6 Backlink Analysis Tools Compared (and Who Each One Is Best For)

Introduction

Backlink analysis is super important in search engine optimization (SEO). It’s not just about seeing who links to your website, but really understanding how those links help your site show up more and rank better on search engines.

To actually do this right, you need backlink analysis tools. These tools are really helpful because they let you:

• Check the quality and relevance of the links pointing to your site
• Find chances to get more links and better ones too
• Watch what links your competitors have and kind of learn from them
• Spot any harmful links that might lower your site's ranking

There are a lot of backlink analysis tools out there, and each one has different features, some simple and some pretty advanced. In this article, we'll look at six of the best backlink analysis tools for SEO audits.

These tools are:

1. Ahrefs
2. Semrush
3. Moz Pro Link Explorer
4. SE Ranking
5. Linkody
6. Seobility Backlink Checker

Also, popular SEO research tools like Google Search Console, Majestic SEO, BuzzSumo, LinkMiner, Serpstat, and SEO SpyGlass have a bunch of useful features you can use for more detailed backlink audits.

We picked these tools because they have strong features, are pretty easy to use, not too expensive for most people, and they give you helpful information for building good backlink strategies that actually work over time.

As we delve into these strategies, it's crucial to understand the importance of link building in enhancing your SEO efforts. Mastering link building with advanced strategies and AI insights can significantly boost your SEO performance and help you outrank competitors.

1. Ahrefs

If you need a strong tool to analyze backlinks, Ahrefs is honestly one of the best ones to try. It’s really well known for having a huge link database, and it’s super useful for SEO experts who want to improve their link-building strategies. Or even if you’re just getting into it and kinda figuring things out.

Ahrefs gives you a bunch of important backlink data, like:

• Domain Rating (DR): Shows how strong a website’s backlink profile is on a scale from 0 to 100. Higher usually means more authority, pretty much.
• Referring Domains: Counts how many different websites link to your site, which helps you see how diverse your backlinks are instead of everything coming from one place.
• Anchor Text Analysis: Lets you check the words used in backlinks so you can understand how relevant they are and spot any overused or weird looking anchor text.
• DoFollow/NoFollow Link Attributes: Lets you filter links by type so you can look at the quality and possible impact of the sites that are linking to you.
• Competitor Backlink Gap Analysis: Compares your backlinks with your competitors’ backlinks so you can find missed opportunities and figure out where to improve your link-building.

Features of Ahrefs

Ahrefs comes with a bunch of tools that help with pretty much every part of SEO, or at least most of it:

• Competitor Keyword Rankings and Backlink Analysis: You can dig into your competitors' keyword strategies and backlink profiles to see how they’re ranking and why. This includes checking their Authority Score and keeping an eye on their backlinks over time. If you want to go even deeper, you might want to try using AI for competitor analysis, since it can give you some really useful insights.
• Site Audit: Ahrefs checks your whole website for SEO problems and then gives you clear tips on how to fix them. It also looks at your backlinks to make sure they’re actually helping and not hurting your site.
• Keyword Deep Dives: This tool lets you dig into detailed keyword information. You can find new keyword ideas, spot fresh opportunities and slowly build a better content plan around that.
• Rank Monitoring: You can track where your website is showing up in search results for the keywords you care about and get updates when your rankings go up or down.
• Mention Alerts: Ahrefs can notify you whenever your brand or certain keywords are mentioned online, so you can jump in, respond, or just keep track of what people are saying.
• Toxic Backlinks Identification: It regularly scans your backlinks and helps you find the harmful ones that might hurt your rankings or your site’s authority, so you can deal with them before they cause more trouble.
• Reporting Features: You can create detailed reports that show your SEO performance, like keyword rankings, backlink health and the overall quality of your site.

All together, these features work to make your SEO efforts more effective and honestly just easier to manage.

Ahrefs Pricing Plans

Ahrefs offers different pricing levels to fit various needs:

• Lite: Best for freelancers and small businesses, starting at $99/month.
• Standard: More features for growing businesses, priced at $199/month.
• Advanced: Full set of tools for larger companies with big SEO needs, at $399/month.
• Enterprise: For large companies and agencies needing all features and support, costing $999/month.

You can try each plan before buying. While the Lite plan doesn’t include every feature, it still lets you do strong backlink analysis.

