External optimization is one of the most crucial areas of modern SEO. Building a link mass allows you to confirm the authority of the site, which is considered a key element of the Google EEAT formula. However, as in other areas, it requires a cautious and balanced approach. Quality is more important than quantity, and regular analytics is more beneficial than the automatic generation of materials for external posting.
If you do not use specialized backlink monitoring tools yet, your entire SEO strategy may be at risk. Algorithmic errors or deliberate actions of competitors lead to hundreds or thousands of links that search engines consider spammy. Materials that worked effectively yesterday may lose credibility or simply disappear today.
Link building is a very dynamic area of SEO, which is why you can only understand it with the help of the best backlink monitoring tool. They automatically scan the platforms where your materials are posted, assess the “health” of this network, and signal any problems. With them, you can be sure that you have chosen the right direction of development, which will be the path to success.
Of course, you can’t trust just anyone with the financial results and reputation of your business. Before subscribing to a service, you should carefully check its reliability, convenience, and functionality. To make this difficult task easier, we’ve compiled an overview of the best backlink monitoring tools in 2024.
What’s a Backlink Monitoring Tool?
You can’t control all the backlinks your website gets manually. If it was possible, you’d spend so much time and effort on it, it’s frightening. Gladly, the tech world has gifted us with a multitude of digital tools for any purpose.
There are tools for backlink research and monitoring that will do the job for you. All needed from your side is checking in regularly to see the new and lost links and referred domains, disavowing spammy links, and putting effort into building new high-quality ones.
A backlink monitor software is a program that checks the backlinks to your website in real time or once a day. You can import the links from Google Search Console or have the tool crawl the Net for you. Many programs will send you emails with changes once a day, once a month, or live after a change has happened in your profile.
This type of software automates your backlink checking efforts, allowing you to focus on partnering with relevant websites and building more links. Some tools even have the disavow list feature built-in so that you don’t have to create the files yourself.
Which Backlink Monitoring Tool Is Right for You?
We’ve created a table for you to save time and see the basic information on the best tools to monitor backlinks presented in this guide. These are the best tools for backlinks monitoring we could find for this year.
You can look through the table to see the data like pricing, tools, our rating, G2 rating, etc. The ratings are provided to help you make a choice among the tools you haven’t tried yet.
Keep in mind that choosing one or several tools may be tricky, so think about the following beforehand:
- Your budget
- The number of domains you want to monitor
- What additional capabilities you may need
- Whether you need a dedicated or an all-in-one tool
The answers will help you make the right choice that will amplify your efforts and won’t strain your budget.
TOP-10 Best Backlink Monitoring Tools
We know that brief info from the table isn’t enough to be 100% sure about your choice, so we’ve prepared more detailed reviews of backlink monitoring tools. Now, let’s see which of them can become your ally!
Keep in mind that you can save some money if you buy annual subscriptions. But do it only if you’re sure the tool is for you. Gladly, many companies are generous enough to provide a free trial, so don’t hesitate to use it to find a perfect combo of features for your projects.
Let’s start!
1. SE Ranking
SE Ranking offers some impressive backlink check software. Backlink Monitor will show you the value of each backlink, whether any of them have been deleted, whether any of them are not indexed, and when the SE Ranking crawler first and last saw the links.
In the SE Ranking review, we should mention the key advantage of this backlink monitoring tool — it has a vast worldwide database and a powerful crawler that will show you as many mentions of your URL or domain as possible.
All you have to do is import the links from GSC (Google Search Console), SE Ranking’s Backlink Checker, or add them manually. Then, the algorithm checks up on the list regularly to actualize it and see if there are any changes.
If there are, you get notified via email.
