How to Find Backlinks to Your Website

A backlink is a link from another website to yours. Search engines use links as one signal of credibility, relevance, and discovery. A strong backlink from a respected, relevant site can help a page earn visibility. A random link from a scraped directory or spam site usually means very little.

No backlink tool sees the entire web. Google Search Console, Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz, Majestic, and similar platforms all crawl different parts of the internet at different speeds. That means your backlink count will never match perfectly across tools.

Use backlink data as a directional map, not an exact census. You are looking for patterns: which pages attract links, which domains mention you, whether links are relevant, and whether anything risky or suspicious is appearing.

Google Search Console is usually the best place to start because it is free and comes directly from Google. It will not show every backlink Google knows about, and it will not give you the same competitive research features as paid SEO tools. But it is reliable enough for a first review.

To find backlink data in Search Console:

1. Open the property for your website.

1. Go to the Links report.

1. Review “Top linked pages” to see which pages on your site earn the most external links.

1. Review “Top linking sites” to see which domains link to you most often.

1. Review “Top linking text” to understand common anchor text.

1. Export the data if you want to sort, filter, or compare it later.

The most useful section is often “Top linked pages.” If your homepage has most of your backlinks, that is normal. But if one old blog post or resource page has earned links naturally, it may deserve a refresh, stronger internal links, or a clearer conversion path.

If you are still building the SEO foundation of your site, pair this with a broader audit. TrafficBud can help you identify page-level SEO gaps such as weak titles, thin content, missing structured data, and internal linking opportunities. For a wider checklist, see How to Do SEO for a Website.

Paid backlink tools are useful when you need deeper analysis, competitor comparisons, faster discovery, or quality metrics. Common options include Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz Link Explorer, and Majestic.

These tools can help you answer questions such as:

• Which websites recently started linking to you?
• Which backlinks were lost?
• Which pages on your site attract the most referring domains?
• What anchor text do other sites use?
• Are competitors earning links from sites that might also link to you?
• Are there spam patterns or irrelevant domains in your backlink profile?

If you only need a one-time snapshot, a short subscription or free trial may be enough. If you run SEO for clients or publish content regularly, ongoing backlink monitoring is more useful.

A single website can link to you many times. For example, a partner might include your link in a footer across 500 pages. That would create hundreds of backlinks, but only one referring domain.

Referring domains are usually a cleaner way to judge link diversity. A healthy profile often includes links from several types of sources:

• Customers or partners
• Local organizations
• Industry blogs
• Podcasts or interviews
• Directories that are relevant and moderated
• News mentions
• Resource pages
• Guest articles or contributed quotes

The quality of the linking site matters more than raw volume. A link from a respected industry publication can be worth far more than hundreds of irrelevant links from generic directories.

You do not need to manually inspect every backlink if your site has thousands of them. Start with the domains that send the most links, the most recent new links, and any domains that look suspicious.

Use this framework:

Relevance

Does the linking site have a real connection to your business, location, industry, audience, or topic? A bakery getting links from local event guides makes sense. A bakery getting links from unrelated foreign casino pages does not.

Authority

Does the site appear trustworthy? Look for real editorial content, an identifiable business or publisher, working navigation, and signs of an actual audience. Third-party metrics such as Domain Rating or Domain Authority can help, but they should not replace judgment.

Placement

A contextual link inside a relevant article is usually stronger than a link buried in a footer, author bio, comment section, or random directory listing.

Anchor text

Anchor text is the clickable text used in the link. Natural anchor text includes brand names, URLs, article titles, and descriptive phrases. Be cautious if many links use the exact same commercial phrase, such as “best cheap SEO software,” especially from weak sites.

Traffic potential

Some backlinks are valuable even if they do not move rankings much. A link from a niche newsletter, partner page, or product roundup can send qualified referral traffic.

Backlink analysis becomes more useful when you connect it to individual pages. Export your top linked pages and group them by type:

• Homepage
• Product or service pages
• Blog posts
• Tools or templates
• Research or data pages
• Case studies
• About or contact pages

This helps you see what people naturally cite. If a guide, calculator, checklist, or comparison page earns links, consider whether you can build more content in that format.

It also helps you protect pages that already have link equity. Before deleting, merging, or changing URLs, check whether the page has backlinks. If it does, use proper redirects and update internal links. Losing a linked page without a redirect can waste authority and create a poor user experience.

Competitor backlink research is useful because it shows where your audience, industry, or local market already pays attention. You are not copying competitors link for link. You are looking for realistic opportunities.

Check competitors for:

• Directories they are listed in
• Podcasts they have appeared on
• Guest posts or expert quotes
• Local sponsorships
• Resource pages that mention them
• Product roundups or comparison articles
• Industry associations

If three competitors are listed on the same relevant association page and you are not, that is probably worth pursuing. If a competitor has hundreds of spam links, ignore them.

This works best when paired with smart content targeting. If you need to decide which topics deserve new pages, read How to Do Keyword Research.

Lost backlinks are links that used to point to your site but no longer do. They can disappear for several reasons:

• The linking page was deleted
• The publisher updated the article
• Your URL changed or now returns an error
• A redirect broke
• The site owner removed the link
• The linking site shut down

Not every lost backlink is worth chasing. But if a strong, relevant site used to link to an important page, investigate it. If the problem is on your side, such as a 404 or redirect issue, fix it. If the publisher removed the link during an update, you can politely reach out only if you have a clear reason the link still helps their readers.

Most websites eventually attract strange links. Scrapers, automated directories, AI-generated sites, and spam networks link to normal businesses all the time. In many cases, Google ignores these links.

You should be concerned if you see a clear pattern of manipulative links you or your SEO provider created, especially links bought at scale, exact-match anchor text networks, private blog networks, or hacked-site links.

The Google disavow tool exists, but it is not something most small sites need to use. A bad disavow file can remove signals that were actually helping you. If you think you have a serious link penalty or a history of paid link schemes, get expert help before submitting one.

Finding backlinks is only useful if it changes what you do next. After reviewing your backlink profile, look for practical actions:

• Refresh pages that already attract links
• Add internal links from linked pages to important service, product, or conversion pages
• Redirect old linked URLs that return 404 errors
• Pitch similar sites that already link to competitors
• Create more assets like the pages that naturally earned links
• Improve title tags and meta descriptions on linked pages so search snippets work harder
• Monitor new and lost referring domains monthly

TrafficBud is useful here because backlink data often points you toward pages that deserve more attention. Once you know which URLs have authority or referral potential, you can run audits to improve on-page SEO, metadata, content depth, internal links, and structured data. For search snippet work specifically, see How to Optimize Google Search Results.

For most small businesses and creators, backlink monitoring does not need to be daily. A monthly routine is enough:

1. Export new and lost referring domains.

1. Check your top linked pages for outdated content or broken CTAs.

1. Fix linked URLs that return 404 errors.

1. Review any sudden spike in suspicious links.

1. Identify 3 to 5 realistic outreach opportunities from competitor backlink data.

1. Add internal links from high-linked pages to pages you want to grow.

Agencies and high-volume publishers may need weekly monitoring, especially when campaigns, PR, or content launches are active. But for most sites, consistency beats constant checking.