5 Backlink APIs to Level Up Your Link Building Strategy in 2021

Creating an effective marketing strategy means covering all your bases. When thinking about the future of your website, ranking high needs to be one of the crucial goals for you to achieve. Search engines pick up numerous metrics, and backlinking remains essential.

Getting backlinks is an ongoing process that requires making a detailed inbound marketing strategy. Having access to your current performance and your competitors’ approaches can help you take action quickly.

That’s where a backlink API comes in handy. It lets you access data that indicates who’s linking to your competitors’ websites and who they are linking to in their strategy. Furthermore, you can examine who they’re collaborating with now and who their partners in the past were.

Before examining the best picks in the market, let’s go over API basics and why you need one.

What is an API?

APIs (application programming interface) are systems developers implement in various software products to quickly access different types of information. For example, the weather app from your smartphone collects weather information from weather APIs created by developers.

It makes communication between applications efficient.

First, a team of developers creates an API of a particular software product. They pre-set what information the API is going to offer to its users. Then, a different team of developers working on another product can access the data feed from the API and call it for their app. 

The majority of applications we use today utilize APIs for quick information exchange. These tools have become a standard in the IT industry, as it simplifies communication between programs.

Why should you use one?

The main benefit of using various APIs is access to an abundant amount of information with a couple of clicks. Plus, it’s a big time saver because it automates the whole process, as you’d otherwise have to search for information manually.

With an API, your software tool or an app simply requests data from another system, and you get all the information you need.

Additionally, you can develop your app to communicate with multiple APIs. That would enable you to use a single tool to get data from several different APIs in one place. 

Taking that step would speed up your in-house processes as your team could centralize all the data in one place. The functionality of these tools can be some of the following benefits for your business:

• Higher productivity
• Lower costs
• Better in-house organization of processes
• Team versatility through working with multiple APIs
• Access to copious amounts of real-time data 

Implement different APIs to make it easier for your teams to be more efficient when possible. It’s a worthwhile investment that can help you grow your business.

Top backlink APIs picks

Now that we’re familiar with APIs and why using them is an excellent step for your business, let’s look at the specific set of APIs. The ones that can audit your website and present you with backlink data are essential ranking factors.

Luckily, there are plenty of options available in the market today. Let’s explore a couple of those that offer exceptional APIs.

1. DataForSEO

Image Source: Platform’s Website

DataForSEO offers a feature-rich backlinks API. With the ever-growing index of backlinks, the team behind the DataForSEO provides quite a lot of value to their clients. 

The tool is convenient as it’s easy to implement. It provides real-time data for millions of domains and subdomains globally.

When auditing your website, or your competitors’ websites, you can receive the following data:

• Backlinks — Find all the backlinks leading to every single page of the website you’re auditing. You can see some of the patterns that your competitors are using. Furthermore, you can see your weak points much better and create a more effective backlink strategy for a better ranking.
• Relevant domains — Analyze how domains are linking to one another. You’ll be able to see which domains are interlinked.
• Link intersection — Use the API to detect websites that link to numerous other websites from the same niche. Analyze the data to discover backlinking opportunities for your brand.

These functionalities make DataForSEO API a valuable addition to your SEO set of tools. But there’s more. The company offers help with the integration process and pay-as-you-go pricing model.

Your API costs depend on the number of requests you make to it. Therefore, your costs will vary from one month to another, depending on your use.

2. Ahrefs

Image Source: Platform’s Website

Ahrefs has established itself as a giant in the SEO world. The company takes a lot of pride in its crawler, which, according to them, is the second biggest crawler outperforming other big companies such as Bing and Yahoo.

That means that you get an impressive number of indexed backlinks by accessing their API. The sheer amount of data opens up many options for the API subscribers, but it affects the pricing.

The API is available in three different plans, which are Standard, Plus and Premium. The pricing is quite steep, plus you get additional charges if you overstep the pre-set API request limit for every plan.

This tool is a viable option for all businesses that are looking to improve their backlinking score. However, it will require a slightly higher investment.

3. SEMrush

Image Source: Platform’s Website

SEMrush is another big name in the SEO industry that counts huge amounts of indexed websites, backlinks and keyword data. They’re currently working on releasing version four of their API, which heavily focuses on improved security features.

The company makes integration simple, allowing brands to start using their API quickly and make the best use of its data. However, much like Ahrefs, you’ll find the API access only available to Business plan subscribers, which comes at quite a steep price.

On top of that, additional costs might vary depending on the number of requests with the API.

However, aside from backlinking data, you also get keyword information to get keyword ideas for your content.

The company offers plenty of valuable resources on its website, which SEO readers will find beneficial.

4. Mozscape

Image Source: Platform’s Website

Moz has become an essential part of the SEO industry. The company’s Domain Authority browser extension is prevalent among SEO professionals. Mozscape API is rich with over 40 trillion links in its database.

What’s more, not only will you get to see all the backlinks, but you’ll be able to access more details about them, such as their anchors and whether they are do-follow or no-follow links.

These insights are necessary to get a complete picture of what the competitors are doing and what you can do to improve your position in the market.

The API also displays information such as Domain Authority and Page Authority, helping you get an immediate picture of how high something is likely to rank.

The Entry Level API plan is affordable but comes with plenty of limitations. It suggests users go with a Low Volume plan with the same price tag as Ahrefs and SEMrush. The most demanding users can opt for Mid Volume or Enterprise plans.

Overall, Mozscape is an excellent backlink API with a more than rich backlink database.

5. Majestic

Image Source: Platform’s Website

Last but not least, Majestic offers a robust platform with an API with a massive index of backlinks. Like the abovementioned companies, Majestic is also a veteran in the SEO sphere. Features like Trust Flow, Citation Flow and Flow Metric Score show the quality of your website.

You’ll also find plenty of helpful API documentation that helps developers integrate the API with their software tools more efficiently.

Access to the powerful API is only available to Full API plan subscribers. However, as you keep pushing the analysis units up, the plan’s price also follows. 

While a bit cheaper than SEMrush, Ahrefs and Mozscape, Majestic’s API price is still high.

How to pick the right tool?

Opting for one of these APIs will depend on your business needs. The key is to find a tool that will get the job done without spending too much money. Therefore, value is one of the most important factors to keep in mind. But that’s not all. There are many other elements to consider:

• Features — Evaluate what data you can access with a particular API. Opt for one that lets you access more information on top of the backlink analysis.
• Backlink index — Backlink index size is a metric that shows how good the tool is. If you opt for one with a small base, you won’t see the most accurate data.
• Ease of implementation — Make sure that your team can handle the API implementation. Steer away from complex solutions that’ll waste your valuable time.
• Experience — How long has the company been in business? Pick an API provider who’s been in the industry for a long time. They’ve survived because of the quality of their service. That means their API is most likely excellent.

Paying attention to these things will let you opt for the most optimal backlink API for your business.

Concluding thoughts

Gaining access to big data can help you elevate your business efforts significantly. Data analytics is essential for staying competitive in the modern market, as it allows you to estimate your next business moves better.

Accessing an exceptional backlink API can help you get a higher ranking for your website. Picking one of the options we’ve analyzed in this article will undoubtedly help you get the right results. Take your time to evaluate the best option for you. It’ll help find room for improvement.