You also get comprehensive data on each link, including:
- If it comes in text or image form
- The anchor
- The URL it targets
- Whether the link is dofollow or nofollow
- Whether it’s UGC (user-generated content) or sponsored
- If the link comes from a domain with a high authority
Pros
- Comprehensive data on each link
- A powerful crawler
- Email notifications
- Proprietary domain score
- Easy to use
- Affordable
Cons
- The amount of data may be overwhelming
- Some advanced features are only available in the Business plan
Pricing
SE Ranking offers a 14-day free trial so that you can start working on your backlink profile and/or see what competitors are doing link-building-wise. You also get access to other SEO backlink monitoring tools in addition to backlink monitoring.
The pricing plans:
- Essential – $55 per month
- Pro – $109 per month
- Business – $239 per month
You can get an annual plan and save 20% if you think the toolset covers your needs. Also, if you need to calculate your price, there’s a calculator on the Pricing page of the site. And if you need a custom plan, just contact the company!
Verdict
SE Ranking is a very decent choice when it comes to the balance of price and functionality. You can easily see the toxic links on your profile, disavowing them later. If you research competitors’ profiles, you can also see future link-building possibilities. It’s affordable and fairly accurate.
2. Ahrefs
Ahrefs tools usually don’t need an introduction because they are so well-known. But we’re treating each provider by quality rather than fame, so let’s see what it has to offer backlink-wise.
First of all, Ahrefs offers a free backlink monitoring tool where you can check up to 10 backlinks or 2 domains per request per day. With a paid plan, you also see the important backlink metrics, such as:
- The source (image or text)
- Dofollow or nofollow
- Anchor, etc.
Ahrefs, aside from the majority of similar backlink monitoring tools, uses not only HTML but JavaScript too. The crawling speed is also impressive — the tool crawls 4.1 million pages a minute.
And if you lose links, the tool will show you why (noindex, 301 redirects, 404, other reasons). That’s why after the Ahrefs review, we decided to rank this service second in the ranking.
There are great features that will help you avoid Google penalty or fix the situation if it happens. For instance, there’s anchor analysis and disavow features.
Pros
- Free capacity for 2 domains a day
- Google penalty help
- Comprehensive metric list
- Fast crawling
- Broken backlink check
Cons
- No free trial
- Pricey plans
- May be difficult to understand for beginners
Pricing
The provider doesn’t offer a free trial, but there are some free tools with limited capabilities, as well as an opportunity to try the features for $7 for a week.
Pricing:
- Lite – $99 a month
- Standard – $199 a month
- Advanced – $399 a month
- Enterprise – $999 a month
As in most cases, when you pay annually, you can save up to 20%.
Verdict
Ahrefs is a high-quality and high-end platform that includes backlink monitoring tools. It is suitable for businesses that have sufficient budgets. The plans are pretty expensive, but the amounts of data and opportunities it provides are usually worth it. But if you feel like paying some $200 is troublesome, try another tool first.
3. SEMrush
SEMrush is another well-known SEO tool that also has backlink monitoring capabilities. Even the cheapest plan offers access to the backlink tool where you can not only see the data on the existing links but also pinpoint the toxic ones as they come.
One exceptional feature that we learned about in the SEMrush review is export where you can load all the spammy mentions of your website directly to the Disavow tool in Google Webmaster Tools. This saves a lot of time and effort.
The backlink monitoring module also has a feature that allows you to audit your profile and highlight the links that may have a negative influence on your SEO efforts.
Moreover, if you need help with building new links, there’s a separate tab with solutions for that.
Pros
- Impressive data on backlinks
- Convenient reporting
- Export to the Disavow Tool
- Backlink audit
Cons
- Pricey solutions
- May not be the best for beginners
Pricing
You’re offered a 7-day free trial to see if the UI and functionality of the backlink monitoring tool suit your needs. After that, you can choose one of the plans:
- Pro – $99.95 per month
- Guru – $191.62 per month
- Business – $374.95 per month
You may not find clear info on pricing on the official website of the provider, so make sure to contact them prior to making a purchase.
