Search engine optimization (SEO) efforts are never-ending. As soon as you’ve mastered one tweak, Google rolls out new ones. Then you have to unlearn all the SEO hacks you’ve become accustomed to and start all over again.
Every blogger and website owner dreads this nightmare.
What if I told you there’s a long-term solution to improve your SEO ranking?
Although there are tons of SEO strategies available, link building is one of the most effective ways to improve your rankings. However, many people have unfounded concerns that link building is challenging, expensive, and time-consuming. This is far from the truth.
When you have access to the right tools, link building is straightforward and speedy.
In this article, I’ve put together a list of the best link building tools. The list cuts across premium and freemium tools that can help you build backlinks faster and more efficiently.
Without further ado, let’s get to it.
Why Does Link Building Matter?
Link building gives credibility to your site as it serves as a third party, indicating the authoritative strength of your domain. Google’s #1 priority is to satisfy users with the most relevant results.
So, the higher the quality of your backlinks, the better your chances of ranking high in SERPs.
According to a survey by Backlinko, websites with a higher domain rating score from tools such as Ahrefs and Semrush rank better on the first page of Google results. These domain rating scores are directly proportional to the number of backlinks you have pointing to your website.
In essence, good-quality links outweigh bad ones. Therefore, to improve your ranking, instead of prioritizing the number of backlinks and referring domains, focus on quality.
The Best Tools for Link Building
Now, let’s explore some of the best free link building tools for SEO, plus several premium ones. Check out my comprehensive list below.
Ahrefs
Today, Ahrefs is one of the top link building tools on the market. Marketers from the world’s leading companies use the tool to track their ranking progress. It’s simply a must-have tool for link builders.
Ahrefs gives you access to your competitors’ links. You can see where they get their links, how many backlinks each site has, and how many pages link back to them.
All this data makes it easy to identify potential link building opportunities and which ones aren’t worth pursuing.
The tool also lets you access keyword rankings for each site. This information can be used to determine the sites with the highest rank for target keywords and the number of backlinks they have from other sites in your niche.
Backlinks and content play crucial roles in your SEO performance. With Ahrefs’ Content Explorer, you get to see how often sites link to your content. The Link Explorer report, as part of Ahrefs’ Site Audit feature, includes finding broken internal and outgoing links and identifying URLs not crawled by Site Audit.
The data makes it easy to highlight top-performing content. It also provides insight into the type of content other sites in your niche are publishing.
Ahrefs premium starter plan goes for $99/month. It comes with features like an SEO dashboard, site explorer, keywords explorer, and rank tracker.
Uncover the differences between Ahrefs and SpyFu by diving into my comparison article.
Semrush
Semrush is another blogging tool for link building. It helps you identify your competitors and their backlinks, making it easier to enhance your own backlink profile.
This SEO tool can build your website’s backlinks and give you access to the sites that link to your competitors.
Semrush also comes with a backlink checker that assists in locating all the sites with links to your competitors’ websites. The feature makes it easy to determine sites linking to your competitors and the number of links they have. You can also see the link type (do-follow or no-follow) and where that link is placed on the page.
Link building and organic research go hand-in-hand. With this tool, you can find out which keywords your competitors are ranking for and how well they’re doing with them. You can also see which sites rank on the first page of Google for those exact keywords and the number of backlinks on each site.
Without proper traffic analytics, your link building efforts are futile. With Semrush’s traffic analysis tool, you can conduct competitive research. It provides an estimate of a website’s mobile and desktop traffic as well as how the audience engages with the site.
Semrush offers two free plans, namely a simple free plan and a free trial account. As for the other option, after a 7-day free trial with all premium features included, you can opt for any of the paid plans available.
Semrush’s premium starter plan goes for $129.95/month. It gives you access to five projects, 500 keywords to track, and 10,000 results per report. You also get keyword, domain, and backlink analytics.
In my full Semrush review, you’ll discover all the secrets of this amazing tool.
