Nothing is charged until you pay the basket. Links from $1.
Glossary and steps
Once you buy links, or earn them, you need to see them. Here is how to answer 'who links to my web site' for free first, and with a tool second.
The cheapest answer is free. It lives in Google Search Console, under Links. That report lists the sites linking to you, your most linked pages and your top anchor texts. It is sampled and it lags, but it is Google's own view.
Third-party tools see a different slice. Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz and Majestic each run their own crawlers, so no two show the same list. Differences of 30 percent between tools would not surprise us.
Start free. Move to a paid tool only if the questions get harder.
| Term | Meaning | Why you care |
|---|---|---|
| Backlink | A link from another site to yours | The unit we are all counting |
| Referring domain | A distinct site that links to you | Ten links from one site count as one domain |
| Anchor text | The clickable words | Repeated anchors form a footprint |
| Dofollow | A link without rel nofollow | The default; passes ranking credit |
| Nofollow / sponsored / ugc | Hints about the link's nature | Introduced by Google in September 2019 |
| Domain Rating | Ahrefs' site-strength score | A rough guide, not a Google metric |
Go to Links, then Top linking sites, and export the list.
See which of your posts receive links and which receive none.
Look for the same phrase repeating. If more than a third share a money keyword, mix the next orders.
Does each link still exist? Is it in the body text?
Compare against ordered links so every purchase shows up in the report.
Count referring domains, not links. Forty links from one site are one vote from one place. Then glance at the countries and languages. A French cooking blog with every link from Vietnamese forums has a story worth asking about.
Next, check for dead ends. Pages that link to you but return an error, or that sit in noindex, are doing nothing. Mark them and move on.
Finally, note the ratio of brand anchors to keyword anchors. Brand and URL anchors usually dominate on sites that grew without help, which is a decent benchmark for your own profile. The footprint guide explains why.
A hypothetical blogger notices her Domain Rating falls from 24 to 19. Panic follows. The usual causes are dull ones: a few referring domains disappeared, a donor deleted a page, or the tool re-crawled.
Check the lost-links view in Ahrefs or the equivalent. Then check traffic in Search Console.
If clicks and impressions are flat, the score change is probably cosmetic. Google does not use Ahrefs' number, so a falling DR is a hint to investigate, not an alarm.
Spikes from odd countries are usually bots, not links. Look at referrers in your analytics before blaming a purchase.
Keep a log. A simple sheet with date, donor, target, anchor and status is enough. When a link vanishes you can ask the owner, or the shop where you bought it, with the facts in hand.
If something looks spammy and you did not order it, do not panic. Google says it generally ignores spammy links pointing at you, and the disavow tool is meant for rare, serious cases with a manual action.
Check in once a month, no more. Daily refreshing of a link report is a way to lose an evening.