Verdict
SEMrush is an established provider offering high-quality tools, and the backlink ones aren’t exceptions. However, the plans are pretty expensive and the interface may be hard to grasp for a beginner. So, make sure your budget and skills are sufficient.
4. Seobility
Seobility is a beginner-friendly SEO tool that can help you monitor the quality of your backlink profile at all times. The report shows the essential data such as:
- The total number of links
- The total number of referring domains
- The ratio of dofollow and nofollow links
- A rating for each backlink
You can click on one domain and see how many backlinks there are to your pages.
Unfortunately, there’s no sufficient filtering in the backlink monitoring section, so that you could see links that meet certain requirements, but whenever there are new links, you’ll see them in the report. It’s not a lot, but the Basic plan is free, so you can use it as an additional or basic solution.
Pros
- Suitable for beginners
- Free Basic plan
- All basic metrics are included
- Backlick ratings available
Cons
- No sufficient filtering
Pricing
One of the perks of the backlink monitoring tool worth mentioning in the Seobility review is the completely free Basic plan. You can also get a free trial for the Premium one. If you need more capabilities, here are the paid plans:
- Premium – $50 a month (+ VAT)
- Agency – $200 a month (+ VAT)
Verdict
Seobility is your basic backlink check software. It’s not too expensive and offers essential metrics for your backlink profile. In terms of filtering or live monitoring, it doesn’t give much, but it’s suitable for beginners and has a free plan to start with and gain skill.
5. Linkody
Linkody is a dedicated backlink management software. It’s great for both backlink research and monitoring. It sends you email alerts that notify you about new backlinks and shows all the new and lost links on the dashboard.
You can get additional metrics from well-known tools like Majestic, Moz, and Alexa. Besides, you can create disavow files using the tool and then just upload them to Google Webmaster Tools.
And if you need further analysis, you can get one to see just how natural and high-quality your reference portfolio is.
By using this backlink monitoring tool, you can see:
- The spam rating of the backlinks
- The anchor text used for your site
- Domain and page authority scores for the sources linking to you
If you own an agency, you can create reports with your own logo and curate several backlink profiles at once.
Pros
- Email alerts for new links
- Great new backlink identification
- Ability to peek into competitors’ backlink profiles
- Trust scores for domains and pages
Cons
- The tool is only dedicated to backlinks
- Some crawl errors may occur
Pricing
There are 5 plans, so you can choose something for your needs:
- Webmaster – $14.90 per month
- Advanced – $24.90 per month
- Pro – $49,90 per month
- Agency – $99,90 per month
- Agency XL – $153,90 per month
In the Linkody review, you should pay attention to such a wide range of subscriptions. This is a significant advantage of the service as it allows you to choose the best option for any budget and scope of activity.
Verdict
Linkody is a tool specializing in one aspect of SEO, which is both its advantage and disadvantage. It’s great because you get so many metrics and features for researching and monitoring backlinks. However, some may find it too expensive to pay for a backlink tool separately.
6. Monitor Backlinks
Monitor Backlinks is another dedicated tool solely focusing on backlink research and monitoring, hence the name. You can also do keyword ranking research, but it’s not the primary feature. This service was included in the list of the best backlink monitoring tools precisely because of its link-building features.
You can find out the number of your backlinks, their analysis, and your domain authority. There’s also a possibility to track other websites, for example, your competition, at an additional price.
With the tool, you can track inbound links, see where competitors get backlinks from, build reports, create files to disavow links in Google Webmaster Tools, and more. Monitoring backlinks is fairly easy, and the links appear only a day or two after Google crawls them.
Pros
- New links are added automatically
- A lot of information on each link
- Spammy link tags available
- Disavow file creation in the program
- Friendly UI
Cons
- Email alerts come once a week only
Pricing
You can find out what plan is the best for backlink monitoring by using a suggestion tool on the Pricing page of the website. Based on whether you’ll be monitoring competitors, how many domains you need to analyze, and whether you want to pay each month or annually, the perfect plan for you will come to the top of the list.
