Best Mobile App Monetization Strategies in 2022 [Unique Guide]

Best Mobile App Monetization Strategies in 2022 [Unique Guide]

Congrats, you developed a new app for your business. You can increase the ROI of your application by monetizing.  In this How to Monetize Mobile Apps – The Essential Guide, we, at CodeFuel, will walk you through all you need to know to monetize your apps successfully.

How do you monetize an app?

When you create an app, besides providing a solution, your main goal is to make money from it. So where do you start? There are several methods you can use to generate income from your application, also called app monetization. 

The obvious, but the least popular, is simply charging for your app. Charging users a fee to download your application may seem a good idea,  but you must consider that over 90% of applications in the Google Play Store and the Apple Store are free. 

Other methods include getting paid for displaying ads within the application, getting sponsorships to promote other companies’ products, and in-app purchases, which we’ll explain in the next sections.

What Is App Monetization?

It is the process of generating revenue from your app. When publishers offer free apps, they generate revenue in other ways.

Developers need to generate revenue from their apps, but it can be challenging to stay afloat without a solid amount of funding. With most apps free to install, developers need to adjust their revenue model to generate cash after the user downloads the app. While coming up with your business model, you need to ensure that your app generates revenue and provides a great user experience.

The Mobile Apps Market

From banking to gaming and dating, we use mobile apps for our everyday needs on our smartphones. In recent years, the mobile apps market has increased exponentially. Here are some statistics:

Number of mobile app downloads worldwide in 2022    255B

Global consumer spending on mobile apps in 2019     $167B

News apps had the largest retention rate at 11% in the 3rd quarter of 2022

Apps that are used only once in 2023    25%

Most popular U.S mobile app monetization strategy in 2023    Advertising

Total consumer spending on mobile apps in the 3rd quarter 2022    $167 billion

Number of apps available in the Google Play Store   3.55M

Number of apps available in the Apple App Store 2.09M

What can we learn from this?

While in recent years advertising was the most popular monetization strategy, by the end of 2019 and 2020, subscription was the most popular app monetization model. Subscription and pay monthly models work for giants like Netflix and Spotify. In the next section, we will look into these points as we explore the different app monetization strategies.

How Mobile App Advertising Works

One of the most popular ways to monetize a mobile application is by adding ads to it. Mobile app advertising allows you to make money from an app without actually charging for the app. When a user downloads your app, it will present your user with ads. Every time the ads get viewed or clicked via your app, you get paid a fee.

That works because people prefer not to pay for the apps they download. No matter how cheap the app is, if there is a free alternative that works, chances are the user will prefer it. That’s why, according to Statista, 96.7% of apps in the Google Play Store in January 2021 were free.

How do you get paid? There are two metrics you should know:

  • CPC: Cost per click. It means the amount the advertiser pays for each click on their ads. 
  • CPM: Cost per mille (thousand impressions). With this system, the advertisers set the price they will pay per 1000 ad impressions. As a developer or publisher, you’ll get paid every time a CPM ad is served to your app, and a user views it.

In the Google Play Store, CPM ads and CPC ads compete against each other. Google displays the ads that earn more revenue for you.

11 App Monetization Models and Strategies

When you plan to launch an app, monetization needs to be more than an afterthought. You should plan how your app will make money from the beginning of the project. There are many app monetization strategies applicable according to the type of app and audience. Some companies focus on one approach, while others use a combination of methods. Let’s explore:

1. Freemium – In-App Purchases

This strategy allows the user to download the app for free, but some premium features are behind a paywall. The users can try the app in the basic format, but if they want multiplayer, for example, they need to purchase the premium version. This approach can increase the audience reach and the number of downloads. Gamers can buy accessories for their characters, resources, or premium packages.

Freemium

2. In-App Advertising

In-app adverts are ads that appear when a person uses the app. It seems simple, but each application implements in-app advertising in a different way. Like with every monetization strategy, it has pros and cons. On the one hand, it is easy to implement. But on the other side, too many ads can annoy the users.

How does in-app advertising work? Unlike mobile web ads, in-app advertisements appear within a mobile app. They can be banners, video ads, or display ads. Because of the large amount of time people spend on their phones, using their preferred apps, in-app advertising has a higher response among users.

What are the most common Ad Formats? 

  • Banner Ads: they are usually so small on a mobile screen that they don’t provide a lot of value for the advertiser.

