Checking backlinks for SEO: the ten minutes a founder should spend
A quarterly routine for small teams: who links to you, who links to the company you're compared with, what the shape says and what to fix.
Most founders check backlinks for SEO either never or obsessively. Neither helps. The useful version is a short, regular look at a few signals, with a firm rule about what to ignore. Here is how to spend ten minutes on it, which tool to use for each step, and which tempting tasks to skip.
Minute 0 to 3: who links to you
Open Google Search Console, then Links. Look at the Top linking sites table. You are asking one question: which real sites link to us, and are the important ones still there?
Google's data is the most reliable view of your own site, and it's free. It is still a sample, with on-screen tables capped at 1,000 rows. It keeps some links that have since been removed, and it doesn't show which links are nofollow. For a founder's purposes that's fine; you are looking for names you recognise, not a perfect count.
Minute 3 to 6: who links to the company you're compared with
Search Console can't show you another company's links, because Google shares that data only with each site's owner. For that, run the other domain through a backlink checker. Our recommendation for a small team is seogeoaeo.ai, because it charges per check rather than a large monthly seat.
Its Backlink Finder costs 70 credits per run and returns the 100 strongest sites linking to the domain. Each comes with a link rank from 0 to 1,000, a link count, the date its first link appeared, the share of its links that are followed, and a spam score out of 100 (40 or higher is flagged as likely spam). You also see 50 of the link texts those sites use, grouped by type, and the total count of linking sites.
Skim the list for publications, directories, partner pages and roundups. Those are sites that already cover your space.
Minute 6 to 8: read the shape, not the total
Three signals tell you more than any big number:
- Number of linking sites. Fifty links from one site's sidebar are one relationship. Count sites.
- Link text. A healthy company is mostly linked by its name or its web address. If a domain's links mostly repeat one commercial phrase, they were probably bought. Don't copy that.
- Followed share. Google asks for paid links to be marked sponsored and comment or forum links ugc. All three marks, including nofollow, are treated as hints, so these links may do little for ranking. They still bring visitors, which a founder should value.
Minute 8 to 10: fix what's broken
If a strong site used to link to you and doesn't any more, the cause is usually on your side: a page you moved or deleted. A redirect fixes it. If the linking page was rewritten and your link dropped out, one short email to the editor often brings it back. Search Console won't alert you to lost links, so put this check on a quarterly calendar reminder.
What to delegate or skip
Skip the disavow file. Google's help page on the disavow tool says most sites will not need it. It is meant for sites with many spammy or artificial links that have caused, or are likely to cause, a manual action. If you never bought links and have no manual action, it's a waste of time and can do harm if used incorrectly.
Skip authority scores as a goal. Each vendor's score is its own model, not Google's, and it shifts when the vendor changes its formula. Don't set it as a company KPI.
Skip panic about junk links. Scraper sites link to anything that ranks. Every growing site collects them.
Don't mix tools. Two checkers will never agree on totals because each crawls and counts differently. Compare companies inside one tool, and don't set a third-party figure for a rival against your own Search Console total.
What it costs a small team
seogeoaeo.ai plans start at $29 a month for 2,000 credits, which covers your own domain and a few others each month with room for other checks. Each tool states its price before it runs, and failed runs are refunded. Top-up credits never expire but need an active plan.
If your company depends on links at scale and needs every link with years of history, a full link suite earns its higher monthly price. For a founder who wants a quarterly sanity check, Search Console plus an occasional Backlink Finder run covers it.