11 Link Building Tools Every Link Builder Should Know
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Link building is an important part of off-page SEO, and you should absolutely have it as part of your marketing strategy.
With link building, you encourage other high-quality sites to add links to your content. That alone is a process — link building can be time-consuming, and you have to wait to see the long-term payoff.
On top of that, even figuring out where to get backlinks from is a process. Luckily, there are a number of link building tools to help you automate and systematize it.
11 Top Link Building Tools
Some of these tools are full-featured SEO platforms with link building tools included, while others are specifically for working on your backlink profile. Let’s get into them!
1. Ahrefs
This all-encompassing SEO tool includes a Content Explorer that can help you create a list of sites for outreach.
By running a search for your company’s mentions and filtering by those that are unlinked, you’ll determine which website owners to contact and ask for a backlink.
Otherwise, Ahrefs has lots of other SEO features, so if you’re looking for a tool that can do everything, this is among the best.
2. BuzzStream
BuzzStream is a platform with a lot of link building tools, including:
- Content promotion to earned media
- Prospect research and link monitoring
- Media list-building, plus press pitching and placements
This outreach CRM tool keeps your link-building efforts organized without the need for spreadsheets or digging through your email. You can add multiple projects to BuzzStream, and it will track convos and manage all of your campaigns.
There are also customized fields so that you can organize your contacts in whatever way makes the most sense to you.
3. BuzzSumo
If you’re looking to connect with influencers in your niche, consider using BuzzSumo. The tool helps you in two major ways:
First, you can use BuzzSumo to create link-worthy content. The Content Analyzer takes a keyword you enter and shows you the highest-ranking results. By analyzing what those sites are doing right, you can create competitive content.
Then, you can find influencer blogs that recently shared the competition’s content. Those are the sites to target with your outreach efforts. The idea is that if they shared content that’s similar to yours, they’re more likely to share yours, too.
Plus, BuzzSumo has a brand mention monitoring tool that alerts you whenever your company name is mentioned online. Results can be filtered to show only the ones without backlinks. You can then reach out to those sites to ask for a backlink.
4. HARO
Help A Reporter Out (HARO) isn’t link-building software, but it still has its place among the top link building tools.
Bloggers and journalists use HARO when they need to connect with an expert who can answer a question or provide insight. By responding to a media query, you increase your chance of a big outlet publishing your feedback and including a backlink.
P.S. There’s also Help a B2B Writer, which works similarly to HARO but is specifically for B2B experts.
5. Hunter
The Hunter email outreach tool is adept at finding contact details so that you can target the right people for backlinks. You can enter a company name or website, and Hunter will find the best person at the company to contact. Then, you can personalize an email to them and send it along.
On top of that, you can enter a name and get the person’s verified email address in return. If a large part of your outreach strategy includes cold emailing, Hunter is an excellent choice to add to your link building tools.
6. