Link building is an essential part of search engine optimization (SEO). Using the right tools can structure your backlink strategy, helping you identify quality link opportunities, improve outreach processes, build your site’s credibility, and more.
Link-building strategies and SEO tools have significantly changed over the years. While older automated tools like KontentMachine or GSA’s Search Engine Ranker focused on automatically placing content, modern tools prioritize manual research and outreach. Today, the tools used for link-building often resemble those used for public relations (PR), but there are still specific link-building tools that remain indispensable.
By considering the best link-building tools available, you can enhance your SEO efforts and ensure your strategy is not only effective but also up-to-date.
With all that being said, let’s take a look at the best 8 tools that money can buy!
Respona
Respona provides a comprehensive suite of outreach tools in one package, making automatic every aspect of link building from prospecting to personalization. The all-time favorite features include:
- Three-mode search engine: Google Search, backlinks (using Moz data), and podcasts (powered by ListenNotes).
- Real-time email finder and verifier: to get accurate contact information.
- AI-powered personalization: for unique personalizations for each opportunity, beyond simple variables like “first_name.”
- Unified inbox: to access all your email accounts into one place.
- In-depth analytics: for detailed insights into your campaigns.
These features make Respona an excellent tool for link-building outreach, even for beginners. It includes campaign templates and tutorial videos for each strategy, so you can effectively manage your link-building with just a few clicks.
Ahrefs
It doesn’t matter if you are already an expert or just have started, there is no doubt that at least once you’ve heard of Ahrefs.
Ahrefs is a great link-building tool, designed for professionals. It has the world’s largest index of live backlinks, making it incredibly powerful. Ahrefsbot crawls and updates data on about 420 million pages every 24 hours, making it the third most active web crawler after Googlebot and Bingbot. This extensive data collection provides comprehensive insights unmatched by any other link-building software. Here are some of Ahrefs’ top features:
- Mention monitoring: it allows you to set up alerts for whenever your brand or website is mentioned online. You can then reach out to those websites and ask for a link, which is an easy way to build links.
- Competitor analysis: Ahrefs makes it simple to compare your backlink profile with any competitor’s (thanks to its extensive backlink index). You can see how you measure up, identify what you need to do to outrank competitors, and even reverse engineer their link-building strategies. By contacting websites that link to your competitors, you can get them to link to you as well, making your link-building efforts more efficient.
- Link intersect report: one of the easiest ways to build links is by reaching out to sites that link to your competitors. The Ahrefs Link Intersect tool highlights these sites for you. You can also apply filters to target sites that link to multiple competitors or have a specific Domain Rating, helping you focus on the most promising link opportunities.
Ahrefs isn’t just a link-building tool; it’s an all-in-one SEO tool with a range of features. Despite its advanced capabilities, it remains user-friendly, even for beginners.
Semrush
Before Ahrefs, there was Semrush, another all-in-one SEO tool with excellent link-building features. Semrush stands out in data analysis, offering powerful reports that provide deep insights into your link-building campaigns.
If you’re looking for a comprehensive link-building tool, Semrush can manage your entire campaign from start to finish. It helps you find opportunities, analyze and review them, and reach out to website owners. Here are key link-building features from Semrush:
- Competitor backlink analysis: Semrush’s backlink analysis tools are incredibly comprehensive. You can analyze and research any competitor, gaining a wealth of information to understand your competition better.
- Outreach link-building tool: Semrush allows you to conduct outreach directly within the tool. This feature is great because you can analyze data and immediately start an outreach campaign. By connecting your Gmail or Google Workspace account to Semrush, you can send outreach emails directly from the tool and even use their link-building templates.
- Backlink gap analysis: similar to the Ahrefs Link Intersect tool, it has unique features. You can add your top five competitors and review the gap analysis report to find quality link opportunities, then export the data to your outreach campaign to secure those links. If you’re unsure who your SEO competitors are, Semrush’s competitor auto-suggest feature compares your content to similar sites, helping you identify relevant competitors. This ensures you find niche-relevant link gaps in your backlink profile.
One standout aspect of Semrush’s backlink gap analysis is its unique filters. You can filter reports by:
- Best: websites that link to all your competitors but not you
- Weak: websites that link to you less than competitors
- Strong: websites that link only to you and not your competitors
- Shared: websites that link to both you and your competitors
- Unique: websites that link only to one other site (competitor or yours)
These filters help you build a mixture of unique and shared links, creating a stronger and more diversified backlink profile.
Semrush is an excellent tool to add to your link-building arsenal, with a vast array of other powerful SEO features available.
Link Whisper
Link Whisper is considered as the best tool for internal link building, and for a good reason. It provides intelligent link suggestions so you never miss an opportunity for internal linking. The key features are:
- Automated internal linking: you set the rules, and Link Whisper builds the internal links automatically, helping you diversify anchor text and scale the number of internal links on your site in minutes.
- Internal linking report: shows which pages on your site have few or no internal links, allowing you to easily add new internal links with a couple of clicks. This ensures you never have pages that are left behind and helps balance your internal link structure, ensuring your most important pages have proper internal links.
Link Whisper is a must-have tool for anyone serious about improving their SEO through internal linking.
Ontolo
Ontolo is a powerful link prospecting tool designed to help you find top link-building opportunities quickly. It offers a range of unique features that are valuable for any link-building team. Let’s take a look at some key features:
- 80+ prospecting methods: Ontolo uses a variety of strategies to find link-building opportunities. You can customize these methods for more targeted searches and develop your own strategy based on what works best.