If you want to improve other parts of your website besides backlinks—like internal linking, which helps your site’s authority and user experience—check out tools like AI-Powered Internal Linking. This tool uses AI to easily improve how your content links within your site.

Ahrefs is powerful not just for backlinks but also for giving a complete view of your SEO health. Using these tools helps make sure you cover all bases to rank higher in search results.

Price Comparison: Ahrefs vs. Other Top SEO Tools

Tool	Lite Plan Price (Monthly)	Standard Plan Price (Monthly)	Free Trial/Freemium Option
Ahrefs	$99	$199 (Standard)	Yes, trial available
SEMrush	$119.95	$229.95 (Pro)	Yes, 7-day free trial
Moz Pro	$99	$179 (Standard)	Yes, 30-day free trial
Ubersuggest	$29	$49 (Pro)	Yes, freemium option available

This table shows how Ahrefs’ prices compare to other popular SEO tools and notes which offer free trials or free versions versus only paid plans.

2. Semrush

Semrush is a pretty powerful SEO tool, especially known for its keyword research and really strong backlink analysis features. It’s honestly one of the best backlink checkers out there, since it lets you look closely at your competitors’ backlinks and spot new chances to build links for your own site.

A lot of SEO experts and digital marketers use Semrush all the time, because it helps them boost a website’s visibility and ranking on search engines. So yeah, if you want to understand backlinks better and grow your site, Semrush can help with that quite a lot.

Features of Semrush

Semrush stands out by offering really detailed backlink analysis. It basically lets you dig into your whole backlink profile and see stuff like link types, authority scores, and which backlinks are actually bringing traffic to your site. With all that info, it gets a lot easier to build better link-building strategies. Semrush also gives you clear insights into DoFollow and NoFollow links, so you can judge the quality and actual impact of your backlinks a lot more accurately.

Key features include:

• Backlink Analytics: See detailed data about any domain’s backlinks, like types, location, and domain extensions. Super useful when you want to spy a bit on competitors.
• Backlink Audit: Identify harmful links to protect your site by checking for toxic backlinks. This helps you avoid getting in trouble with search engines.
• Competitor Insights: Track your competitors’ backlink strategies to find new link-building opportunities. Basically, see what they’re doing and borrow good ideas.
• Anchor Text Diversity Reports: Review the variety of anchor texts in backlinks to keep a natural link profile. This keeps things from looking spammy.
• Content Marketing Tools: Improve your content with tools for researching topics, auditing content, and tracking posts. So you’re not just guessing what to write.
• New/Lost Backlinks Tracking: Keep an eye on new and lost backlinks over time to monitor changes. If something drops suddenly, you’ll notice.
• Bulk Analysis: Analyze up to 200 URLs quickly to check competitors’ or partners’ backlinks. Saves a lot of time when you’re looking at multiple sites.

Semrush doesn’t just analyze backlinks; it gives you more of a full approach where you can study competitors and use content marketing tools to create engaging content that attracts valuable backlinks. By looking at DoFollow/NoFollow ratios, domain types, and anchor text variety, you get a complete view of your link profile, so you can make smarter SEO decisions without guessing all the time.

Pricing Plans

When you’re thinking about choosing Semrush, it kind of really matters that you pick a plan that fits what your business actually needs and what you can afford. Semrush has three main plans you can choose from:

• Pro Plan: Starting at $119.95/month, this plan is good for freelancers or startups who want to start building their online presence and just get things going.
• Guru Plan: At $229.95/month, this one works better for small to medium businesses that need more detailed data, extra tools, and access to historical reports.
• Business Plan: For $449.95/month, this is meant for large agencies or big companies. You get advanced features like API access, Google Data Studio integration, and more sharing options so teams can work together easier.

Each plan kind of lines up with different levels of data and analysis needs. And yeah, the price might look a bit high at first glance, but the benefits you can get from better SEO and higher search rankings can really pay off over time.

Compared to other tools, Semrush is honestly on the pricier side, especially because it has such a wide range of features. A lot of alternatives have cheaper plans or even free versions that let you try out basic features without paying anything. For example, some tools offer free trials that last from 7 to 30 days so you can test them out before you decide to buy.

If you want some extra help with keyword research along with backlink analysis, you might want to try using AI-powered SEO tools like AI-powered Keyword Research. These tools help you find valuable keywords and show things like search volume and competition, using fresh and up-to-date data from Google Keyword Planner.

