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PressureWashing
03-21-2012, 07:20 AM
I have started to track all my back links recently and wondering how many of you are doing the same thing?

Business Attorney
03-21-2012, 09:30 AM
What do you mean by tracking your back links? I occasionally check Google Webmaster Tools, Analytics or similar programs to see where links are coming from, but I don't do anything to track the back links.

PressureWashing
03-21-2012, 06:08 PM
I mean having a record of where you are posting your back links. It takes time to build back links right? Many of those back links will not get indexed so its time wasted.

By tracking back links you can find out which ones are being indexed and then index the ones that aren't.

Harold Mansfield
03-22-2012, 11:12 AM
I check referring links, and if there are any of significance that I can double down on, I do.
But other than that, no.

I spend far less time building my own links, and more time trying to write blog posts that other people want to link to, and participating in industry related discussions.
It has done far more to make my phone ring than trying to manipulate my own placement in the SERPS.

My last 10 phone calls were, "I saw your response on Facebook to _______ which lead me to your page and then your website", or, "A friend forwarded me an article you wrote about...", or, "I saw you listed as a service provider on________".

I resisted it before, but I'm really starting to see where search is still great for local businesses. Actually, it's really coming along. But those of us looking to do business nationwide or worldwide, need to do way more than just SEO. We have to participate where ever we can, where people may be looking for information.

I think the days of manipulating your own placement are almost over. JMO of course.

Google Announces a New SEO Over-Optimization Penalty:
Alert! Google Announces a New SEO Over-Optimization Penalty (http://wpmu.org/alert-google-announces-a-new-seo-over-optimization-penalty/)

billbenson
03-25-2012, 05:17 PM
Keeping track of backlinks is something that was done in the link exchange days. If you exchanged links with someone and they dropped your links from their site at some point in time you wanted to know about it. A lot of people wrote scripts to keep track of it.

Today, to me, the only valuable link would be a very high quality paid for link or natural links. The only tracking I would be interested in is if I wrote very high quality content with the intent of generating links and looking to see who decided to link to me and how many...

merlot105
04-04-2012, 04:21 PM
If you are creating the links yourself, more than likely the links are not worth tracking. Instead, look for high-quality links from sources with editorial control (ie. not every website can get a link from the source). In other words, your website must be worthy of a link - and these are the links that Google really looks for anyway.

HolliAnn
04-12-2012, 01:04 PM
Keeping track of backlinks is something that was done in the link exchange days. If you exchanged links with someone and they dropped your links from their site at some point in time you wanted to know about it. A lot of people wrote scripts to keep track of it.

Today, to me, the only valuable link would be a very high quality paid for link or natural links. The only tracking I would be interested in is if I wrote very high quality content with the intent of generating links and looking to see who decided to link to me and how many...

Tagging along with this...

My company is big into content. Any time we put a link out there for a client, we place it within content that is A) unique B) quality C) relevant to the site we're posting on. Now, having said that, I think it's important to track your back link profile. We use Raven Tools and have found it to be really valuable for SEO. They help you keep track of your links, rankings, etc. and provide you with insight to how the website is doing in general. Hope that helps! :)

websonalized
09-13-2012, 01:58 PM
I have used WebSEO for my needs, still use them now: Pricing & Plans for Premium SEO Plans - Web SEO Analytics (http://www.webseoanalytics.com/seo-packs.php)

billbenson
09-13-2012, 05:40 PM
Tagging along with this...

My company is big into content. Any time we put a link out there for a client, we place it within content that is A) unique B) quality C) relevant to the site we're posting on. Now, having said that, I think it's important to track your back link profile. We use Raven Tools and have found it to be really valuable for SEO. They help you keep track of your links, rankings, etc. and provide you with insight to how the website is doing in general. Hope that helps! :)

HolliAnn, I can see where it is important to you. However most people on this forum have small sites supporting their business. Do you see a significant importance for most of them?

Also, asking the question in a different way, is it important to see those links that you don't want? Can you get Google to un-index a link to your site? Can you legally get a link to your site removed (without spending a fortune)?

dianecoleen
09-21-2012, 03:01 PM
Well, tracking of back links will generally help you control to what site you are linking. Perhaps you may have a competitor who does black hat techniques to your website in order to rank above you in search result. Thus, it really helps by finding out unrelated sites linking to your website. This is also helpful if you really want to have a clean and related back links. Now that Google is more often to those spam sites that just build links wherever, tracking such will really be a great of help.

billbenson
09-21-2012, 08:19 PM
Well, tracking of back links will generally help you control to what site you are linking. Perhaps you may have a competitor who does black hat techniques to your website in order to rank above you in search result. Thus, it really helps by finding out unrelated sites linking to your website. This is also helpful if you really want to have a clean and related back links. Now that Google is more often to those spam sites that just build links wherever, tracking such will really be a great of help.

