SEO Compare
Compare Search Engine Optimization tools & methods
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Backlinks Checkers
No, I’m not refering to a game called “backlinks checkers”, but to the real thing thing.
We all need to know who is linking to our sites & pages and how they do it, if it’s by an image (banner) or a text, if they’re using the url as the anchor text, the website name or by an anchor text that reflects the sites content and targeted keywords.
The thing is that now, after that Microsoft had acquired yahoo search, we’re all limited in yahoo backlink check, just as we’re in bing backlink check.
So how can we check our backlinks?
Well, there are still tools that can help us run a pretty good analysis. Let’s go over them:
Backlinks watch – is still alive and still shows up to 1,000 results including the anchor text being used.
Open Site Explorer – the free version shows the number of backlinks and a selection of anchor text being used.
Majestic SEO – if you verify that you own the website you get a bit more info, which can include anchor text analysis, backlinks types, link building paste and a comparison with your competitors – for free.
Which to use?
We’ll post our reviews to these and other tools soon enough
Live Link Check
After almost a year MSN had returned their link check operator back to live (double meaning… nice, right?)
But as MSN knows they decided to make things complicated so they changed the way we were used to use.
From now on you need to add “+” before the operator
For example, to check the back links of seo-compare.com you need to write:
+link:www.seo-compare.com
and if you want to check all of your domain backlinks just use:
+linkdomain:seo-compare.com
I am pretty sure they’ve done so in order to prevent old robots from using their tools automatically, so if you have a bot or a script that is attempting to receive data from MSN Live.com simply add the “+” before the original code and you’re set to go.
Link Harvester
from the maker of the SEO Book, Aaron Wall, comes this great seo tool that shows link information for a certain website according to yahoo (the last standing link source for webmasters).
Link Harvester checks up to 1000 results and divides them according to c-class ip address.
It also displays a set of links next to every link your site has giving you the following options:
- W – Whois
- A – Archive
- G – Google Cache
- T – Google Cache – Text Version
- D – Dmoz
- Y – Yahoo Directory
- S – search Yahoo for page from that link that are linking to your website
Using this tool you can check your site value or your competitors. It also separates completely from the list links that comes from authority sites such as .EDU, .GOV & .MIL
You can find the link harvester here – http://www.linkhounds.com/link-harvester/backlinks.php
BackLink Watch
From the home of DigPageRank.com – Backlinkwatch.com brings a very simple and very useful back link check tool.
Backlink watch homepage shows a few ads and a “Enter URL” field. as simple as that.
Once a url is entered you will be directed to a page that will show you all the links in 1 table that will include each links anchor text, Google PR of the page, Number of OBL from that page and any special flag in that link (such as nofollow) – which is a feature most back link checkers and link popularity tools do not bother checking.
Very nice tool, very simple, only thing that annoys is that on many pages it does not recognise the anchor text and if it does not recognise that, it does not write PR, OBL or Flags.Â
1 more thing if you’re working with IE load the page and continue what you were doing, because it will take a long time if you have more than 1000 IBL.