If you started a backlinking campaign for your web site and you worked hard for months, now, how do you check the backlinks? How do you know which backlinks are still there and - especially if you bought some ( which is not really recommended) - how do you check you are getting what you paid for?

One way to check for your backlinks is by using your Google Webmaster account. You can see who is linking back to you - at domain level and page level. The problem with that is that the data is not updated as it should be, so you may see wrong numbers.

The Yahoo Site Explorer that used to be a reliable backlinks source information has been merged into the Bing's Webmaster account, so now you will have to sign up for it.

Of course, there is also a ton of different software that one may use to check for backlinks. Some of these pieces of software show only the backlinks themselves, without any other information. Other ones include into their backlinks information the anchor text of the backlink, the domain age, the domain PR, the page PR ( where the backlink resides), the Alexa rank for the site and many more details.

If you want to rather use software to check for your web site's backlinks than manually trying to figure out what sites are linking back to you and how, then you want to look for a backlink checker with page rank. The PR of the page where the link resides on is important. You want to know what PR pages all those backlinks are coming from.

Of course, you also want to know if a backlink comes from a high traffic site or from a site no one is visiting.

A good backlinks checker will offer the following details ( at the minimum):

• Anchor Text
• Anchor URL
• Page PR
• Domain PR
• How many outgoing links are on that specific page
• Domain age
• Some are also showing your popularity in social media ( as you link back from bookmarking sites and web 2.0 properties and so on)

Of course, not all backlinks checkers out there will show all this information. That is why you should wisely choose one that is giving you all these details.

The backlinking process takes a lot of time and perseverance. It is a chore that unfortunately needs to be done. To see the results of your hard work, you need to use a good tool - a good backlinks checker. The beauty of having one is not only the fact that you can check for backlinks only with one click, but it also can be used for spying on the competition, to see how many backlinks your competitors have; usually you can use the information to backlink from the same sites they do.

Backlinks checkers are the way to go when it comes to checking for backlinks and also for spying on competitors. They give the webmaster using them an unfair advantage over the ones that do not, as backlinking is one of the most important work that pushes a web site up in SERPS.