PitchBox
Do you want a seamless link building experience? PitchBox is another excellent link building tool for SEOs and content marketers.
It helps you build and manage link building outreach campaigns, find link opportunities, and analyze competitors’ backlink data. The best part? Anyone can find their way around the tool.
PitchBox has a blogger outreach feature that allows you to search for relevant bloggers and send them personalized pitches. You can also create a list of influencers to keep track of who you’ve approached and who hasn’t responded yet.
One of the fundamental challenges link builders face is finding quality resources for successful link building outreach.
However, PitchBox has a resource page listing various tools and websites you can deploy for your link building campaigns. You’ll find everything from email templates to research tools on link building devices.
Pitchbox’s reports & analytics let you track the progress of your outreach. It provides in-depth insight into your outreach campaign performance and progression.
With the feature, you can easily identify what works and which of the implemented campaigns still needs improvement. It’s ROI-focused for link builders.
PitchBox has no free trial plan, however, the premium plan starts at $195/month.
Bouncer
Bouncer is a valuable email verification tool designed to validate your outreach list, ensuring that your emails reach the recipients without being blocked or detected as spam.
Thanks to this software, you can verify the receivers without having to test the email lists on your own. The Email Checker uses advanced technology and AI algorithms to ensure that your emails don’t bounce back, providing you with the most accurate results.
Apart from that, Bouncer allows you to test the emails for potential toxicity by identifying widely circulated, compromised, or spam trap emails. With the help of this tool, you can keep your email deliverability at a good rate and maintain your sending reputation.
Help a B2B Writer
Help a B2B Writer is a specialized platform for content marketers seeking connections with industry experts, catering specifically to B2B enterprises. Users can sign up as sources, receiving daily emails featuring relevant source requests in their expertise categories. The platform enables direct communication with journalists, presents opportunities from prominent brands, and is entirely free for sources.
Operating through email correspondence streamlines the workflow, and notable sources on the platform include WordPress, Fiverr, and HubSpot.
While using the service, there’s no assurance of receiving a backlink, as it depends on each publication’s policies. However, Help a B2B Writer is recognized as a valuable link building tool that facilitates ethical link building opportunities.
BuzzStream
BuzzStream is a comprehensive link building tool that includes a host of features to streamline link management efforts. It acts as a complete solution for both digital PR and link building. Some of this tool’s best features are fast prospect research and contact management.
In addition to its key features, BuzzStream provides integration with popular tools like Moz and Ahrefs for streamlined prospect research. It also offers email outreach management, personalized templates, and automated follow-ups to help optimize your outreach efforts. Furthermore, BuzzStream allows team collaboration, tracking your link growth, and detailed reporting to measure the success of your campaigns.
Linkvalidator.io
Linkvalidator.io is a user-friendly link building tool that streamlines the process of tracking and validating links. It simplifies the task by allowing you to input your URLs effortlessly, automatically initiating the tracking process.
This comprehensive tool offers all-in-one solutions for link tracking and building, ensuring efficiency in managing your efforts. With features such as backlink validation and anchor text checks, Linkvalidator.io ensures the quality and effectiveness of your links. Additionally, users can opt to receive email notifications regarding their link building projects. This tool has a freemium version as well as three affordable pricing plans catering to everyone’s needs.
Overall, Linkvalidator.io proves to be a valuable asset for optimizing and managing your link building endeavors.
Hunter
Hunter is a fantastic outreach tool to help you identify link building opportunities on your site and across the web.
An effective link building strategy starts with a thorough understanding of your target sites. Thanks to its domain search feature, this tool allows you to find email addresses associated with any website.
Additionally, Hunter’s email finder and its verifier allow you to search for a specific domain and find contact details for the owner, Website Administrator, and Webmaster.
With Hunter’s bulk tasks, you can effortlessly search for multiple websites and perform the same task over and over again.
