Website Backlink Analysis Using Top Backlink Checker API and Logging in Google Sheets

The Top Backlink Checker API makes it possible to perform a thorough analysis of your website's backlinks. Analyzing your backlinks using the Google Sheets logging feature is a straightforward process. The traditional way of backlinking has long since lost its value. It consisted of creating a large list of backlinks and then reviewing them one by one. This method is tedious and can result in not only wasting time, but it also produces an enormous number of results, many of which will not produce quality traffic. When dealing with many links for various projects within the crypto industry, speed is just as essential as accuracy, so manual methods for managing backlinks do not work anymore. We learned very quickly at ASCN.AI that we needed an automated method for making the backlink checking process quicker and easier to manage. We were quickly able to find an API that allows us to log into Google Sheets and export data directly from it; thus, checking the backlinks on multiple projects was simplified considerably, and we reduced our auditing time from three days to ten minutes.

This article will detail how easy it is to set up an automated backlink checking system using the Top Backlink Checker API and export the data into Google Sheets. Whether you need to check dozens of websites or wish to receive regular updates on a few specific backlinks, the system makes it simple for anyone to use, as no programming skills are required.

Understanding Backlinks

Websites can promote themselves throughout the internet by using the techniques of developing quality links to other sites related to their own. Quality backlinks are essential for every website to grow and maintain. Each website should create a unique, relevant link building strategy based on the website's content and target audience to achieve successful growth. Search engines view a backlink as a positive signal for your web page due to the fact that it comes from another website and can be trusted. This means the more trustworthy the source of the backlink, the better chance of your PageRank score increasing. For example, Ahrefs found 91% of all pages ranked #1 on Google have at least one external backlink pointing to it.

There is however a "golden rule" when it comes to backlinks -- not all backlinks are created equally. Backlinks from untrustworthy or non-relevant websites will most likely cause damage to your domain and could also lead to being penalized by search engines. For this reason, you should focus on obtaining high-quality backlinks, rather than trying to accumulate many low-quality backlinks; that is, quality should always take precedence over quantity, especially with respect to quality domains, relevant sites and their domains' histories.

In 2024, Google confirmed that backlinks will continue to be one of the top 3 ranking factors in conjunction with high-quality content and RankBrain.

In general terms, a backlink consists of three components: the URL of the source website (the source hostname), the destination URL (the URL of the page you are linking to), and the visible text of the link (the anchor). The anchor can be of a branded nature (e.g., "ASCN.AI"), commercial (e.g., "buy cryptos"), or neutral (e.g., "read more"). Each of these components affects the relative "weight" or value of the backlink when being evaluated.

Backlink Quality Metrics:

Domain Authority (DA) is a metric developed by Moz that estimates the estimated strength of a domain on a scale of 1-100. In 2022, Moz modified its algorithm to factor in the number of outbound connections and the dispersion of links within a given domain. Although DA is not an official metric utilized by Google, it is often considered a good reference point. Considering the DA may be useful, but also other variables like an organic traffic level on the donor website, which gives you the real audience versus DA alone which can be a high number with no traffic.

Anchor text also indicates how relevant the backlink may be for any particular webpage, and thus also influences its value.

Additional important metrics:

Trust Flow (Majestic): Measure of the trustworthiness of a link or domain, based on the domain's connection to reputable authority websites;

Citation Flow: The total number of backlinks pointing to a domain, regardless of whether they are good or bad; and

Spam Score (Moz): A warning indicating that the domain may be filtered out from Google due to low-quality links; and

Dofollow/Nofollow: Indicates whether a backlink passes "link juice" from the linked to webpage or is only provided for reference.

At ASCN.AI, we take these metrics into consideration and use them to assess the overall evaluation of any backlink. For example, we are hesitant to work with links from a domain that has a Spam Score of 8/17, even though it has a DA of 60 and other good metrics.