By adding Semrush’s full set of features to your SEO toolkit, you get the kind of data you need to really compete in search results. Its strong backlink analysis, plus competitor insights and content marketing tools, makes Semrush a pretty powerful platform for hitting your digital marketing goals.

3. Moz Pro Link Explorer

If you want a full SEO plan and not just random stuff here and there, Moz Pro Link Explorer is one of the best tools for digging into your backlinks. It’s pretty well known because it gives a lot of detailed info that actually helps your link-building efforts, not just numbers for no reason.

With all the strong backlink data and reports, you can quickly see how many links are pointing to your site and also how good those links really are. Quality and not just quantity, you know. On top of that, Moz lets you compare a bunch of domains side by side, which is super helpful for spotting new opportunities and also the weak spots in your link-building strategy that you might be ignoring without noticing.

Key Features of Moz Pro Link Explorer:

• Detailed Link Information: Moz Pro Link Explorer gives you a lot of info about each backlink, like the anchor text and the link’s target URL. This makes it easier to see how strong and how relevant your backlinks really are.
• Anchor Text Breakdown: The tool shows you a clear breakdown of the different anchor texts used in your backlinks. So you can quickly see how varied your linking words are and if they actually match what your page is about.
• Domain and Page Authority Scores: With Moz’s Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) scores, you get a solid idea of how well a website or page might rank in search results. These scores help you judge the overall quality of your backlinks.
• Competitor Link Analysis: You can also look at your competitors’ backlink profiles. This helps you spot new opportunities and notice spots where your own link-building strategy could be better.
• Spammy/Toxic Link Detection: Moz Pro Link Explorer can find harmful backlinks by checking things like low domain authority and irrelevant anchor text. That way you can remove bad links that might hurt your site’s reputation and rankings.
• Tracking Lost and New Backlinks: You can keep an eye on backlinks you gain or lose over time. This helps you understand changes in referral traffic and tweak your link-building plans when you need to.
• Other Useful Tools: On top of all that, Moz Pro Link Explorer also helps you find broken links and figure out which of your content is performing the best. These extra tools make it easier to manage your backlinks properly and stay organized.

Moz Pro Link Explorer Pricing Plans:

Moz Pro Link Explorer is part of the Moz Pro suite, and it has a few different subscription options so you can kind of pick what fits your needs and budget best:

1. Standard Plan: Costs $99 per month ($79 per month if paid yearly). This one is really good for beginners or small websites that are just starting out.
2. Medium Plan: $179 per month ($143 per month yearly). It’s meant for growing businesses that need more features, like branded reports and a bit more room to work with.
3. Large Plan: Made for bigger businesses or agencies, this one includes higher limits and Datasets API access at $299 per month ($239 monthly with annual billing), so yeah, more serious stuff.
4. Premium Plan: This is the most complete plan at $599 per month ($479 monthly annually). It gives you full keyword research tools and the highest usage limits, so it’s kind of the all in one heavy duty option.

All plans come with a free 30-day trial, so you can check everything out and see if it works for you before actually paying. Just pick the plan that fits your business goals and SEO needs the best.

Moz Pro Link Explorer gives you quick and easy access to really useful data. Its simple design and powerful analysis tools make it a solid choice for marketers who want to improve their online presence by building smart backlinks and, you know, actually understand what’s going on with their site.

4. SE Ranking

SE Ranking is a pretty strong all-in-one SEO platform, and it’s especially good for checking backlinks. It comes with a bunch of useful features that help you manage SEO in a more organized way. Or at least easier.

The biggest advantage of SE Ranking is its accurate backlink analysis. It uses advanced technology to give you detailed info about your website’s backlinks, which is really important for checking the health of your backlink profile. With SE Ranking, you can see:

• Number of Backlinks and Referring Domains: Shows how many backlinks point to your site and how many unique domains they come from. Keeping track of this helps you understand how your referring domains are growing over time.
• Dofollow and Nofollow Links: Tells you which links pass SEO value and which do not, so you can plan your backlink strategy a bit smarter.
• Anchor Texts: Shows the most common anchor texts used in your backlinks, so you can check if your anchor text strategy is actually working well or maybe needs a tweak.
• Referring IPs: Lists the unique IP addresses of linking sites, helping you avoid getting too many links from the same IP, which search engines might see as spammy.