Overall, there are the following plans:
- Start – $25 per month
- Plus – $47 per month
- Professional – $89 per month
There are more plans if you need to curate more domains. While compiling the Monitor Backlinks review, we contacted a representative of the company and found out that the subscription starts at $106 per month.
Verdict
Monitor Backlinks is a great tool with convenient pricing and a wealth of data on the links you already have and the new ones. Disavowing is easy as each spam link turns red when you flag it. The tool is relatively easy to use and adds new links rather quickly.
7. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a backlink monitoring tool with excellent capabilities. You can check your website or that of your competitor to find out the state of the backlink profile in question. On the dashboard, you’ll see the referring domains, anchor text, as well as the pages that rank the highest.
Whenever you get a new backlink, an email notification will be sent to notify you. While working on the BuzzSumo review, we found the outreach feature to be very useful. If you see there’s a high-end domain linking to you, it’s possible to build a good relationship with its owner and get more references.
BuzzSumo is one of the top backlinks monitoring tools that have a lot of other features connected to content, and you can use them as well to find opportunities for articles you can pitch later as guest posts to get more high-quality links.
Pros
- Easy to use
- Live monitoring
- Highly customizable
- Free plan available
Cons
- May lag when you integrate it with Slack
- Pricier than alternatives
Pricing
BuzzSumo offers a Free plan if you don’t need more than 10 searches per month. The paid plans are:
- Pro – $99 per month
- Plus – $179 per month
- Large – $299 per month
You can save 20% if you pay annually.
Verdict
BuzzSumo has a lot of, well, buzz over it. The tool is multifunctional and decent, including backlink monitoring. The provider offers a free basic plan, but it’s quite limiting. If you need more, prepare to pay a considerable sum of money every month.
8. AgencyAnalytics
AgencyAnalytics is an excellent tool when it comes to backlinks. It offers to track new and lost backlinks, detect link-building opportunities, and more.
In terms of monitoring, the tool gets data from Majestic, including KPIs for backlinks, as well as new links and other updates on your profile. AgencyAnalytics updates data every day. The reporting is very convenient and you can choose from a range of visualization options.
One of the best backlink monitoring tools also offers insights from Trust Flow and Citation Flow. These metrics help you identify domains with a higher authority. There’s a close tracking of the links you lose so that you can regain them if needed. Opportunities for new links are visible when you research competitors’ portfolios.
It’s a solution mostly catered to agencies or freelancers who work with other businesses since the provider highlights its reporting capabilities.
Pros
- Great visuals for data
- Easy to use
- Convenient pricing model
- Many integration opportunities
Cons
- Some analysis tools are limited
- Little customization capability for imported info
- Filtering could be better
Pricing
You can try AgencyAnalytics for 14 days; no credit card needed.
The plans:
- Freelancer – $10 per month per one client campaign; min purchase for 5 campaigns
- Agency – $15 per month per one client campaign; min purchase for 10 campaigns
- Enterprise – custom price for agencies that have 100+ customers
Verdict
The conclusion from the AgencyAnalytics review is that it’s a nice backlink monitoring tool for agencies that need to cater to their clients not only in terms of results but also in reporting. Majestic data is used, and we all know that they have a large database, so you’ll get pretty accurate data on your backlinks. The pricing is interesting and pretty diverse, even though there’s a minimum purchase for the first two plans.
9. SISTRIX
SISTRIX offers a great backlink tool for analysis and backlink monitoring. First of all, you have to insert a domain or URL to analyze and click Overview. To see more detailed data on each link, click on Activate Linkplus.
To monitor new links, use the New Links feature. This will help you be updated on each backlink popping up on the Net. The data available:
- Top anchors
- Destination
- Source
- Visibility index host, etc.
If you need to analyze a competitor’s backlink profile, you can see a very useful feature — Opportunities. There, you’ll see the domains that have linked to that other website but not to yours. The good news that we received while working on the SISTRIX review is that this feature is available in the free trial.