Importance of Backlink Analysis to SEO

The Importance of Backlinks in Your SEO Strategy

Backlinks are one of the top three metrics that Google uses when determining the ranking of a webpage against other pages. As long as all the other ranking factors are equal, a webpage that has more backlinks will usually rank better than another webpage that has fewer backlinks.

According to a Backlinko study, pages that are at the top of the search engine results (web pages that are on the first page) have an average of 3.8 times as many backlinks as pages that sit on the second page or further down in the SERPs.

The battle for internet traffic is very competitive in the cryptocurrency industry. One of our clients had excellent content but was struggling to generate traffic. By performing a backlink analysis of its competitors, we were able to identify websites that would serve as good link partners for the client and added links to the client's content on those websites, all of which were DA 70+. We were able to achieve an increase of 220% in organic traffic to the client's website within a four-month period. Checking backlinks regularly is vital to ensure that your link profile remains intact and useful. Checking back regularly allows you to quickly assess any issues with your link profile and provides insight into new linking opportunities. Here's how:

• Recover lost links
• Determine if you have new toxic domains to include within your disavow file
• Monitor your competitors' activity

According to the 2023 SEMrush Link Building Report, companies that conduct link audits once per quarter are 34% more likely to remain in the Top 3 for search engine results than those that do not. For example: After seeing a 15% drop in traffic after a major do-follow link donor was penalized, a DeFi client added the domain to his disavow list, gained new do-follow links with Domain Authority of 60+, and regained their previous traffic position in just 2 months.

What Does the Top Backlink Checker API Do?

The Top Backlink Checker API allows you to gather all of the backlinks to a given Domain or URL. The API offers functionality that allows your system to automate the collection of backlinks, sending them to an Excel sheet, importing them into a Google sheet, and/or integrating them with your CRM. Here are the fields that are available in the API response; the source URL of the backlink; the target URL of the backlink; the anchor text of the backlink; the Domain Authority (DA); the spam score; the do-follow status of the backlink; the date that the backlink was first seen; and the date that the backlink was last checked.

The Advantages of API Technology

• Automated Processes: An API handles updating a database; configuration occurs once and all future updates occur automatically via the API;
• Scalability: Filtering and/or grouping data as well as receiving notifications when new or problems occur with a link(s);
• Integrating the API with Internal Computer Systems and AI Assistants: The combined analysis provides insight into how many times, when and where an analyst has viewed, changed or contacted an individual's link(s);
• More Time for Analysis: Using an API saves at least 2 hours of an analyst's time every day.

ASCN.AI has over 40 monitoring projects, using automated notification systems that send alerts through Telegram. This has greatly increased the visibility of all projects and makes monitoring much simpler.

The Disadvantages and Specificities of API Technology:

• API cannot be requested more than once in a set time frame. Exceeding the time limit will result in an inability to use the API or being charged for it;
• API keys must be kept secure; i.e., in the app script properties (Properties);
• Pagination and Pausing: In order to extract an entire profile, the API must paginate the request. After each page of results, pauses are required for the system to retrieve the next page. There is also a time lag when retrieving updated data, which can range from several hours to a full day.

Integrating Google Sheets with Analytics

Create a Google Sheets Sheet for Backlink Reporting

Creating a Google Sheets Document for Monitoring Backlinks will allow you to monitor the changes and trends of individual links over time.

To begin, create a Google Sheet and name the first sheet "Backlink Reporting", you will need the following Columns: "Check Date", "Domain Name", "Source URL", "Target URL", "Anchor Text", "Domain Authority", "Spam Score", "Dofollow Status", "Date First Seen", "Date Last Checked".

To access the Apps Script Editor go to "Extensions > Apps Script Editor", from here, you will want to create a Function in the script that saves your API Key into the Script Properties so that it is not exposed in the code. Then create a Function to call for Backlinks for a Domain by calling the API Key and Checker's URL. To parse the JSON response to retrieve link data as per the article's recommendation: To complete this process, a new function should be added that will log the retrieved links to the spreadsheet. Each time the data-fetching script is called, the new link will be added to the table as a new row. Once set up, you can configure a trigger in Apps Script so that it automatically runs once a day (e.g. 9am) to create a record of the links.

