Checking incoming links:Google and elsewhere

If you are like most bloggers, you want to know who is linking to your blog.



There are several blog tools that tell you which blogs have a link to your blog. The best known of these tools are Technorati and the Truth Laid Bear Blog Ecosystem.



Blogs do not live by blog links alone, however.



Your blog will also have links from tradtional websites, and surprisingly from your own blog itself. Did you know that your internal blog archive pages also count as backlinks? It's true.



That link popularity boost, from your archived posts alone, should encourage you to add posts to your blog. They increase your PageRank and your positioning in the search engine results for your keyword terms.



To find your overall blog incoming links, there are several places to look.



If you have the Google Toolbar installed, you can check your highest quality backlinks through it. Note that I say the highest quality ones. Google only reports incoming links from web pages of PageRank 4 or higher.



For more information on Google PageRank, check out this blog post on PageRank.



On the Google Toolbar, look for a little blue oval with a small letter "i" in it. Click on it. When the menu opens, click on Backwards Links.



What will appear on your computer screen are the many incoming PageRank 4 or higher blog, website, your forum posts, and directory pages where your blog is found. While only PageRank 4 or better pages are shown, Google takes all located links into account in its calculation of your PageRank and position in the search engine results.



To find even more Google links, that include your blog, try this.



In the search box, enter link: yourblogname.yourbloghost.com and more mentions of your blog will appear.



You can do the same thing for Yahoo, and get even more results.



Simply enter link: yourblogname.yourbloghost.com into the search box as before, and more links to your blog will appear.



One of the very best tools for checking links is the Marketleap Link Popularity Checker.



All you have to do is fill in the name of your blog, or blogs (since there are spaces to check more than one, you can), and the Marketleap Link Popularity Checker will display incoming links in Google/AOL, MSN, and Hotbot/Inktomi.



The first thing you will notice is the different totals. As you search through the links, you will also find that each search engine lists different links. Their spiders crawl different sites. Remember, the Google total displayed is only PageRank 4 or higher, and may even be outdated.



Have fun checking your incoming links.



Remember, there are more links to you than just other blogs.