Backlinks
Backlinks are part of the Professional and Strategic plans. Once a month we read the link profile of your website and of every competitor / peer website: how many websites link in, how many links there are, your domain rank, and the links gained and lost that month. The monthly report has a Backlinks section and the Competitors / Peers table compares referring domains.
A backlink is a link from another website to yours. Google treats links from relevant, trusted websites as a sign your site is worth ranking. See the Backlinks guide for what makes a good one.
What’s tracked
Section titled “What’s tracked”For your website and each competitor / peer website:
- Referring domains: the number of different websites linking in. The number that matters most.
- Backlinks: the total number of individual links.
- Domain rank: a 0 to 1,000 score of how much link authority the site has.
- Gained and lost this month: referring domains that linked for the first time, and ones that dropped their link.
For your own website the report also lists the strongest referring domains gained this month and the referring domains lost, plus your spam score (the share of links from low-quality websites) and any broken links.
A website only gets a reading when the brand or competitor / peer has a Website set.
When backlinks are read
Section titled “When backlinks are read”Backlinks are read on the 1st of each month, for the month just finished, so the figures are in the report that lands on the 2nd.
To read them straight away:
- Go to Marketing Feed > your brand > Setup > Watchlist > Backlinks.
- Select Check now. It takes about a minute.
The table shows the latest reading for you and each competitor / peer: referring domains, backlinks, domain rank, and the domains gained and lost in the month shown. A reading taken mid-month covers the month so far.
To see a fresh reading in a report, re-run the month.
What the report shows
Section titled “What the report shows”The Backlinks section of the monthly report shows:
- referring domains, backlinks and domain rank, with the change on the previous reading
- referring domains gained and lost this month, and your spam score
- bars comparing referring domains and domain rank with each competitor / peer, and a table of the same figures
- the strongest referring domains gained this month and the domains lost, with their domain rank, number of links and the date
The Competitors / Peers section gains a Referring domains column and comparison bar.
A report for a month with no reading shows the latest reading on file and says which month it’s from.
Alerts
Section titled “Alerts”You’re alerted when your referring domains fall by 5% or more (and at least five websites) between two readings. The alert type is Backlinks. See Alerts, digest and Slack.
Where the data comes from
Section titled “Where the data comes from”Backlink figures come from a third-party link index that crawls the web and records links between websites. No index sees every link, so the numbers are a consistent sample rather than an exact count, and they can differ from other tools. Compare months and compare businesses on the same figures rather than treating any one number as absolute.