now)?

Basic: $95/ month (for single users) 
Suite: $319/ month (for large brands and agencies) 
Enterprise: $999/ month (for inhouse brands and large agencies) 

Top 5 Free Backlinks Analysis Tools: 

Looking for the best free backlinks analysis tools on the market? Here’s the list of tools that you can try for free. 

Majestic SEO 

Majestic SEO backlink checker tool provides a ton of backlink information including the mutual links between any two websites.  
The tool also helps you discover backlink opportunities irrespective of your industry.  
The paid version of this powerful backlink checker tool comes with vast features that every marketer should try.  

SEO SpyGlass

SEO SpyGlass is one of the best free backlink checker tools in the market as we can sort and filter the backlinks using many parameters like linked pages, anchor text, dofollow nofollow links, DA & PA, and more.  
You can view links through this tool, however, the maximum allowed free usage is 1,100 per domain – though there is no limit to the number of domains you can check. 
You can also connect to Google Search Console and Google Analytics and pull the backlinks data of your website or competitors.  

Seobility

Seobility is perhaps the best tool to review the backlink profile of your site or competitors.  
We can get a quick summary of your overall backlink profile – number of backlinks, linking domains, ratio of dofollow to nofollow, etc.  
But the tool is limited to three backlink checks a day and under each check, you can review 400 backlinks.  

Google Search Console

We all know that Google Search Console is meant for webmasters to help improve their websites. But we can also get the list of backlinks that were drawn directly from Google’s index.  
The only drawback is you can analyze the backlinks of the websites that you’ve owned. Once your ownership is verified, you can export the top 1,000 backlinks. Unlike other free backlink checker tools, you cannot find other details like the DA score, dofollow links count, etc. So, export the raw backlink data from GSC and analyze them using any of the tools mentioned here.  

Check My Links

This free extension provided by Chrome is a simple but effective tool for finding backlinks to your site or competitors.  
Once you install the extension, all you need to do is open the site you want to analyze and click the icon. This free backlink checker tool will scan the page and list broken and valid links on the page.  
We can easily spot the issues in our link profile like broken links as they will be highlighted in red and fix them.  

The backlink analysis tools free & paid which we have discussed here are loaded with vast features to audit your backlinks and the competitors’. So, choose the best tool from here and boost your rankings and credibility on SERP.  

Let us know in the comments section which one of the above is your favorite backlink checker tool or which one you’re going to try for your business.