Being able to analyze and understand the backlink profile of a site and its competitors is a key step in optimizing a website. This is a collection of tools that makes this analysis easier to do. All of these offer both free and paid versions. The free versions give good analysis powers… of course the paid ones are even better.
Analysis: searchmetrics.com offers a new (currently in beta) backlink analysis tool that looks at a comprehensive set of factors including an overview of your link profile, anchor text and geo location of links. This will be one to watch as they roll out features.
Authority: The SEOmoz site Open Site Explorer rates both the domain link strength and the individual page strength using their metrics of domain authority and page authority. These are 100 point scales that are meant to show ranking potential using an algorithmic mixture of link metrics. By clicking on the tab “top pages” you are able to view the authority ratings of many of the pages within the website.
Link Metrics: Examine over a dozen of the key individual link metrics for a domain using Open Site Explorer. This section of the site allows you to compare pages within your website or compare your website against your key competitors for a search phrase. At a glance you can see which page or domain is stronger and for which metrics.
Backlink History: Majestic SEO has some powerful analysis tools. Their backlink history report allows you to chart the history of link building that Majestic SEO has discovered over the years. These charts show rate of backlinking as well as the volume of backlinks. They allow you to compare multiple domains on the same chart.
Anchor Text:Open Site Explorer allows you to view the linking anchor text phrase frequency from both linking root domains and the total number of links. You are able to view this for links to an individual page or the entire domain.