- Data visualization: Ontolo is good at data analysis, helping you quickly identify the most promising prospects. This ensures you focus your efforts on prospects that are more likely to convert, saving you time and resources.
Ontolo is unmatched in finding and highlighting the right link opportunities, making it easy to load them into your outreach campaign. If you need to revitalize the prospecting side of your link-building efforts, Ontolo is the tool to check out.
LinksThatRank
Want to outsource your link building to a reliable service? LinksThatRank builds high-quality backlinks you can be proud to show off. Whether you need first-rate link building on demand or complete white-label services, LinksThatRank has you covered. Check out why LinksThatRank stands out:
- 23-point quality control: it ensures every link you receive is top quality.
- Free advanced anchor text selection: that is included with every link.
- 1,000 words of content: that is provided with each link by default.
- Natural linking strategy: strategic internal and external links are placed within the content.
- Blacklist of toxic backlinks: to maintain an internal list of harmful backlinks and domains.
- Custom link building tool: developed their own tool to enhance their services.
LinksThatRank also offers discounted monthly packages for site owners and agency discounts for SEO agencies. Simply choose the links you need, tell them your target keyword, and they handle the rest. Outsourcing your link-building has never been easier.
SE Ranking
The SEO Backlink Checker from SE Ranking offers both a high-level overview and detailed insights into a website’s backlink profile. It helps you understand who is linking to your top competitors and where backlinks in your niche are coming from. Here are some key features:
- Domain, subdomain, and URL analysis: simply paste the URL into the search box and click ‘Find backlink’ to get started.
- Key metrics overview: instantly view Domain Trust and Page Trust scores, the total number of backlinks and referring domains, and the number of referring domains from .edu and .gov TLDs.
- Backlink attributes: see the breakdown of dofollow and nofollow backlinks.
This information helps you indicate the strength of a domain’s backlink profile. For example, you can identify guest posting opportunities by searching for sites with “Write for Us” pages. Before reaching out, use SE Ranking to assess the potential value of these links and determine whether they are worth pursuing.
Pitchbox
Pitchbox is the best tool for outreach. After trying hundreds of link-building tools, none compare to Pitchbox. If you want to build links on a large scale, this is the tool for you.
Pitchbox has many unique features that save you time and money. It can help you:
- Quickly find niche-relevant bloggers, publishers, and influencers.
- Build fully customizable and personalized link outreach campaigns.
- Create an automated link-building process to predict how many backlinks you’ll get.
- Make data-driven decisions by showing your efficiency at each stage of the link-building process.
The biggest benefit? Pitchbox automates many tasks that you would normally need to hire staff to do.
Almost every major link-building service and SEO agency uses Pitchbox. No other outreach tool comes close.
Bonus
Link building doesn’t have to be expensive. Especially when you are not ready to spend a fortune… yet. These are the best free link-building tools to use.
1. Hunter.io
To improve your chances of successful outreach, it’s important to contact the right person. Avoid sending emails to generic addresses like contact@exampledomain.com, as this often leads to rejections or no responses at all. That’s where Hunter.io comes in.
Hunter.io is a tool for finding email addresses. Unlike other tools, it uses advanced verification to ensure accuracy. Simply enter the website domain you want to contact, and Hunter.io will find all related email addresses for you, even showing the sources it used. This makes your link-building efforts easier and more efficient.
2. Scraper
Scraper can save you hours when finding prospects for link-building campaigns. This powerful Chrome extension lets you extract almost any information from any webpage with just a few clicks.
One great use of Scraper is finding quality link-building prospects. For example, if you want to connect with other blog owners, you can find a relevant blog post with lots of comments. Many of these comments often link back to personal or business websites.
Highlight a link, right-click, and select “scrape similar” to automatically select all the links in the comment section. Export them to a Google Sheet, and you have a list of potential outreach targets.
3. HARO
Looking to build high-quality links from major news sites? HARO (Help a Reporter Out) is an excellent option.
Here’s how it works:
- Sign up as a “source.”
- Add your areas of expertise.
- Journalists will post questions or requests for comments on the platform.
- Respond to their questions or provide comments.
- If they use your response, they will link to your website.
HARO is a simple, yet effective way to get high-authority backlinks from well-known news sites.
Be aware
So there are many link-building tools available, but not all are worth using. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Avoid black-hat link-building tools: such tools use risky or outdated methods to get more links. While they might seem attractive because they’re easy to use, they can cause big problems later. You might see short-term gains, but in the long run, you could face severe Google penalties. Recovering from a Google penalty is can be hard and is not worth the risk.
- Avoid tools that don’t follow Google’s good practices: the tricky moment is that all link building goes against Google’s policies. However, some tools go even further by using unethical methods. These tools are, at best, questionable and, at worst, borderline illegal. Don’t use sketchy tools. Stick to well-known tools with teams that understand Google’s guidelines and policies. This will help you stay out of trouble.
Closing words
In the fast-changing world of SEO, link-building is still key to increasing site visibility and authority. The tools we’ve discussed offer many features, such as analyzing backlinks, researching competitors, verifying emails, and improving outreach.
Whether you’re working alone, part of an in-house SEO team, or in an agency, these tools can meet different needs and budgets. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses.
As you work on your link-building in 2024, the tools you choose will greatly impact how efficient and successful your campaigns are. SEO tools are always progressing, so staying updated on the latest changes will help keep your link-building efforts effective.