Besides backlink analysis, SE Ranking also gives you domain metrics and special reports. Domain metrics give a quick overview of your site’s health and authority with key scores like Domain Trust Rate and Alexa Rank.

The reports let you dig into specific parts of your SEO strategy, like details on referring pages or anchor texts. You can customize and export these reports, so it’s easy to share them with your team or clients. They’re also really handy for comparing backlinks with competitors and seeing where you stand.

SE Ranking has a few pricing plans to match different needs and budgets:

• Optimum Plan: $39/month – good for small businesses. It includes 250 keyword checks, audits for 25,000 pages, and monitoring 5,000 backlinks.
• Plus Plan: $89/month – fits growing businesses and SEO pros. You get 1,000 keyword checks, audits for 150,000 pages, and monitoring 25,000 backlinks.
• Enterprise Plan: $189/month – made for large companies or agencies. It includes 2,500 keyword checks, audits for 250,000 pages, and unlimited backlink monitoring.

With its detailed backlink tools and pretty flexible pricing, SE Ranking is a helpful tool for anyone wanting to improve their SEO. Whether you're a small business owner trying to better understand your link profile, or an agency that needs deep insights for clients’ sites, SE Ranking could be a really good fit.

5. Linkody

SEO can get pretty complicated sometimes, so keeping track of your backlinks is actually really important. Linkody is a powerful tool that helps make it way easier to monitor your backlinks, and it gives you a bunch of useful features that can help you improve your backlink profile and just understand it better.

Linkody also tracks how fast you get new backlinks over time. This helps you see how healthy your link profile is and if your backlink work is steady and actually effective, not just random. It also shows you how many links you lose compared to how many you gain in a certain time period, which is pretty helpful. When you look at all these details together, you get a clearer idea of how stable your link profile really is, so you can make smarter choices for your SEO plan and maybe fix stuff before it becomes a problem.

Main Features of Linkody:

• Backlink Discovery: Linkody lets you know whenever you gain or lose backlinks, so you’re always aware when new sites start linking to you or when some links just randomly disappear.
• Analyzing Backlinks: Not all backlinks are the same. Linkody shows key details like if a link is nofollow or dofollow, and it gives you scores like Moz Domain Authority and Trust Flow so you can quickly see which links are actually good and which are kinda weak.
• Competitor Tracking: You can keep an eye on your competitors’ backlinks to see where their links are coming from and use that info to spot new link building chances for your own site.
• Link Analytics: Linkody gives you simple charts that show how your backlinks are spread out and what their status is, so it’s easier to understand how healthy your whole link profile really is.
• Disavowing Risky Links: If you notice harmful or spammy links, Linkody lets you create a disavow file right inside the platform. This way you can tell Google which bad links to ignore and help protect your site from possible penalties.
• Email Alerts & Reports: You can get regular email alerts about changes in your backlinks and also detailed reports, so you don’t have to keep logging in all the time just to see what’s going on.

Linkody Pricing Plans:

Linkody has a few different pricing options to fit different kinds of needs:

• Webmaster Plan: Costs $14.90 per month and is really good for website owners who just need to track up to two domains with 500 links.
• Advanced Plans: Priced between $24.90 and $153.90 per month, these plans are more for SEO experts and agencies that need to manage more domains and a lot more links.

If you're a content creator and want more than just backlink analysis, it’s actually pretty important to check out the best tools for content creation too. Using a mix of different tools can help improve both your content and your SEO results, kind of at the same time.

Adding Linkody to your SEO approach gives you clear insights into building and managing your site's backlinks, which is super important for better search engine rankings. So whether you're a small business owner trying to boost your online presence, or an SEO professional working for clients, knowing these details really matters in today’s competitive online world.

6. Seobility Backlink Checker

The last tool on our list, Seobility Backlink Checker, is pretty affordable and still gives you a detailed look at your backlinks. It’s a free tool, which is nice if you’re on a tight budget or just starting out and don’t want to spend money yet. But even though it’s free, it still comes with a lot of useful features.

It shows you helpful info about the types of domains that are linking to your site and kind of lets you see what your backlink profile really looks like. So yeah, it’s a good choice for beginners and solo users who just want to understand their backlinks better without getting overwhelmed or paying for something super advanced right away.