When using Google Apps Script for larger scale monitoring, create a "Domains" sheet which contains the URLs you would like to track. Then create a single master function that will call the logging function and loop through the domains contained within the "Domains" sheet. It is also best practice to add a small delay between each request made to the API to avoid overload.

There is also an option to send notifications directly to Telegram to notify your team as needed. For this, you will need to include your Telegram Bot Token and Chat ID in the script properties. Using the POST method, the function will submit a request to the Telegram API with your alert message. You can trigger this alert after the data update completes.

Google Apps Script allows you to create plans to regularly check your URLs on whatever frequency suits you and your business best, whether it be daily, weekly, etc. Personally, I recommend setting up a frequency of once a day, especially for crypto. At ASCN.AI, we understand that having fast access to data on backlinks from other competitors helps give you a competitive edge, which makes it possible for you to be more reactive, and position your own content where your competitors are located, literally increasing your overall organic reach.

Integrate With SEO Tools

You can connect with your other SEO tools via API to create one full SEO dashboard by linking your Google Analytics and Search Console data;

You can create automatic synchronization on Google Sheets and your CRM for quick outreach campaign automation by using Zapier or Make;

You can use ASCN.AI assistants to analyze anchors, and assess risk.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What data is available via the API?

You will see a variety of information, such as source URL, target URL, anchor text, DA, Spam Score, link type (dofollow/nofollow), date of first discovery, date last checked, plus other metrics such as traffic, Trust Flow, Citation Flow, and domain geography etc. The exact data set you receive depends on the service level.

How do you store API Keys and how do you manage access?

You can save your keys in either Script Properties or as secure environment variables. You should restrict access to your Google Sheet to only those personnel who need access and utilize OAuth 2.0 where possible, along with monitoring the request logs for fast notifications of issues.

How do I read the reports in Google Sheets?

Using charts, identify your overall or individual link profile changes over time;

The total number of dofollow and nofollow links should be monitored, which, in general, should be 60-70% dofollow;

Regularly track average donor DA.

Case Study — An increase in traffic due to backlink analyses performed throughout the lifecycle of the DeFi project;

Case Solution — Identifying New Backlink Sources for Competitor Analysis for a DeFi Project (Launched in 2024): As of now, daily monitoring of the competitors' backlinks resulted in finding 12 new sites for backlink placements, tripled dofollow links to our site, and a 180% increase in organic traffic; The time spent on analysing backlinks was reduced from 10 hours per week to approximately 30 minutes.

Insights from the Top Backlink Checker API:

According to the results of the SEO Tool Survey 2024, API tools for link analysis are the most popular SEO tools used by SEO professionals after keyword position tracking.

Main Advantages of Top Backlink Checker API:

• Very large index: 12 Trillion Links
• Daily recap
• 1-Year Historical Data Available
• Bulk request support for 100 domains each at once
• Webhooks for spam score alerts and filtering
• Seamless integration with Google Sheet App Script

Final Thoughts:

Clearly Define Your Goals: Determine what you wish to monitor; dynamics separately from your competitors and toxic link profiles;

Select an API that meets your functional needs and budget; Build a Google Sheet for Data Monitoring and Analysis; Write and Configure Your Scripts, ensuring you have proper security in place; Set Automatic Updates and Triggers for Notifications to Maintain the Working Flow; Receive Messenger Notifications for Updates; Track & React to New Data Changes as they Occur;

Build the Backlink Analysis Platform Through Increased Domain Numbers, and Include AI/CRM Applications As Needed;

Automation is not only about savings; it is about maintaining a healthy, quality of data; Periodically Check Your Script Health, and Protect Your Data; Missing Out on Valuable Changes Can Be Expensive; By using this method, You are Ahead of the Game when Making Decisions to Improve Your Analytics to Find Your SEO Needs.

For Further Assistance with Configurations for Your Project, please Contact Us at ASCN.AI; We Are Here to Help You Work Smarter, Not Harder!