Avinash Kaushik - world leader in web business optimisation
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Analysis tools for assessing backlinks - tutorial
Success in SEO depends on creating content which is valuable to site visitors so that they will link to it or bookmark it. This tutorial introduces 3 tools for finding backlinks pointing from other sites to your sites. You can repeat this analysis for competitor sites and then identify similar sites you can ask to link to you.
Yahoo! Site Explorer
Method 1. Use Yahoo Site Explorer to find links from competitors
Step 1. Go to the Yahoo! Site Explorer URL
Step 2. Enter the URL to see backlinks for
This can be the home page or any location, as shown below:
Step 3. Review pages at this location
When you enter the URL by default you will be shown all pages indexed by Yahoo! at or below this point in your site hierarchy.
Step 3. Show inlinks
OK, this is why we're here - there are two things to do: - first click on Show Inlinks then select ‘Except from this sub domain’ as shown below.
This shows all pages linking to yours - if you click on these links you will see a reference back to your site.
Tool 2. Delicious
Delicious is a social bookmark tool which allows users to bookmark sites using a browser plug-in. Google Bookmarks is a similar tool but the bookmarks aren't shared.
To see the number of bookmarks, go to "http://del.icio.us/url/" and enter a URL of the home page or deeper in the site as shown below.
This will then show the number of bookmarks (528) in this case and the type of content, a sample of users and how the site is classifed using the tags on the right.
You can review individuals bookmarks to see what else they bookmark in the same category as you.
Tool 3. Google Alerts
These tools notifies you of new content potentially linking to you on the web.
You should set them up with searches which reference your brand as follows:
- Brand-name, e.g. E-consultancy, E-consultancy
- Brand URL, e.g. e-consultancy.com
- Brand name plus product, e.g. E-consultancy training
A will give a lot of updates for a well known brand, you can reduce it by using C by including a particular product line or type of content in association with the brand.
There are 2 options of tools:
This is the best tool offering 3 free searches.
Google backlink checking tools
Google Webmaster tools (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools) has a powerful tool for showing external links. This is only available for your own site when it has been verified - so it is less accessible than the Yahoo! Site Explorer.
Note that this is more reliable than the Google "link:" Advanced Search syntax that does not return a full range of backlinks.
Please bookmark this article if you found it useful (just two clicks).
Please add your comments, experiences or link suggestions to inform me and other visitors to my site.
I've set it up to be quick, but you can't add true hyperlinks - just text.
Thanks, Dave Chaffey.
