Last Updated on April 9, 2025 by Becky Halls
Backlinks are a critical part of your website’s SEO strategy, helping to improve rankings, build authority, and increase organic traffic. Knowing how to check backlinks with Google is essential for monitoring your site’s performance and ensuring your backlink profile is healthy and effective. In this guide, we’ll take you through the step-by-step process of using Google tools to check, analyze, and manage your backlinks, making sure you get the most out of them. Let’s get started!
Why Backlinks Matter in SEO
Before we dive into how to check backlinks with Google, it’s important to understand why backlinks are so crucial for your website. Backlinks, also called inbound links, are links from other websites that point to your content. Search engines like Google view backlinks as a vote of confidence. When a reputable site links to yours, it signals that your content is valuable and trustworthy, which can boost your search engine rankings.
Maintaining a varied backlink profile is key for stability in your site’s SEO performance. Link diversity involves obtaining backlinks from different types of sources, such as blogs, news sites, forums, and directories. This variety signals to search engines that your content is reliable and popular across various platforms. A mixed profile can also protect you from algorithm changes that might impact links from a single source type. Monitoring the range of your backlinks helps ensure a more balanced and healthy overall strategy.
But not all backlinks are created equal. High-quality backlinks from authoritative sites carry more weight and can significantly improve your SEO. On the flip side, low-quality or spammy backlinks can hurt your rankings, so monitoring them regularly is key.
How to Check Backlinks with Google
Now that you understand the importance of backlinks, let’s walk through the different ways you can check backlinks with Google.
1. Use Google Search Console to Check Backlinks
Google Search Console is a free tool provided by Google that allows you to monitor various aspects of your website’s performance, including backlinks. It provides an easy way to check backlinks with Google and ensures that your link profile is up-to-date.
How to Check Backlinks with Google Search Console:
- Sign in to your Google Search Console account.
- Choose your website from the list of properties.
- Navigate to the “Links” section on the left sidebar.
- Under “External Links”, you’ll see a list of websites that are linking back to your site. This shows you the pages on your website that have the most backlinks and the sites linking to them.
- Use the information to assess the quality and relevance of the backlinks.
Google Search Console offers an overview of your backlink profile, making it easier to manage and analyze your links.
Google Search Console offers advanced features that enhance backlink analysis. You can use comparison reports to observe changes over time, which helps identify trends in backlink growth or loss. The filtering feature lets you narrow down links by attributes such as the source domain, so you can target specific areas needing improvement. These tools provide deeper insight into backlink dynamics, allowing for a more strategic approach.
2. Use Google Search Operators to Find Backlinks
Another way to check backlinks with Google is by using Google’s advanced search operators. These commands help you narrow down your search results and find where your website has been linked across the internet.
Some useful search operators to check backlinks include:
- “yourwebsite.com”: This simple search allows you to find mentions of your website across the web. By placing your domain in quotation marks, Google will return results that mention your site, some of which may include backlinks.
- intitle:”your keyword” + inurl:”links”: This search operator helps you find resource pages or blog posts in your niche that may be linking to your content. Resource pages often feature valuable links and can be great opportunities for future backlinks.
3. Set Up Google Alerts to Track Mentions
While Google Alerts doesn’t directly show you backlinks, it’s a great tool to monitor when your brand or website is mentioned online. Once you’re alerted to a mention, you can check whether it includes a backlink. If not, this gives you the chance to reach out and request a link.
How to Set Up Google Alerts:
- Go to Google Alerts and type your website URL in quotation marks (e.g., “yourwebsite.com”).
- Set up an alert to receive notifications whenever your website is mentioned online.
- Review the mentions, and if there’s no backlink, consider contacting the website to ask for one.
4. Track Referral Traffic Using Google Analytics
You can also check backlinks with Google by tracking referral traffic in Google Analytics. Referral traffic refers to users who come to your site through a link on another site, and this often comes from backlinks.
How to Track Referral Traffic in Google Analytics:
- Log in to Google Analytics and select your website.
- Navigate to Acquisition > All Traffic > Referrals.
- Review the list of sites that are referring traffic to your website.
By analyzing this data, you can determine which backlinks are driving traffic and whether they’re coming from high-quality, relevant sources.
5. Check for Broken Links with Google
Broken links can hurt your SEO performance, and monitoring them regularly is essential. One way to identify broken backlinks is by searching for mentions of your site that lead to a dead link.
Use the “site
.com” search operator to identify backlinks that may lead to 404 errors or broken pages. Once you find these broken links, reach out to the website owner to fix the issue, or redirect the broken link to a relevant, working page on your site.
Common Backlink Mistakes to Avoid
Avoid common pitfalls in managing backlinks, such as purchasing low-quality links from unreliable sources. These can lead to penalties and degrade your link profile’s quality. Ignoring outdated or toxic links without disavowing them may harm your site’s reputation. It’s important to regularly update disavowed links in Google Search Console to reflect current conditions. Another mistake is failing to monitor changes in the quality of backlinks, which could impact SEO negatively if left unchecked. Regular audits are key to maintaining link efficacy.
Best Practices for Checking and Managing Backlinks
Once you’ve learned how to check backlinks with Google, here are some best practices to follow:
- Focus on Quality: High-quality backlinks from authoritative sites are more valuable than dozens of low-quality links. Prioritize backlinks from reputable sources in your niche.
- Regularly Monitor Backlinks: Use Google Search Console and Google Analytics to regularly monitor your backlink profile. This will help you stay on top of new backlinks and catch any low-quality or spammy links that could hurt your SEO.
- Disavow Toxic Links: If you find harmful or irrelevant backlinks, consider using Google’s Disavow Tool to tell Google to ignore them. This can help protect your site from penalties.
- Build Relationships for Future Links: Don’t just stop at checking your backlinks. Build relationships with the sites linking to you and explore opportunities for future collaborations or guest posts.
Conclusion
Learning how to check backlinks with Google is an essential skill for anyone looking to improve their website’s SEO. By using tools like Google Search Console, Google Alerts, and Google Analytics, you can easily monitor your backlink profile and ensure your site is getting high-quality, relevant links.
Take the time to regularly check and manage your backlinks to maintain a strong online presence and improve your search engine rankings.