Banner Ads

  • Interstitial Ads: they are often served at the end of a section or flow on a game. Also, when the app is loading.
  • Native Ads: these types of ads integrate seamlessly into the app. Therefore, they have a higher engagement rate.
  • Affiliate Ads: these generate commission from other applications by advertising them through your app.

3. Upgrade to Remove Ads

In this model, ads are served unless the user pays the subscription to remove them. Spotify and YouTube music use this model.

Upgrade to remove ads

4. Smart Installers

Ensuring your users install the app seamlessly is part of providing a great user experience. You can also earn some revenue by using a smart installer and display third-party ads. Keep the offers related to what our app offers to give more value to users.

5. Bundle Deals

Combining several utilities or extensions can be a way to give more value to your audience and increase your application’s exposure. Bundles generally attract users to perceive that they are getting a good deal, and they are more likely to buy the app.

6. Search Monetization

A search monetization strategy, such as CodeFuel, earns money by adding search capabilities to your app. Every time a user performs a search from a third-party search box, your app pulls the results from other services, and your app gets paid.

7. Pay-to-Download Apps (or Paid Apps)

In this model, developers and software publishers simply charge users for downloading the product. Publishers usually combine this model with a freemium trial period or ads. This is one of the least popular strategies because users now don’t want to pay for an app when there are many free others.

8. Affiliate marketing

Can you apply affiliate marketing for a model application? Sure, this strategy allows the app to deliver value to the end-user with coupons, season deals of other brands. This commission-based sales method involves reselling services through affiliate programs in the app.

9. Merchandise

You can use your apps as a sales channel for your own goods or services. For example, a restaurant can use an app to sell delivery orders. An online store can use a mobile app to extend its reach, offer deals and special sales.

Merchandise

10. Transaction fees

Your app can be a platform to sell other people’s goods and services. Uber and Airbnb use this model where they get a commission fee for their services. 

11. Freemium/ Subscription service

Subscriptions are very popular as a way to generate app revenue. This model still lets the user download the app for free. They get access to all the features of the app for a trial period. Once this trial is over, they need to subscribe to keep using the app. This model is used by Netflix, Amazon Prime, almost all VPNs, and many other categories.

Freemium/ Subscription service

Best Practices to Improve App Monetization

When monetizing our app, there are some tips that can improve the strategies you implement:

  • Measure user engagement – user engagement rate is one of the best metrics you can use to track your app’s chances of getting monetized. If user engagement is high, it means users are satisfied. Also, the more time the user spends in the app, the more likely they will purchase.
  • Create loyalty with perks and discounts – reward loyal customers with discounts and perks. Some users may not feel comfortable with in-app purchases, but when offered a discount, may convert them.
  • Build a community –  some apps like mobile games thrive with communities. Players are more engaged and tend to make more in-app purchases when belonging to a community. But this practice doesn’t work only with gaming apps, cooking apps,

Ways to monetize an app

 1. Search Ads

Search ads can catch your audience’s attention about your app and remind existing users to use your application. These ads appear whenever a user searches similar keywords or categories. Moreover, you can create ads in the Google Ad Network that only appear to users who already have your app.

2. Social Media Ads

Promote your app on social media through ads that link directly from sponsored Facebook posts into your app. You can do this on Facebook and Twitter.

3. Push Notifications

Catch the attention of your audience when they are not using your app. For example, have your app send notifications based on location triggers. Or send your users regular reminders with valuable and relevant content from the app.

4. Recommendation engines

Use your app with a recommendation engine to suggest related products and services that the user may want. The recommendation engine algorithm can determine exactly which offers to promote, and you profit from the clicks and referrals.

5. Promote cross-platform

You can list your application not only in Google Play and Apple Store; there are other directories and app stores outside the US that can also offer revenue. Who knows? Your app might be a success in Europe.

How to measure app success

Companies generally measure an app’s success by tracking general performance indicators like the number of mobile downloads, the number of subscriptions, the retention rate, active users, and so on. Yet, the number of downloads is not the only metric to monitor your app’s success. After all, you need to know if your app is generating revenue.