An Overview

To really get why backlinks matter in SEO, you kind of need a tool that shows all the data in a way that’s actually easy to understand. Seobility Backlink Checker does exactly that. It lets you quickly look through your website’s backlinks and see what’s going on, so you can make smarter decisions based on that information.

Simple Steps for a Basic Backlink Audit with Seobility Backlink Checker

1. First, go to Seobility Backlink Checker and just type in your website’s URL. Pretty simple start.
2. Then, check the overall backlink summary to see how many backlinks you actually have and what their quality looks like. Like, good or kind of sketchy.
3. Look at the referring domains to spot trustworthy sites that are linking to yours. These are usually the ones you want more of.
4. Try to find any harmful backlinks that might hurt your SEO. Stuff that looks spammy or just not right.
5. Review the anchor text and make sure it’s relevant and also a bit varied. You don’t want everything saying the exact same thing.
6. Compare your backlinks with competitors so you can see where they’re getting links and maybe find some new chances for yourself.
7. Finally, download the data so you can do more detailed analysis and planning later, if you want to go deeper into it.

Key Features

Seobility Backlink Checker comes with a bunch of really useful features:

• Detailed SEO Audits: Seobility doesn’t just check backlinks, it also runs full SEO audits for your site. These audits help you see how your website is actually doing and point out places where you could fix things or improve stuff.
• Link Ratings and Analysis: To help you understand your backlinks better, Seobility Backlink Checker gives each link a rating based on different factors. This makes it easier to see which links are helping your SEO and which ones might be kind of harmful or not so great.
• Anchor Text Information: Seeing the anchor text other websites use when they link to you gives you helpful insight into how they see your content. Seobility Backlink Checker shows you this info so you can tweak and better optimize your content if you need to.
• Competitor Analysis: Checking out what your competitors are doing is a pretty smart SEO move. With Seobility, you can look at their backlink profiles and pick up ideas from their strategies, maybe even do it better.

Pricing Plans

Seobility Backlink Checker actually gives you a lot of features for free, which is pretty cool, especially since a lot of other tools make you pay to get anything good. If you find yourself needing more than three searches a day, though, there are some paid plans that aren’t too crazy expensive:

• The Premium plan is $50/month and comes with ongoing monitoring, automatic alerts, and more detailed reports so you can really keep track of things.
• The Agency plan costs $200/month and is made more for bigger businesses or SEO agencies that use these kinds of tools a lot.

Seobility Backlink Checker is a really solid pick if you’re just getting started with SEO or if you’re working with a small budget. It doesn’t have every single advanced feature that some of the really expensive tools have, but honestly, for the price, it’s still a pretty good option.

Conclusion

Backlink analysis tools are super important for SEO audits. They help you see what your website’s link profile looks like and where you can do better. With these tools, you get useful data that helps you plan your strategy, especially when things are really competitive online. Picking the right tool lets you understand your site’s authority more clearly, learn from what competitors are doing, and slowly build a stronger online presence.

The best backlink analysis tools don’t just analyze your links, they also help you improve your whole backlink structure. Each tool has its own thing going on:

• Ahrefs has a really large database and pretty flexible tracking options. Best for: SEO experts and agencies that need very detailed analysis.
• Semrush gives deep backlink analysis and strong competitor insights. Best for: Digital marketing agencies and experienced SEOs.
• Moz Pro Link Explorer shows helpful domain authority and page authority info. Best for: Content creators and beginners who are just learning about link quality.
• SE Ranking is popular for accurate analysis at a budget-friendly price. Best for: Small businesses and freelancers with smaller budgets.
• Linkody mainly focuses on tracking new and lost backlinks, which really helps you adjust and refine your strategies. Best for: Agencies that manage backlinks all the time.
• Seobility Backlink Checker gives free audits and link ratings, which is great if your budget is tight. Best for: Beginners and small businesses with limited resources.

Backlinks matter a lot, but it’s actually still possible to rank without them, like in this article on [how to boost SEO without backlinks](https://www.junia.ai/blog/how-to-boost-seo-without-backlinks). Still, having strong backlinks usually makes it easier to climb up in search rankings and get more organic traffic coming to your site.

When you’re picking a tool, think about what you really need, how much you can spend, and the size of your business, so you can choose one that actually fits your SEO goals. If you check and analyze your backlinks regularly, it can seriously improve your search rankings over time and bring in a lot more organic visitors to your website.