When it comes to building a robust SEO profile for your website, regular backlink audits are extremely important. What is a backlink audit, you might ask? In short, this term refers to the process by which you comb through all of the links out there on the internet that are pointing to your site. They might be on reputable websites or they might be somewhere you don’t want them to be, which is why it’s important to stay on top of where they are and what they’re pointing to.
Of course, doing this yourself would take a huge and unreasonable amount of time, especially if you’ve got a popular website that lots of people are linking to. That’s where backlink audit tools, or backlink checker tools, come in.
These tools will automatically crawl the internet looking for backlinks and will tell you where they are; many of them will also offer additional information like how valuable they are or what you can do to maximise your backlink strategy. Here are the best backlink audit tools for 2023!
Semrush
For our money, you’re not going to find a better backlink audit tool out there than Semrush. It’s one of the biggest and most well-known names in SEO for a good reason, and its backlink checker is excellent; it’ll give you insights and recommendations for improving your backlink profile, tell you when suspicious or unscrupulous sites are linking to your domain, and show you detailed reports about your domain’s health with regards to backlinks.
In pricing terms, Semrush offers a free backlink checker, although it doesn’t have all the functionality you might want. Pricing tiers begin at $129.95 per month, rising to $499.95 per month for the Business tier, which is naturally for bigger and more established organisations.
Ahrefs
Alongside Semrush, Ahrefs is another extremely well-known name in the world of SEO software, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Ahrefs offers a backlink audit tool as well. It lets you see domain and page-level metrics, monitor your backlink profiles for growth or decline, and see which of your domain’s pages are getting the most backlinks from elsewhere on the web. In short, it’s a comprehensive tool, although its UI could use a little work.
Just like Semrush, Ahrefs is actually a suite of SEO tools rather than just one element, so pricing reflects that. The Lite tier is just £79 per month, which isn’t too bad, but you don’t get too much for your buck; it’s better to begin with the Standard £159-per-month tier, which gets you backlink audits and a whole lot more besides.
SE Ranking
Like its competitors, SE Ranking offers a free backlink audit tool, although you won’t get information that’s quite as in-depth or extensive as you would if you paid up. The tool shows you important information like referral domains, active and lost backlinks, and domain trust, meaning you can take effective action to improve the health of your domain and get rid of those pesky backlinks that Google is penalising you for.
SE Ranking has three different pricing tiers: Essential, Pro, and Business. Billed monthly, the Essential tier is just £33 per month, with Pro and Business costing £75 and £159 per month respectively. Those numbers drop a little if you bill annually, though, so if you know this is the tool for you, the annual model is worth going for.
Mangools LinkMiner
Using the Mangools LinkMiner tool, you can easily and quickly check backlinks not just for your own domain, but for those of your competitors as well, which should be an effective way to augment your strategy. This isn’t one of the most complex or difficult tools to understand; it’s great for those who are just getting started in the world of SEO and who need backlink information in an easily-digestible and understandable form.
You’ll need a free Mangools account to use LinkMiner, but pricing tiers are also available for extra SEO tools, link rows, and site lookups. The basic entry-level pricing tier starts at $29, although offers are regularly put in place, so it’s worth checking back every now and then to see if Mangools has lowered its pricing (even though it’s already pretty affordable).
Serpstat
Like other options on this list, Serpstat’s backlink checker purports to allow you to increase your backlink profile’s power, find low-quality backlinks and rid yourself of them, and analyse the links your competitors are getting. It provides this information, plus lots more you might find interesting or useful, in an easy-to-digest format that shouldn’t confuse you even if you’re a total SEO newbie (and don’t worry; we’ve all been there!).
The backlink checker is part of Serpstat’s wider SEO platform, which is available at $50 per month if you’re billing annually. The Team tier jumps to $119 per month, but unlocks other powerful tools like access to the backlinks API and extra team members, so if you’re running a small organisation, that’s the tier to opt for.
Majestic
The final option on our list is far from the least powerful, but it’s certainly one of the oldest. Majestic’s backlink checking tool started all the way back in 2008, making it one of the earliest examples of its kind. The company is still kicking around today, and its backlink audit tool is still a widely-respected alternative to many of the others we’ve outlined on this list. That’s also thanks in part to Majestic’s proprietary Flow Metric score, which provides a graph-based analysis of your backlinks.
Paying $49.99 per month gets you access to various extra Majestic tools, including its extensive Fresh Index database, as well as the Trust Flow system. Upgrading to $99.99 per month adds useful tools like a backlink history checker and a full profile for your business, and there’s even more advanced functionality available in the (admittedly costly) $399.99-per-month API tier.
