Basic Google Webmaster Tutorial.
If you’re wondering how to check the number of links that come to your website(inbound links), through Googlebot’s eyes, it’s really easy. You need to have a Google Webmaster account so if you don’t have one cick that link and get one.
So lets say you have a Google webmaster account, sweet, you’re a couple clicks away. Open webmaster tools, click on your site. In the left menu bar select “Search Traffic > Links to Your Site”. Upon clicking ‘links to your site’ you’ll be directed to a page like that in the screenshot.
So why is this information important to SEO? Well, the reputation of the sites that link to you, and the “anchor text” of the links are both important to your own website’s reputation. Google webmaster allows one to check both of these measures. One reason why active social network locations are good for your SEO, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and the like all have very good reputations, or, high PageRank. Keep in mind this list of links shown is probably not “all” the links Googlebot sees.
It’s important to expand “how your data is linked” and make sure you have a good variety of phrases here. An overuse of one phrase is indicitave of a copy paste approach and googlebot knows this. It’s smart to keep track of what’s going on with sites linking to you.
You may also disavow backlinks that you didn’t create(or if you did I guess) through Google webmaster tools.
I’ve found my content being used without my permission. Some are prone to copy paste a block of content that is not theirs. Then they are sloppy and don’t take care to edit the links that are taken in the copy. You don’t want links from malicious websites and this is one way they may appear. – Stephen James Hall
*lightly edited for 2015