How To Check Your Site’s Backlinks

Posted on 18. Jan, 2009 by Mike J in Blogging Elements

This is a great method to check your website’s back-links.

Before we delve into a step by step how-to, you might ask why you would want to check back-links at all; a common and valid question. The answer to this question is a key to having success with your sites SEO.

As Bloggers or blog owners, you will want to check your backlinks because this shows you who is linking to your site. When you look at the back-links you will see exactly what the search engines are seeing. If you see hundreds of links pointing to your site and they are all coming from the same domain, then you know that link is a bit more spam-like to the search engines than if just a handful of links were coming from that domain. You can also see, on average, how many total back-links you have; this is also important as you can check with competing site’s backlinks in this same way. Once you know what backlinks they have you will get an idea on how to shape your back-link campaign.

So now there is the question: What is the best way to check your back-links? To check your back-links all you have to do is visit Yahoo.com. Once you’re at Yahoo you can type in the search box the following string:

Link:www.yourdomain.com

This string brings up all the back-links you have throughout the net. Yahoo is the best tool to use because they don’t “x-out” back-links for any reason. They show every one so you can control what happens next.

One important thing to know about checking back-links in Google is that they don’t show a lot of your back-links. We are not sure why–just another of those Google mysteries!

What are your thoughts and ideas for checking back-links?

Let us know with a comment!

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