Check Number of Backlinks

Backlinks are a crucial factor in search engine ranking. Though the algorithms for the major search engines vary, the number of quality backlinks to your website is high on the list of important considerations. The search engines consider inbound links to your site from others to be an indicator of relevance and popularity and thus are weighted heavily in ranking consideration.

The free Link Popularity Tool from iWebTools allows you to quickly view the number of backlinks there are to your site from Google, Yahoo, and MSN. It also provides the Google PageRank of the site. By comparing your backlinks to those of  competitors, it can give you an indication of where improvement can be made to increase your ranking. (Note: when tested, MSN results were not available and Yahoo produced 0 return.)

Though this tool is free, it limits you to only 5 uses of their collection of tools per hour. It provides very little useful data compared to other tools, free and paid, many of which offer not only the number of backlinks but also the origination of the links and anchor text.  To check unlimited website inbound link numbers and Google PageRanks, you have to purchase their “gold account” for $4.95 per month. That fee covers the unlimited use of this tool and the other SEO tools they offer.