The tool is handy for finding contact information for all sites on a competitor’s list and checking backlinks from a group of pages to send outreach emails to.
Hunter comes with a built-in feature for managing campaigns that allows you to create lists of targets and tasks that need to be completed, like finding contact information or performing backlink analysis.
Hunter.io’s free plan allows you to perform up to 25 searches and 50 verifications per month. You can also have one email account with 500 recipients per campaign.
If this isn’t enough for you, Hunter’s starter premium plan goes for $49/month. It offers 500 searches and 1,000 verifications per month. You can also add up to five email accounts with 2,500 recipients per campaign.
Other notable features in the starter premium plan are attachments and images in emails and link tracking.
Explore how digital PR link building can drive exponential growth and visibility for your business.
Linkody
Linkody simplifies the link building process and saves time. It’s link building software that allows you to find sites related to your niche and reach out to them for backlinks.
This feature allows you to check the quality of every link to your site and determine whether they’re do-follow.
You can also use this tool to see the number of referring domains that link to your website, as well as their page and domain authority.
This feature enables you to compare your website with your competitors’ sites. You get access to their number of backlinks, social shares, and referring domains each site has to get a clearer picture of why they’re performing better than yours.
Linkody has a free one-month trial, which is the best way to get started with the tool. It lets you use every tool and feature and see how it works.
However, the plan has CSV/PDF export limitations. Once the free trial is over, you can easily opt for one of Linkody’s premium plans.
Linkody’s Webmaster Premium plan goes for $13.90 per month. It lets you monitor two domains and 500 links. Only one user is allowed on this plan.
Connectively (formerly HARO)
HARO is an acronym for “Help a Reporter Out.” Today, the website was revamped and has a new name, Connectively. When used correctly, this is the perfect platform to build links and create awareness of your brand’s PR efforts, irrespective of your industry.
It helps journalists and other people working in the media feel connected by helping them gather feedback, engage credible expert sources, and collect quotes for new content.
Here, you either register as a source or an inquiring journalist. When that’s done, you need to keep an eye on your inbox if you are a source. Similarly, you need to send a request if you are seeking a source or quote about a particular subject.
Even though HARO is now Connectively, HARO link building is still a valid and widely used term. While HARO link building might have been helping to shape the SEO industry for a couple of years, getting results on the platform requires hard work. It’s difficult to rely on the platform when you have hundreds of queries daily, most often from people who may not be a great fit for your business.
Quality should always trump numbers. Therefore, filtering through links and sources worth pursuing is the key to making the most of Connectively. However, it takes time and diligence to start building links.
It’s free to enjoy Connectively’s basic features. However, the premium plan, which starts at $19 per month, gives you access to features like keyword alerts. This feature helps you filter Connectively results for quality link building outreach.
NeverBounce
Sending personalized and thoughtful pitches should never take a back seat in your link building outreach. Naturally, after you’ve spent time crafting pitches and brainstorming brilliant content ideas, your outreach must get to the right people.
NeverBounce is an email verification tool that helps you validate the authenticity of a prospect’s email address before sending personalized pitches. It can serve as the crowning jewel of your link building by making sure that your carefully crafted pitches don’t bounce.
Over 125,000 users trust NeverBounce for real-time email verification and email cleaning services. One of the tool’s most sought-after features is the 80+ integrations, which include Mailchimp, Zapier, and Salesforce.
It also makes it straightforward for link builders to work with Google Sheets. If you are verifying up to 1,000,000 email addresses, NeverBounce charges $0.003 per verification.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts is the right tool for getting inspiration for your link building campaign. It lets you strategically filter relevant search terms and also receive alerts directly to your email inbox.
Whenever you are researching link building prospects, the search engine you’re using bombards you with millions of results. With Google Alerts, you can easily zero in on the most valuable results, consequently saving you time and adding impact to your link building outreach.
Filter options like sources, languages, and regions help you get the specific results desired. What’s more, you get to decide how often you receive alerts and the email address where these notifications are received.
