About Monitor Backlinks
Monitor Backlinks is a simple tool, true, but it’s also a very powerful one. It allows you to monitor your site’s link profile. It will also provide you with a comprehensive report of the links which point to whatever domain name you enter. It also provides a ton of analytics for a site’s entire link profile. Don’t let the rather generic name fool you, Monitor Backlinks is easy to use and has a lot of useful features, including one in particular which is especially interesting.
Monitor Backlinks was created from scratch by Razvan Girmacea, who is also the current CEO and founder. He has over 10 years of web development experience, and is constantly working to improve and refine the Monitor Backlinks experience. Basically, the guy who runs the company understands the product inside and out.
Top Features of Monitor Backlinks
It takes just a minute or two to set up, and requires almost nothing on your part from then on. If you can open emails, you’ll have no issues using Monitor Backlinks. Everything you need to know with be sent to you in on-going emails, or else accessed whenever you like from their easy-to-navigate overview page. Trust me, you’re going to look forward to receiving email from Monitor Backlinks — and how many companies can you say that for?
Monitor Backlinks
- Checks for new links to your website on a daily basis
- Checks for new links to your competitors on a weekly basis
- Checks every few days to see if you current backlinks have changed
At the overview page, you can instantly analyze many aspects of your domain. You can view your Average Keyword Position, as well as make side by side comparison between your metrics and your competitors.
From this overview page, you can view your domain’s backlinks, filtering them by practically any category you can think of.
Here are three scenarios which illustrate how Monitor Backlinks is both useful and versatile:
- Your site, product or service is reviewed by a journalist, well-known blogger or otherwise mentioned in a major way. Monitor Backlinks will notify you by email when that happens, so you always know when your brand is mentioned.
- You lose a powerful SEO link. It can hard work establishing high quality links, such as one from an expert in your field or from a powerful tastemaker. It can also be expensive to place visible ads in relevant areas. Whether you’ve paid for the ad or earned the link in some other way, you want to know if it’s ever taken down unexpectedly. Monitor Backlinks will notify you by email when that happens, so you always know if someone is trying to take advantage of you or if there’s been a technical error.
- Your competition is building links. Even if you don’t have the budget, Monitor Backlinks can still help you keep pace with your competition. They’ll send you an email every time your competitor gets a new backlink. This service is included in every plan.
MonitorBacklinks.com Prices
Pricing is based off the number of domains you want to follow. Each domain includes some competitors you want to follow, so the “number of domains” you need a plan for are just the domains you own and/or operate. Prices are monthly.
Transparency is the name of the game with Monitor Backlinks. You can try the product for 30 days before you buy. During the trial, you’ll even get a reminder that your trial is almost over.
As a subscriber, you’ll receive two emails notifying you when your subscription is about to expire. One will arrive about 15 days before your subscription ends, the other arrives on the day of.
There are three plans. Here’s a breakdown:
Domains: 2
Keywords: 50
Backlinks: 500
Competitor’s Domains Followed: 2
Competitors Links: 500
Ideal For: Start-Ups and Freelancers
Domains: 5
Keywords: 200
Backlinks: 5,000
Competitor’s Domains Followed: 4
Competitors Links: 1,000
Ideal For: SEO Consultants and Small Businesses
Domains: 10
Keywords: 500
Backlinks: 15,000
Competitor’s Domains Followed: 4
Competitors Links: 1,500
Ideal For: Agencies and Medium-Sized Businesses
If you pay for an entire year at once, you’ll get a 20% discount.
All plans come with the full email reports, keyword rank checker and backlink management. There’s an interesting twist to that one, as we referenced earlier.
Here’s the twist: Monitor Backlinks discovers links using Ahrefs data, but you can also import additional links from other sources, including Google Webmaster Tools and Majestic SEO. The Ahrefs subscription is included with your Monitor Backlinks subscription, but you’ll need separate accounts for any other service.
You can cover a lot of bases with just one easy-to-use program. Also, because Monitor Backlinks makes it very easy to disavow bad links, you have a powerful tool to identify and then remove spammy links. Your overall search engine ranking will thank you.
You can also follow competitors and receive regular emails telling you when they’ve added new links. It’s useful and, let’s face it, it’s also pretty fun, too. Who doesn’t want to know what the competition is up to? You can copy their tactics, or even go after them more directly in the battle for a high search ranking. Even if you do nothing to respond directly to your competitors, it’s still a good idea to know what they’re up to.
Criticism of Monitor Backlinks
There really is no criticism of Monitor Backlinks I could find. If anything, it’s a hidden little gem in the crowded world on SEO tools. Really, the only negative I can think of is that if the features of this tool are incorporated into a larger program, then it might become obsolete. But with its interface, price and functionality, I suspect I’ll be using Monitor Backlinks for quite some time.
Customer Support
Basically, the program compiles information and sends it to you. There isn’t a lot of need for customer support, and I haven’t encountered any problems so far. It works as well on day one as it does on day 100.
If you do need help, it’s always just a phone call or an email away. There is also an extensive set of blogs available on the site, which not only help you use the tool, but also provide a lot of information on SEO in general.
Plus, Monitor Backlinks comes with an extensive capability to create charts and graphs. You can even print out a graph comparing your keyword ranking to that of your competitors. If you have to report to anyone who might not have a strong technical background, these graphs will still illustrate how you’re doing versus the other guys.
Conclusion
Overall, I was pretty impressed with Monitor Backlinks. It’s extremely easy to use, and has a lot of power. Setup takes minutes and the price is extremely affordable. You’ll be able to manage links in a way you’ve probably never done before. At the end of the day, I think it became an interesting little lesson for me: Never judge an SEO tool by its name.