It's a casual task to work with backlinks in SEO. There are several tools to check or search for backlinks. Unlike other tools, this script does not look for backlinks to your website. The script is used to validate a list of backlinks that you already know. You recieve a list of backlinks using one of the following ways:
- you buy backlinks and recieve the list of donor web pages
- you generate the backlinks yourself by posting on forums, 3rd party websites, etc.
- your SEO expert or company work for you and show you the reports with backlinks as one of the SEO strategies
When you have such list of donor web pages, you need to confirm that they actually contain the required backlink to your website. Besides, you need to validate this list regularly in the future to monitor if the backlinks still exist and are not being deleted. So, this script will help you to do that. The script allows to check for a fixed backlink, such as https://example.com and use search patterns, such as *.example.com and many others using regular expressions.
To start using the script, first have the list of donor web pages prepared in a file: one URL per line.
backlink-checker.sh -input FILE -link LINK [OPTIONS]
Script is used to check if a specified LINK exists in a list of web pages specified in a FILE, one URL per line. The script is useful for SEO experts when you need to validate that your backlinks still exist on the web pages where you set them or bought them.
-v
Activates verbose mode
-mode LETTER
The LETTER defines how LINK is interpreted. We use grep for search, for complete info refer to Matcher Selection of the grep manual. Usually grep supports the following modes:
-E
Interpret LINK as an extended regular expression (ERE).
-F
Interpret LINK as a fixed string (instead of regular expression). This is the default.
-G
Interpret LINK as a basic regular expression (BRE).
-P Interpret LINK as a Perl-compatible regular expression (PCRE).
-log LOG
Saves the log to file LOG.
-found-log LOG
Saves URLs where the LINK was found to file LOG.
-missing-log LOG
Saves URLs where the LINK was not found to file LOG.
-append
All log files will be appended, otherwise they will be overwritten.
-user-agent AGENT
Sets user-agent string to AGENT.
root@Sputnik:~# bash backlink-checker.sh -input list.txt -link dubaidance.com -log log.txt -found-log found.txt -missing-log missing.txt
The script should work on any Linux which has wget and grep installed. For Debian-based OS simply run the following command to install missing packages:
apt-get update
apt-get install wget grepFirst, install brew, run in terminal:
ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"Install wget:
brew install wgetInstall grep (we need a newer version of grep, the one that comes with iOS does not work properly):
brew install grepWe need to add the bew binarties path to the PATH variable, so that we use the new binaries from brew. You can temporarly do it by executing the command below each time you start a terminal:
PATH="/usr/local/opt/grep/libexec/gnubin:$PATH"Or you can permanently do it by using this manual.
Finally, please, test that you have the required versions installed. Test wget (should be version 1.20.3 or later):
MacBook:~ user$ wget -v
GNU Wget 1.20.3 for darwin18.7.0.
-cares +digest -gpgme +https +ipv6 +iri +large-file -metalink +nls
+ntlm +opie -psl +ssl/opensslTest grep (should be version 3.3 or later):
MacBook:~ user$ grep -V
grep (GNU grep) 3.3
Packaged by Homebrew
Copyright (C) 2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
Written by Mike Haertel and others; see
<https://git.sv.gnu.org/cgit/grep.git/tree/AUTHORS>.If you want to run this script in Windows, then you need to setup a bash shell first, for example, read instructions here. I personally didn't try to do that, so it's just a tip.
Your feedback is very appreciated. If you want to see new features in this project, please, post your ideas and feature requests in the issue tracker.
This is a free project that I do in my spare time. If you find it useful, then you can support it by donating some amount of money. This will help to keep the project alive and making it better: develop new features, make new releases, fix bugs, and provide at least some minimal technical support.
You can choose any payment method you prefer:
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Having trouble? May be something has already been reported in the issue tracker. If you don't find your problem there, then, please, add your issue there.