Less than a third of marketing professionals are currently using a backlinks checker. Using one of these tools can be the best way to make sure that your website will be safe from changes to Google. With so many options for a free backlink checker, finding the right one can seem tough. Keep reading this guide and you'll find out not only how a backlinks checker can make your life easier, but also how to choose a backlink checker that will solve the right problems for your firm—possibly even a free backlink checker.
Why Do I Need Backlinks?
In the very earliest days of search engines, the biggest factor in website rankings was keyword density. While websites that used a keyword over and over would see their search engine rankings decrease, attaining a good keyword density made it much more possible to be seen by anyone searching the web.
As time passed, the biggest factor for ranking websites changed. Now, backlinks account for more than half of the total ranking that your website will receive in searches. If you don't have any backlinks coming to your website, or have very few, you will appear far too low in searches for anyone to find you with a reasonably sized search string.
What Is a Backlink Checker?
A backlinks checker works by looking all over the web for websites that are linking to your domain. You can obtain a free backlink checker either as a standalone program, an add-on or extension for Firefox or Chrome, or even by just loading up a website. There's no one right kind of backlink checker, and usually, any individual backlinks checker will miss some links. You may want to use more than one free backlink checker just to make sure that you're seeing all of your backlinks instead of just a small selection of them.
A backlink checker can't help you with other SEO tasks, like telling you which keywords to insert more frequently in order to get better search rankings. Usually, each free backlink checker is designed for only one task, and should generally be used only if you know at least a little bit about what you're doing and how to differentiate high value and low value links.
What Can a Backlink Checker Help With?
Depending on what kind of backlinks checker you're using, you can use these tools for a wide range of purposes. The most common reason that people want to use a free backlink checker in 2012 is that new Google updates have caused their website to fall out of favor in the search rankings. These users usually want a backlinks checker that will analyze the quality of the websites where their backlinks come from.
If a website appears to be low quality based on the analysis of the backlink checker, internet marketing specialists can send an email to the webmasters of the websites where the bad links are hosted and ask for them to be taken down.
Another way to use a free backlink checker is to find one that allows website comparisons. You may want to investigate, using a backlinks checker, where your competitor's backlinks are coming from. If the free backlink checker reveals that you have a competitor who appears to be doing much better than your law firm at getting search rankings, this kind of backlink checker tool can be your ticket to working on an equal footing. Often, you can use the same kinds of websites they're using to build your own backlink presence.
Another reason that you may want to use a backlinks checker is to make sure that all backlinks leading to your domain still work. If you've recently changed the layout of your website, it's possible that a number of your backlinks now just give 404 errors to would-be visitors. By running a free backlink checker that monitors whether these backlinks are functional, you can tell which webmasters to ask to update your links. If a webmaster is unavailable or refuses to edit the link, you can always add a redirect page for any links flagged by your free backlink checker.
Is a Backlink Checker Still Important?
In some ways, a backlinks checker is a more important tool than it has ever been before. Because free backlink checker tools abound, there's no reason not to get one. Backlinks are now the single most important factor for your search engine rankings, and what's more, search engine rankings count more every day.
Why is that? Because mobile traffic is driving more and more of the web today. Mobile customers, even more than traditional desktop users, are likely to click on and convert with one of the very first results they see. Because their screens are smaller and scrolling can take longer, it's very unlikely that mobile traffic will come to your website if you're on even the second page. This means that even though Google is penalizing “over optimized” websites, you need to optimize your backlinks as much as possible without incurring this penalty—and a backlinks checker is the best way to do that.
Finding the Right Backlink Checker For the Job
You've read the writing on the wall and decided you need a free backlink checker. But which backlink checker will do the best job for you? First, you need to decide what it is you're trying to do with your backlinks checker. If you want to find out which of your links work currently (and which now direct to invalid URLs), ScrapeBox (www.scrapebox.org) can help.
For those wanting a tool to just show them all of their current backlinks, try backlinkwatch.com. This online tool can help you to understand exactly who's linking to you, what their Google PageRank is, and what the anchor text is that is bringing people to your website. Just identifying these trends can make it much easier to avoid any unnecessary loss of search rankings on Google.
