About this plugin
A link exchange is easy to agree and easy to forget. Months later the partner has redesigned, the link is gone or quietly carries rel="nofollow", and nobody notices. The same happens on your own side: a relaunch drops the link you promised, and the partner finds out before you do.
Linktrade Monitor is a backlink monitor built for link exchanges, paid links and guest posts. Add the partner page once. The plugin then checks every week whether their link to you is still there, whether it turned nofollow or sponsored, whether the page went noindex, and whether your link to them is still live.
When something changes, you get one email with all changes.
Your link partners stay on your server
Most backlink monitors are online services. You open an account, enter every partner, the deal you made and the price you paid, and that list then lives on the provider’s servers. Linktrade Monitor works the other way round.
It is a plugin, and everything you enter is stored in your own WordPress database.
- No account, no API key, no subscription. Install it and start.
- One kind of outgoing request. To check a link, your server fetches the partner page you entered (and, for exchanges, your own page), the same way a browser does. Nothing else is sent anywhere.
- Reports stay with you. Emails go to the address you set, through your site’s own mail setup.
- Your deals are your business. Partners, agreements, prices and notes are visible to people who can log into your WordPress, and you decide who that is.
- In and out by CSV. Import an existing list, export everything at any time. Deleting the plugin removes its tables.
- Check it yourself. The source code is public on GitHub.
What it does
- Checks both directions. Their link to you and your link to them, in one row.
- Weekly automatic check. In small portions, so it also finishes on small hosting plans. The dashboard shows when the next check runs and when the last one finished.
- Email when something changes. One summary per check: link removed, now nofollow, now sponsored, page now noindex, your own link missing, link back again.
- Needs your attention. The dashboard lists what to act on, grouped by what to do: partner removed the link, your link is missing, link devalued, agreement ending, page could not be checked.
- History. Every check and every status change is recorded, so you can say since when a link has been gone.
- Check now. A button per link, and a new check whenever you change an address.
- Finds your own links. Enter the partner page and the plugin searches your published posts and pages for links to that domain.
- Message to the partner. A ready-to-copy text that states what was found and since when. Nothing is sent automatically.
- Keeps the agreement. Store the agreed anchor text and whether a followed link was promised. You are told when the page no longer matches.
- Shows who you already link to. One search over your whole site lists the outside domains, ready to be turned into monitored partners.
- Record for a complaint. Dates, status code and the last anchor seen, ready to copy when a paid link has vanished.
- Counter in the menu and a dashboard widget, so you see open issues without opening the plugin.
- Large lists. Pages of 50, sortable columns, search, and actions for several links at once.
- Command line. wp linktrade check and wp linktrade status for sites with a real cron job.
- Privacy tools. Partner contact addresses are covered by the WordPress export and erase requests.
- No false alarms. A page that blocks automated requests, times out or answers with a server error is reported as “not verifiable”, never as “link removed”.
- Fairness Score for exchanges, expiry reminders for paid and time-limited links, Domain Rating fields, notes, CSV import and export.
- Site Health entry. WordPress tells you if the automatic check cannot run.
What it detects
- Link removed, or pointing to a different page of your site
- rel="nofollow", rel="sponsored", rel="ugc"
- Page-wide noindex, nofollow and none in the robots meta tag, the googlebot meta tag and the X-Robots-Tag header
- Redirected partner pages, shown with the address they lead to
- Pages that only build their content with JavaScript, reported as “not verifiable” instead of “removed”
- Pages that cannot be read (bot protection, rate limits, server errors), shown separately
Who it is for
- Website owners and bloggers who exchange links
- SEOs who buy links or place guest posts and want to know they are still there
- Agencies that keep link agreements for a site
Languages
English and German. The plugin follows the language of your WordPress site.
Pro version
The free plugin is complete for one website. Linktrade Monitor Pro is for people who manage several sites or buy links regularly:
- Daily or hourly checks and “check all now”
- Projects: links of several websites in one installation
- Partners with several deals, mixed packages
- Cost and value overview for paid links
- Anchor text distribution, tags
Linktrade Monitor Pro