App Monetization Metrics You Should Know

Average revenue per user (ARPU)
Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
Customer Lifetime Value (CLC)
Cost per Mille
Cost per Click
Cost per Action
Cost per View
Cost per Install
Average amount of money generated per person multiplied by the total customer base
The cost of acquiring a customer. Includes labor, advertising, and other costs.
Measures the net profit generated by every customer.
In this agreement, the publisher charges advertisers a flat rate for every 1000 views of an ad.
You get paid when a user clicks or taps on an ad.
Only pays the developers if the user makes a purchase.
This is related to video ads. It pays you every time a user watches most of a video in your app.
You get paid every time a user installs an app.

Stats and Figures About App Monetization

Here are the top 5 stats and figures you must know about app monetization in 2021.

1. Distribution of free and paid Android apps in the Google Play Store 2023

Distribution of free and paid android apps

2. Mobile app popular business models

Most popular app monetization

Source: Statista

3. The biggest app stores in the world:

Google Play
3.55 million apps
Apple App Store
2.09 million apps

Average in-app spend per user, per app

Google Play
$0.47
Apple App Store
$1

Average app price

Google Play
Between $1 and $2
Apple App Store
under $1

What can we learn from them?

Free downloading is still the preferred way for users to try an app. Most apps in the app stores are free, so developers need to find other monetization options. From them, subscription models are the most successful. Even when you charge for your app, keep it low priced, as most applications are under $5 in the app stores.

What Does the Future Hold for Monetizing and Promoting Apps?

There is no doubt that the global mobile market is growing. According to Allied Market Research, it is expected to grow over $400 billion by 2026. From the report, we can identify the three biggest trends for app monetization for 2021 and beyond:

  1. Targeted advertising: personalization is one of the biggest trends of the last years. Relevant ads provide the highest engagement. Therefore, most mobile apps use AI algorithms and services that help them show relevant advertising.
  2. Subscription is becoming the new normal. Netflix, Prime Video, and gaming apps are leading the trend with the subscription model and upgrades.
  3. Virtual merchandise: In-app purchases of upgrades and packages in mobile games.

How CodeFuel Helps Companies to Monetize their Mobile Apps

CodeFuel is a complete solution that lets you leverage search, ads, shopping, and news to monetize your mobile app. By adding user intent search, you can enhance mobile applications and increase revenue.

Ready to increase your app revenue? Learn more about how CodeFuel can help.

FAQs About App Monetization

How do you monetize your mobile app?

Use the strategies mentioned in this article, like in-app purchases, freemium/premium versions, in-app advertising, and more.

How do I monetize my app with ads?

You can use affiliate ads that allow your app to generate commission from other apps by advertising them in your app. You can also display relevant native ads by using search or shopping ads engines like CodeFuel.

How do I monetize apps without ads? 

You can offer premium paid features or a paid version of your app. Subscriptions and app referral programs also allow you to make money without apps,

Page RPM: What is it, and How to Increase Your Page RPM?

Page RPM: What is it, and How to Increase Your Page RPM?

​Marketing and performance metrics tell you the number of visitors and the number of impressions, but how this translates into money? Knowing how much revenue your pages generate is critical for a publisher. The reality is that you may be looking at the wrong metric. While site traffic and other advertiser-side metrics are important, they don’t really measure if your business is growing or not. There enters Page RPM.

At CodeFuel, we are committed to increasing the revenue for publishers; therefore, we compiled this guide with an overview of Page RPM and tips to increase it.

Let’s start with the basics.

What Is Page RPM?

RPM is a metric that measures the total revenue generated by a site per every thousand page views. The acronym RPM stands for Revenue per Mille (thousand). Publishers use this metric to estimate how much revenue your site can generate. Knowing how much revenue your site generates per 1000 views helps you refine your site, optimize pages and other site features.

How to calculate page RPM

To calculate your page revenue per thousand views (RPM), you need to know two factors: your estimated earnings and the number of page views you received. Divide the earnings by the number of page views, then multiply by 1000.

Here’s the formula:

Page RPM: (Estimated earnings / Number of page views) * 1000

How do you apply the formula?

  • Example 1: Let’s say you have 2500 page views this month. You estimate the revenue from ads to be $250. Apply the formula: Page RPM: ($250 / 2500) *1000 =  $100
  • Example 2: You earned an estimated $0.20 from 25 page views. Your page RPM will be ($0.20 / 25) *1000, or $8

This metric can be helpful to compare the revenue for different channels and track page performance.

Still, how do you know if it is a good or bad RPM? 

What Is a Good Page RPM For a Website?

