What is the right way to examine your links?

[ROiBOT]

Post Panda/Penguin, there is a lot said about examining your links and possibly removing bad links before Google act.

But, as a relative beginner, what is the right way of examining your links.

Obviously webmaster tools tells you about links, but it doesn't tell me (or I don't know how to see it) everything in a usabe way. It doesn't tell you which anchor text is on which link, it doesn't tell you what is good or bad and it even says 'this is a sample'.

A large number of link URL's on webmaster tools, when inspected, don't even have a valid link to my site.

Majestic gives you a lot of info, off its fresh and historic index, and has a form of ranking, but it isn't Google is it.

Alexa the same.

Are there other tools or processes, e.g extra download from webmasters tools upload here and process. Or is it a manually hard slog going through one by one.

PS what is the best tools from measuring DA that make a reasonable approximation to what google thinks\/

[C.Rebecca]

Google webmaster tool is the best way to check your backlinks. There is no tool out there which can give you every minute detail about your backlinks.

Some human efforts are required to get those detailed facts.

[ROiBOT]

Google webmaster tool is the best way to check your backlinks. There is no tool out there which can give you every minute detail about your backlinks.

Some human efforts are required to get those detailed facts.

Thanks, I don't think I was using GWT to its full potential. The things though that could make life easier is
1. show which are do or no follow
2. show the anchor text (it shows anchor text but not by link)
3. at least flag to us no-value or more importantly negative value links

[whiterabbit]

I politely differ with one of the other contributors here...GWMT cherry picks the links that that show you. They show you a bunch of crap that they're not counting and then a couple links that they are counting sprinkled in. To get decent data, I recommend ahrefs,moz, or majestic (this one is better for good historical index). I think all these places give free trials of some kind, so you can get some kind of deeper picture. Good luck.

[C.Rebecca]

There are many plug ins that fulfills your 1st and 2nd requirement. But for the third one, you have to ask search engines, what are their criteria for devaluing the links.

[ROiBOT]

I do have Majestic SEO, which gives me a lot of info.

[Noj]

Ok diffident tools for different things;

Google WMT is useful or identifying site wide links, and passed links Google stills considers.

Majestic SEO is great for build rates and history.

My favourite is DMOz's open site explorer for quantitative data.

A href I haven't used extensively but is getting some very good feedback and I like the look of.

It depends what aspect of linking are you looking at ?

[thegodfather]

Ok diffident tools for different things;

Google WMT is useful or identifying site wide links, and passed links Google stills considers.

Majestic SEO is great for build rates and history.

My favourite is DMOz's open site explorer for quantitative data.

A href I haven't used extensively but is getting some very good feedback and I like the look of.

It depends what aspect of linking are you looking at ?

Couldn't agree more. I've always used all tools at my disposal. Some are better than others, but each has their own pro's and cons.

AHrefs is OK... I like its pie chart format, in which you can estimate what percentage of a site's links are directories, article sites, one way links, etc.

[annagi]

I also like Ahrefs because of the "new and lost backlinks" report. But I also use Majestisc and Google Webmaster Tools. It is annoying to see that which one of these tools gives different numbers, but after all, the evolution of backlinks is sometimes more relevant than the numbers.

[YanivN]

MajesticSEO is fantastic for backlinks evaluation. I wouldn't be concerned too much about do follow or no follow links.

[apg1985]

I use SEOMOZ's mozbar plugin along with opensite explorer.

I check out the Domain Auth and Page Auth then spend time looking at the site itself, seeing if social signals are being generated etc.