The best part is that it’s completely free to use Google Alerts for all types of link building campaigns.
Google Advanced Search Operators
Google Advanced Search Operators are effective for tailoring results on the search engine. They are used to extend the capabilities of standard text searches.
Google Advanced Search Operators are special commands and characters that narrow down your search on the search engine to results that have SEO in their page titles. When done right, your searches are much more efficient and accurate.
In a link building process, Google Advanced Search Operators are great for searching for branded terms, editorial contact information, and guest post opportunities.
Below are some of the most fruitful ways to use the search operators listed above for your link research and link building efforts.
Guest post opportunities
Guest posting should never be an afterthought in your link building strategy. It’s an effective way to get backlinks and more traffic to your website.
Guest posting on a notable publication that lets you add links to redirect to your site is a surefire way to improve your link building campaign.
So, how do you find guest post opportunities with search operators for your link building outreach?There are a couple of ways to unearth guest opportunities. If your niche is SEO, use this command SEO intitle:”write for us” inurl:”write-for us”
You will get tons of guest post opportunities in the SEO niche.
You can also use the operator for multiple keywords.
Additionally, if you want to know for sure if a publication accepts guest posts, you can try entering this command site incomediary.com (“this is a guest post”) | (“this is a guest contribution”)
Pro tips: Don’t limit your search to “write for us”; you can also explore different ideas like:
- “contribute to”
- “become a contributor”
- “guest post guidelines”
- “inurl:guest post”
- “inurl:guest-contributor-guidelines”
Want to know if link swaps still work? Check out my blog post on backlinks exchange.
Access to prospects’ social profiles
If you are going to reach out to link prospects, search operators can give you access to their social profiles. For this to be effective, you need to know their names.
There are a couple of ways to find your prospects’ names. You could check the About Us page or simply search for it.
Here, we used Inbound Blogging as an example.
Now that we have the name, we’ve entered this command Nikola Baldikov InBound Blogging (site:twitter.com | site:facebook.com | site:linkedin.com)
Discover PR opportunities by finding your competitors’ mentions
Competitive link analysis should be a cornerstone of your link building strategy. Get started by identifying your competitors and analyzing their link profiles with the best SEO link building tools. Chances are you already know who they are. But if you don’t, we’ve got you covered.
There’s a search operator command for sites that are related to yours. All you need to do is enter this command related:then your url.
Now we have a list of competitors, including MOZ and SEObook. The next step is finding sites that have mentioned them.
The command gives you an overview of their mentions of your competitors. So, with this information, the next phase is finding an opportunity. Reach out, connect with them, and they might just write about you.
Keep in mind that patience is key. This tactic is a long game, but the results can really pay off.
Ahrefs SEO Toolbar
Source: Ahrefs
Ahrefs SEO Toolbar is a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox that provides valuable SEO data about your pages. It’s a free tool that offers succinct on-page SEO reports.
The SEO toolbar also has an internal and dead link highlighter. While plenty of link building tools offer such features, it’s hard to find tools like Ahrefs SEO that highlight both dead and internal links together.
Those hunting for resource page opportunities would love this unique combo because it provides valuable prospects for your outreach.
This extension displays additional valuable data for those already on the Ahrefs premium plan. Ahrefs’ starter premium plan goes for $99 per month.
Curious about smarter ways to build internal links? Explore my detailed Link Whisper review article.
Conclusion
Granted, link building can be a tedious and time-consuming process. You can’t afford to make any errors in your strategy because it could cost you dearly.
However, with these useful link building tools on the list above, you can easily spot and fix your link building flaws as these tools give you access to your competitors’ keywords and backlinks.
Not only that, they enable you to monitor your link building campaign’s progress and pinpoint exactly where to make improvements, so you can get the results you desire.
Want to elevate your backlink creation strategies? Check out my blog post on how to outsource link building.
You might also like:
Article by
Nikola Baldikov