This feature is available in the free trial.
For each link, there’s a + symbol you can click on to open additional info like the tag of the link (dofollow or nofollow), the referring domain, the type of link, host info, IP, etc.
Pros
- Comprehensive backlink analysis
- Filters for creating lists
- Historical data available
- The dashboard can be customized to your needs
Cons
- May be hard for beginners
- Module-based pricing may not be convenient
Pricing
Like most tools to monitor backlinks, SISTRIX is available in the free trial mode. If you are satisfied with its functionality, you can choose one of the following plans later:
- Start – €99 a month (+ taxes)
- Plus – €199 a month (+ taxes)
- Professional – €349 a month (+ taxes)
- Premium – €599 a month (+ taxes)
Remember that the price is in euros.
Verdict
SISTRIX may seem complicated at first, but as you discover its full power, your backlink research and monitoring results can change for the better. This backlink monitoring tool is quite pricey, but it’s rather fast and informative.
10. RavenTools
RavenTools closes our list, but it doesn’t mean the tool isn’t high-quality. It offers every basic feature you need when monitoring backlinks. You can find up to 50,000 backlinks per URL, which sounds impressive.
In the RavenTools review, it is very important to note that you can also import the links via spreadsheets or Google Analytics. This feature saves a lot of time — filling in thousands of backlinks manually would take weeks. Use the explorer feature to monitor the inbound links your website has. It will alert you when a bad link appears on the profile or if any of the mentions have a no-follow tag.
By using the Link spy backlink monitoring tool, you can analyze your competitors, which will amp up your gap analysis.
Pros
- A large backlink database
- Automated import of links
- Convenient explorer for new links
- Link spy feature to research competition
Cons
- No pricing plan diversity
- Sometimes not in sync with the Google Analytics dashboard
- Some reports may glitch
Pricing
RavenTools has only two paid plans:
- Monthly – $60 per month with 3 user seats
- Annual – $576 per year with 3 user seats
Basically, it’s one plan, but you can save money by getting the annual one. Otherwise, you’ll spend $720 a year.
Verdict
RavenTools is an adequate solution you can use for checking backlinks. Identify toxic references and the links tagged no-follow. Import existing backlinks easily and effortlessly. The monthly payment is quite pricey, but you get 3 user seats and all the features the provider offers.
Conclusions
Our review covers backlink monitoring tools for any project — from a small business site to an international online store. Some of them have a clear specialization, while others come bundled with other SEO modules for comprehensive resource optimization.
If you are looking for an affordable backlink monitoring tool with a rich set of features, you should start with SE Ranking. Its pricing policy will be convenient for both freelancers and large businesses, including successful marketing agencies. It quickly and accurately determines the quality of each link, allowing you to effectively manage your entire network. The service also attracts attention with a user-friendly interface with an intuitive layout of functional elements. Its advantages also include real-time statistics updates and email notifications.
You should also consider subscribing to other all-in-one SEO platforms. Ahrefs, SEMrush, Seobility, SISTRIX, and Raven Tools offer high-quality backlink monitoring modules. They greatly simplify link building, but you should take a close look at their subscription plans — most of them can hardly be called affordable.
Another interesting option is specialized backlinks monitoring tools like BuzzSumo, Monitor Backlinks, and Linkody. If your SEO strategy is based on off-page optimization or you need a highly efficient service in addition to an all-in-one platform, these tools will be very convenient for you. And the affordable subscription prices will be a nice bonus.
Still not sure which tool is best for your business? Fortunately, you don’t have to rush — you can test the functions of these services for free. For example, SE Ranking offers a 14-day trial period with no limit on the number of features. This allows you to compare different platforms and subscription options without spending extra money.
Ready to give your project a new impetus for development? Then choose backlink monitoring tools from our rating! A proven tool will become your reliable assistant that will quickly lead your business to success.