There are numerous tools that you can use to determine which websites link into another one, such as your own. However in my experience they either have a charging model that just doesn’t appeal, or you have to pay for them or they’re not very good.
At February’s SES conference (London), one of presenters, David Naylor I think, used the following method. I’ve been using it a recently and it’s proved to be really helpful:
- Go to your local yahoo page which in UK, you’ll find at uk.yahoo.com
- Type the following into the web search box at the top: links:http://www.yourdomain -http://www.yourdomain
The ‘links’ command does work in google as well, but it doesn’t seem to produce such an accurate results listing.
You’ll see that there are two parts to the query; the first produces a list of all the links into the domain that you specify. The second removes all internal links. As well as being a good way to check your own site, it’s a great way to see what competing sites are doing too.
Written by Ned Wells
Tags: backlinks, inbound links