One of the most common questions in digital publishing forums is, “what is a good RPM for my site?”. Well, how good your page RPM is different for every company. It will depend on factors like your niche, the quality of your content and traffic, where your audience is located, or if you have seasonal peak demands.

Companies search and compare themselves to sites of the same type to arrive at a kind of benchmark. But a good RPM is always relative. Multiple factors can affect page RPM on a website.

The topic of the content you distribute, what information you give to potential readers help advertisers to define the value of your website. For instance, we researched the top 10 keyword categories in 2020 for advertisers according to Google AdWords:

Top 10 Keywords for Advertising

As a general rule, the more valuable the content, the more valuable the audience your site attracts, it affects the RPM of your pages. Other factors that can affect you are your visitor’s location and the seasonality of your demand.

Which Metrics Can Affect Page RPM?

Besides those factors, two metrics can directly impact Page RPM: 

  • Click-through rate (CTR): this rate measures the number of clicks on a specific ad per thousand ad impressions. The higher your CTR, the higher your page revenue. Why? First, you’d get direct revenue from the clicks. Also, having a higher CTR means your site is a more valuable digital real estate, which means you can get a higher price per click.
  • Cost per click (CPC): this measures how much an advertiser would pay per click on an ad that is placed on your website.

When these two metrics increase, your page becomes more valuable, so your page RPM also increases.

Types of Revenue Metrics (with formulas and examples) 

Before we go into strategies to increase your page RPM, we’ll need to explain the differences between terms that are often confused:

Ads RPM vs. Page RPM

Ad RPM, unlike Page RPM, measures the revenue of an ad per thousand impressions. To calculate it, divide the estimated revenue per number of ad impressions, then multiply by 1000.

Ad RPM =  (estimated revenue / ad impressions) * 1000

The difference with Page RPM

Ad RPM is the cost that advertisers need to pay for every 1000 ad impressions on a given website. Page RPM gives publishers the rate they are paid for ad impressions on their web pages, helping them understand page performance.

CPM 

CPM refers to the cost per 1000 ad impressions for the advertiser. To calculate the CPM, you need to know the cost of the campaign and the number of total impressions. Then, you apply the following formula:

CPM = (cost of the campaign/ number of total impressions) * 1000

Let’s check an example: The advertiser has a $5000 ad budget. The CPM campaign got 10,000 impressions on the ad. Let’s calculate the CPM:

CPM = ($5000/10,000,000) *1000 =  $0.5

eCPM

eCPM is an ad performance metric. That means it measures the revenue that ads generate on their site. eCPM stands for Effective Cost per Mille. To calculate the eCPM, divide the ad revenue per banner or campaign by thousand ad impressions.

eCPM = ad revenue per banner / 1000 ad impressions

Publishers usually use this metric to calculate how profitable is a display ad. A difference from CPM, it doesn’t measure reach, but the effective revenue for every CPM campaign and CPC too.

Why Publishers Should Keep Track of Page RPM?

Page RPM is a key performance metric that allows you to estimate how much are you earning per thousand page views.

Publishers Should Keep Track of Page RPM

Source

Why is that important? When users browse through your site, not all pages catch the same level of attention. Page RPM helps you detect what are your low earning pages and improve performance. Since RPM is very variable, one day may be high, and the next day falls. That’s why it is critical to measure regularly and use the findings to improve your strategies. The tips in the next section can help to increase Page RPM.  

 4 Tips to Increase Page RPM

To improve Page RPM, there are three main areas you need to work on: your website, the ads you show on your site, and the audience visiting your site. With that in mind, let’s see some tips you can implement to increase your RPM:  

1. Improve your website traffic

    • Use contextual targeting for getting high-intent visitors: Getting high-intent targeted traffic is key to increasing the revenue on your pages. Having enough traffic is not enough to monetize the page. Visitors need to be interested. That’s why contextual targeting — that uses keywords on a website page to display ads—is becoming more important for publishers and advertisers. The ads remain contextually relevant to the users’ queries, attracting more high intent visitors.
    • Optimize loading speed for ads and website: nobody has the patience now to wait for a site to load. According to Google, if your site loads in more than 3 seconds, you risk a 40% bounce rate. Some tips that can reduce your page load speed are optimizing your images, leverage browser caching, and enable compression. Keep in mind you need to optimize your ads too, so they don’t delay your page loading. You can use Google Page Speed Insights tool to check the load speed of your site.

