5 Tips for When You Check Your Site’s Backlinks
Some of my most popular posts on this blog are:
How To Check How Many Backlinks Your Site Has
and
How To Check How Many Backlinks Your Site Has – Part 2
When people start link building campaigns, they want to be able to check their progress. Thanks to various websites who provide tools to see how many backlinks each site has (see the above articles), seeing that progress and your results is fairly easy to do. But, many people either use the tools improperly, use too many or too few tools, waste time, or just simply don’t use their full potential. Here are some tips to using backlink checking tools.
1. Don’t just use Google and Yahoo.
Many people when checking their backlinks, go to Google and type in “link:YourURLhere” and they usually don’t see many results, and therefore get discouraged. Yahoo!’s “link:YourURLhere” search does return more results, but it’s still not complete. Don’t just rely on these resources. Google’s Webmaster Tools, and Yahoo!’s SiteExplorer tools will give better results, but still don’t just rely on these.
2. Use multiple tools to check.
There are many different tools online that allow you to see how many backlinks your site has. But, they are not all created equal. Some use averages of major search engine numbers, Others don’t work with all search engines. Some provide you much more information such as your PageRank, your Alexa rank, the site your link is on’ PageRank, etc. Find 2 or 3 different tools that work the best for you, and stick with those. Sticking with just one won’t give you the most accurate, but using more than 3 or 4 will just be a waste of time.
3. Don’t compare one tool’s results to another tool’s results.
Even though I suggest using 2-3 different tools to check your backlinks, that doesn’t mean that you should compare them against eachother. The best thing to do is to create a spreadsheet, or just a normal .txt document, and write down the results from each tool. Then, once a week, check your results again, and log it in the spreadsheet. Then you can see the progress you have made with each tool.
4. Don’t check multiple times a day, or even week.
I know as a webmaster myself, that I want to check my stats multiple times a day. This is pretty useless, and a waste of time. Why waste your time checking your backlinks multiple times a day when you can focus your efforts on link building during that same time. If you focus on link building, you’ll be able to be more excited when you do check your results. Check maybe once or twice a week. You should pick a day, and check on that day every week.
5. Check your competitors backlinks.
When you are checking your backlinks, it is a good idea to check your competitor’s backlinks too. Find out what pages they have links on and see if you can get links on the same pages. You can also check if they are steadily increasing their backlinks or not. If they are not, then you know they are just begging to be taken over in the search engine rankings.
If you stick to these rules, you will be able to better see your progress and utilize your time and the tools better, in order to reach the top of the search engine rankings by focusing your efforts on link building instead of stat checking.
I have a horrible problem with #4. I’m a stats addict. I refresh my Statcounter page every five seconds.
I think I just join a support group or something.
Max Miroff’s last blog post..Ten Easy Blog Post Ideas For When You’re Lazy
yeah i agree with you… especially in the part about comparing data… instead you should use that time to build more good backlinks to your website .. it will be worth the work
KG Lew’s last blog post..Issue 41 : Be opinionated, leave your Comments!
Have you had much luck with Compete?
Carla’s last blog post..Hey . . . Are You Good With Computers?
I use http://tools.khrido.com/ alongwith iwebtools to check out the backlink checker and other links for my site.
James’s last blog post..How is your Website Performing?
Dear Mr. Breakaway, Will you spare some useful information in your blogs that, sites hosted on free hosting and subdomain like my sites pickurbucks.99k.org, startearnnow.99k.org will have their page ranks poor because of hosted in subdomain? Pls, email me if you can
Yes, having those sites in subdomains will hurt your page rank and you probably won’t rank well, if at all, in the search engines.
If you are serious about making money online, then the best thing you can do is to pay $10/year for a domain and like $5-8/month for hosting.
If you don’t want to, and you can learn on-page SEO and link building, then using blogspot is a viable free option.
I just found your site through Digital Point forums and your site seems like a very great resource!
I currently use dnScoop to check back for resources.
I also use StatCounter.
Those are mainly the tools I use.
SEO Blog Wire’s last blog post..Start your blog with Wordpress
Awesome… each person will like their own set of tools…. find what works for you, and use them, and all is good!
[...] Blogger: Link Building Bible from linkbuildingbible.com Title: 5 Tips For When You Check Your Sites Backlinks [...]
Yes Breakaway I am agree with you. Even I myself was doing the same thing. Not only once even four to five times a day i was checking my stats, backlinks in different tools, SERP position and lot of other tools but now gradually i come to know that all that is useless instead we should concentrate on some productive work.
Yes checking once a week and that too at weekend is the best for getting idea of what is going on in your website. I have used and download 100s of tools and software related to seo and website stats. Also I am not dissatisfied with that because I have learn so many things and become aware of hundreds of new techniques.
Eventually I will recommend everyone to utilize your time in developing unique and quality content and create few backlinks and that too in a genuine way.
Thanks Breakaway
nice tips
wawanwaes last blog post..Rambut
LoL on #4 – being a stats addict. I’m sure this is something a lot of web entrepreneurs can identify with. This is a great site — not sure how i got here but I’m going to subscribe — really high quality content! Keep it up.
marks last blog post..Hey baby…whatchadoin’?
Hey Mark… I am glad you found this site…. sadly, it’s been 3 months later and I have gotten way better where i only check my backlinks like once a week, but i am still on analytics too much….
Did you just subscribe to the comments or also the blog feed?
the blog feed of course!
marks last blog post..Hey baby…whatchadoin’?
I have the same exact issue with checking stat counters too frequently. I have to learn to be more patient and check less and less, this way when I do check I’ll be more surprised with the results. It should pretty much be a “set it and forget it” method, whereby you constantly try getting more back links, posting on forums, blogs etc, but then basically forget about your work, and check it in a few weeks to see the fruits of your labor, so to speak.