That makes sense.

MostHeather
10-05-2012, 06:58 PM
I've found that tools are a lot easier to use for tracking purposes. Doing it by hand is too tedious and time consuming!

Matt121
10-17-2012, 12:48 AM
I track my backlinks to wherever I post them and use tools as well. It's so that I know what sites are getting crawled by Google and for me to stick to those sites.

Aeronautes_SEO
10-30-2012, 03:59 AM
Hi.

You're doing the right thing tracking your backlinks, it's a great habit to get into and give you a record of where you need to go to check the links are still alive.

You might be interested in using a free service like Majestic SEO (www.majesticseo.com) (free for your own site), then compare how your own backlinking records align with the Majestic index.

Matt

barry100
10-31-2012, 07:24 AM
can i ask how you are doing this? I do track backlinks sometimes but as i have been building links for many years and have thousands of links, its hard to tell when people stop linking to my sites.

dianecoleen
10-31-2012, 06:35 PM
If you have find out bad links linking to your site then this tool might be of help: Google Disavow Tool (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=393nmCYFRtA) . Although Matt says that you should manually request for the webmaster of the site to remove you on their list first before disavowing the link. Even though you have thousands of backlinks you should checked it if not always then perhaps it can be weekly or monthly so you can track on the bad neighborhoods linking to you. It also prevents your site from being low quality.

rajesh
11-16-2012, 10:35 PM
What do you mean by tracking your back links? I occasionally check Google Webmaster Tools, Analytics or similar programs to see where links are coming from, but I don't do anything to track the back links.

Yes I totally agree with Business Attorney. Backlinks from related websites, guest post,articles directory and forums are permanent. You do not need to track them. Just add value to them. You only need to track links if you do link exchanges or buy them, which I would recommend not to. Do your own SEO. When you buy links, you are always suspicious if your links are removed or not. More over, it causes a lot of waste of time checking them and there is always a risk of Google penalizing your website in next algorithm update if it recognizes that you are doing unnatural linking. Link exchanges are similarly waste of time as Google does not recognize them and the traffic from link exchanges is usually worthless(my own experience) and what it increases is only the bounce rate of your website. I hope this helps.

bulk
01-24-2013, 10:50 AM
I do track backlinks for all my projects.
Well, firstly I can remove unwanted links very fast. The thing is that black hat method of putting bad links to your site is still used by competitors.
Secondly, I track backlink strategy of my competitors in the top-10. Although I am quite experienced in seo, it really helps to find new ways of natural link building. This way you can find blogs, niche websites useful for your industry.
Sometimes you just need to compare two backlink lists, yours and the one for top-1 website. Things become clear at once.
I have been using seo powersuite (even bought it, I LOVE their reports on backlinks), but now switched to webmeup.com - saas tools work better for me these days.

neil@camisonline
01-24-2013, 11:04 AM
We use OpenSiteExplorer (http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/) and just record the page and domain rankings each week in a spreadsheet. With analytics, it helps us keep track of our marketing campaigns. Also it's useful to see if the "nofollow" attribute is set on different pages in particular forums and sites.

justinm
02-15-2013, 04:04 PM
We track all backlinks coming to our site. It is very important to check all links coming in, to see what type of site they are, the quality of them, and if they are spam sites. You do not want these linking to your site. Anyone who actively builds links must check them daily.

dianecoleen
03-04-2013, 06:50 PM
In any case that you'll see a back link that is not related to your niche, then you can disavow that link. In order for your site to prevent having site authority issues. That's why checking on your back links is very essential to every websites.

Zerocool7
03-18-2013, 09:07 PM
I check my backlinks very often. The best program that I have found as far as being accurate is "Ahref Site Explorer" I think that's what it is called anyways. Its also a good way to check on your competitors anf is much more up to date than Google webmasters.

dianecoleen
03-20-2013, 05:42 PM
I agree with you zerocool! Ahref is more like similar to the features of Google webmaster tool. You can get the crawl error results, all at real time. That is a good tool if you really want real time check results. However, if you compared it to GWT, this tool is a paid one.

Tyrant
05-19-2013, 05:39 PM
We are not tracking the links but we are tracking the keywords that we are targeting, that way we are notified if any of our competitors might affect our ranking.

ericw
06-07-2013, 11:08 AM
I agree with Neil that Open Site Explorer (http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/) is quite useful for this sort of thing. Use it (Pro version) in conjunction with Google webmaster tools and Analytics.

johngkm
07-01-2013, 05:48 AM
I track my backlinks through google analytics, webmasters tool, alexa and opensite explorer. You can get an idea of where we are actually are we getting quality backlinks and proceed with some reliable link building methods.