 

Website Speed Test

Source

2. Improve the quality and relevance of your content

  • Focus on the quality of your content: Good quality content not only attracts visitors, but increases the time users stay on your site. Strong content that your audience can go back to influences all the other metrics. 
  • Relevant suggestions increase engagement: use a content recommendation tool to give your visitors relevant content. This not only increases their time on page but also drives more page views. Tools like CodeFuel present relevant ads that answer the user queries on your page, helping improve page RPM.

3. Improve the ads you are showing

  • Use Ad Refresh – with this feature, you serve multiple ads on the same advertising place to the same user. After a certain time on the page, scroll down, or other activity, the ad is replaced with other different ads. This attracts the viewer’s attention and can increase the clickability of your ads. 
  • Optimize ad viewability – ensuring the ads get seen is critical to increasing revenue. More when, according to eMarketer, the viewability on a desktop is only 50%. That means half of the ads pass without being noticed by the user. Improve your ad layout and placement — for example, place ads between the content — so the users notice them.  
  • Optimize ads, formats, and sizes – play with different formats, combining text and images, video, rich media, and expandable ads. Naturally, some ad formats will be more expensive per click than others, therefore, increasing your page RPM. 
  • Make sure ads are relevant to your audience – set the right targeting for your audience. Show ads that relate to the keywords they are looking for, so they’re more likely to click on it. If your site caters to different audiences, you can set different targets for different sections or topics. 

4. Give a great user experience

The audience probably didn’t come to your site to suffer non-stop ads and notifications. They came to consume your content, research, and buy your products. A great user experience makes your audience more loyal. (Don’t you find yourself going back to the same sites over and over?) Exactly, you want to be the go-to website for your users. You can measure repeated visits and bounce rates to make improvements in user experience. Loyal visitors will increase your RPM over time. The key is to make it as simple as possible for the user to achieve their goal on the page. 

Increase your Page RPM with CodeFuel

CodeFuel offers higher ROI for publishers through solutions that increase page RPM, optimizing search traffic, and engage users. The idea is to monetize the website while keeping visitors engaged and interested by providing relevant ads for searches. 

Learn how Codefuel helps publishers to engage their users and monetize their content. Contact us today. 

New Year. New GEOs to grow your business

New Year. New GEOs to grow your business

Happy New Year everyone! As we start 2021, here’s hoping for a happy, healthy, and prosperous year for all of us. We are delighted to start the year with good news and announce that we now have Bing search coverage in even more GEOs to help you serve searchers in more countries. 
Expanding your reach to additional countries is not the only benefit here, as we also now have coverage for mobile traffic in 34 countries. While in the past year due to Covid-19 we have seen an increase in desktop traffic, mobile traffic keeps growing as well.    

The list of countries now serviced across desktop and mobile are Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, Venezuela, and Vietnam.  

As a reminder, search coverage is also available in Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, connecting searchers with search results powered by Yandex across mobile and desktop. 

Our team is happy to assist you in implementing search solutions and making the most out of the available new countries. Please feel free to reach out to your Account Manager for more details.

Not working with us yet? Now is definitely the time to join!  

Top 7 tips for creating a successful search results page

Top 7 tips for creating a successful search results page

A search results page, also known as SERP, is a very important part of the user experience. A well-designed SERP offers a positive experience for your users, engages them, and keeps them coming back. In this post, we are sharing our top 7 tips to help you create the best SERP experience.

1. Make sure the results are accurate and relevant. The most important elements of a SERP are the results. A user’s search experience will be disappointing if the search results aren’t correct or applicable and will put them off from visiting the site again. User satisfaction is key.

2. Pay attention to what your users are asking you. If a user is searching for a black, second-hand Holden, it is pointless to also show them a white, brand-new Holden or a red, second-hand Toyota. If there are no black, second-hand Holden cars available, do not lead the user to a ‘no results page. Instead, explain the situation, suggest an appropriate substitute, or guide them in the direction of how to find what they are looking for. Always make sure the algorithms are up to date and working properly.

3. A good SERP is designed well. An important element of a SERP is how it looks. If it’s too cluttered or all over the place, the user will be put off. Use fonts, sizes, and colors that are easy and clear to read for all screen sizes. Your SERP should also be mobile phone and tablet-friendly, in both vertical and landscape views.

4. The main element – the search box. The search box needs to be clearly visible. Users will expect to find it towards the top center or top left of the SERP. It also needs to be big enough for users to easily click on it or touch it with their fingers. A call to action, such as ‘what do you want to look for’, or a picture of a magnifying glass is also beneficial.

5. Make things snappy. Long loading times are annoying. Make sure the SERP loading time does not exceed two seconds. However, if this isn’t possible, then a progress indicator should be implemented so that a user can see how long they may have to wait. Use cute, quirky or funny animations to divert the user’s attention while they are waiting.

6. Assist with spelling. Many users misspell search terms. Offer the user ‘corrected’ search terms so that a ‘no results’ page is avoided.

7. Offer Results Filter option. If a user is searching for ‘iPhone’, they don’t want to be shown every single iPhone on the web. A good SERP offers filters so that a user can specify their search, for example by price range, brand, color, etc. Provide filters that are relevant to the user’s search.

Wish to learn more about Search and how to monetize your digital assets using search?
Drop us a line here.

Top 10 Backlink Checker Tools, Free and Paid

Top 10 Backlink Checker Tools, Free and Paid

Getting quality backlinks to your site is a great way to raise your page rank and get more visibility in search results.

One way to get better backlinks is to check out your competition and see where they are getting their links. You can easily find out what backlinks your competition has by using on the many tools on the market.

There are both free and paid options to help you spy on your competition. Here are our picks for the top 10 backlink checker tools:

1. Majestic SEO

Majestic SEO actually offers several tools to help webmasters. Its backlink checker crawls the web itself – it doesn’t use third-party data to deliver the information. You can use it to find the backlinks pointing to your own site or to that of a competitor, including the number of referring domains and IPs.

You can also see the anchor text, how many links are set to follow, and more.

Majestic SEO is free, but it offers additional information on a paid subscription.

2. Ahrefs

Register for a free account with Ahrefs and get a complete analysis of your backlinks, including how many you have, where they come from, the anchor text used, and so on.

If you sign up for a paid account, you can get more in-depth analysis and track your progress over time. Of course, you get all the same information for a competitor’s site, and you can compare your progress to see where you can improve.

3. Open Site Explorer

Moz is another giant in the search marketing world, and its Open Site Explorer is considered one of the best tools available for backlink analysis. It gives you the number of links for a site, of course, but also information like the newest links, the page authority, the spam score, and domain authority.

Free searches only get you so much information. The paid account lets you run unlimited reports, track links over time, and more.

4. Google Search Console

The Google Search Console is part of the Webmaster Tools that the search giant provides. Under the Search Console, you can check out “Links to Your Site” under the “Search Traffic” section. There you’ll see the total links to your site, as well as your most linked content, the sites that link to you the most, and the anchor text used.

You can only use the Search Console to check out links on your own site, but it is an important resource that offers up-to-date information right from the source.

5. SEMrush

SEMrush gives you a lot of important information about any URL that you enter, including the backlinks pointing to the site. You can track multiple competitor sites and get comprehensive information about the links. You’ll need to sign up for a paid account for this though, since the site gives you a very limited number of searches for free.

6. Backlink Watch

Backlink Watch is designed specifically to spy on competitors. It gives you information like the total number of links, the anchor text used, the page rank, and more. You can also sort by links that are set to dofollow or nofollow.

Backlink Watch is totally free, and you can use it as often as you like.

7. Rank Signals

Rank Signals is another free backlink checker that provides plenty of useful information. In addition to providing the number of external links, the tool also shows how many followers the site has on social media, its Alexa traffic rank, and its page rank.

The tool is free, but you’ll need to create an account to get a complete report.

8. Open Link Profiler

Open Link Profiler works the way a lot of the other tools do. Put in a URL and get a link profile. The information offered is much more extensive though, including breakdowns of links by age, industries, context, countries, and more. You can also use the tool to analyze what links need to be removed to improve your page rank. There are numerous filters to help you sort the data the way you want.

9. Buzz Sumo

Buzz Sumo is a paid tool, but it provides comprehensive information about who is linking to your competitors, how content performs as a result of those links, and what pages are being shared most often. You can not only identify opportunities for links, but also find out what type of content attracts the most links.

Links are essentials to the success of your site. Use these tools to keep tabs on your own link profile and to spy on competitors to find link opportunities to grow your site.