HeadStartSEO
07-04-2013, 12:35 PM
Best thing to do is here rank your rankings, along side your backlinks, so you can better understand the effects here.

Each time you make a backlink make note of your rankings, so you can see how much that backlink helped you grow or hurt you. You can find some fancy program, or just use excel like all the pros use. You have to make it easy, and let me tell you I haven't found a easier way. Best part, you can hire a VA to keep track of all this for you, so you don't have to worry about it. Collecting data can be a pain, but it's worth it.

HeadStartSEO
07-04-2013, 12:45 PM
I track my backlinks through google analytics, webmasters tool, alexa and opensite explorer. You can get an idea of where we are actually are we getting quality backlinks and proceed with some reliable link building methods.

Only problem with that is, your not keeping track of it yourself, also webmaster tools can take days,weeks, months so show your recent backlinks. It's a delayed system, so you don't have the most up-to-date info. Also, I love Moz tools Opensite Explorer, but it's very limiting. Majestic SEO I've found has the best index, while Aherfs isn't always the best at finding your deeper links. However, I do see the two find different links at times.

The fact is, you have to check all the above if you're doing this. I would buy Majestic, since Aherfs gives you more information for free. Webmaster tools would be something I look at less, but I wouldn't look away from it.


Good thing about Majestic, it does a pretty good job at telling you how useful these links are, while it won't tell you if the link is hurtful, it will only show the power of that link, but not show its negative or positive power. This is the problem, however with any of these tools talked about, since Google is the only one that knows bad links.

Willow
07-05-2013, 11:45 PM
The most up to date backlink tool I have found is Ahrefs.com. Another good one is opensiteexplorer it gives more accurate information about each link but its only updated about once a month.

Khalifa
07-17-2013, 04:22 PM
It's good to check your backlinks from time to time. However, don't pay too much attention to it since it's not about the numbers but the quality of these backlinks. However it's a good practice to check where your backlinks are coming from, it usually shows the places that are interested in your posts.

michelle222
07-21-2013, 11:51 PM
Keeping an eye on your backlinks from time to time is good practice... but obsessively tracking them is a complete waste of time for two main reasons:

1) No 1 software tool provides a 100% accurate analysis of your backlinks. In fact, the figures and stats you see can vary MASSIVELY depending on which software you happen to use. For example, you might see thousands of links to your site using Ahrefs, and only hundreds using Traffic Travis (or whatever tools you are using)

2) Link counts fluctuate greatly.

Just remember that the long-term trend is your friend - if your traffic is growing from your SEO efforts, then you are doing the right thing.

LGCG
09-17-2013, 10:29 AM
No 1 software tool provides a 100% accurate analysis of your backlinks. In fact, the figures and stats you see can vary MASSIVELY depending on which software you happen to use.


Yeah, I check my backlinks occasionally but it's so difficult to find a reliable tool. While I know that organic traffic isn't the only metric to measure SEO success, it's the one I check most often just to see how things are progressing.

Karry
09-18-2013, 02:53 AM
Every SEO do the same at regular basis including me. And the best tool to check backlinks, ahrefs.com. But it is paid after few information. But still is beneficial compare to others.

SeanDawes
09-22-2013, 01:48 PM
We use a combination of GWT, Moz and Ahrefs. It is important to track not only your backlinks but your competitors to see where they are gaining ground. I am not talking strictly gaining ground from a link standpoint but also media coverage, company news etc. Also it can be a field day for a link builder if you spot new broken links on competitors backlink profiles

quamz0
09-25-2013, 11:51 AM
We use a combination of GWT, Moz and Ahrefs. It is important to track not only your backlinks but your competitors to see where they are gaining ground. I am not talking strictly gaining ground from a link standpoint but also media coverage, company news etc. Also it can be a field day for a link builder if you spot new broken links on competitors backlink profiles

My go to is Ahrefs, followed by Moz and majestic just because. It gives you a much better idea of your link profile by using multiple services.

marrick
12-18-2013, 04:20 AM
I do check my backlinks weekly and see if there's changes when it comes to the numbers and sources. I do it through Google Webmaster Tools and ahrefs and I compare the results from both tools. This helps me not only in monitoring the number and quality of links that are built in my site, but to also track another link opportunity that could add value to my site.

Webman123
01-08-2014, 03:52 AM
I'm using AHREFS to check backlinks. It's a great tool. It has free and premium versions. I'm using the free one :) Btw, it's still a good tool!

Damon the Marketer
01-14-2014, 12:16 PM
I use SEO Quake. I talk about the other advantages of this tool in my SEO guide (see signature). But in short, it works with Google to help you analyze all the results for a certain keyword, including your site and your competitors.

For anyone using Firefox, I recommend it as a must-have plugin for business owners. It tells you how many backlinks your site has.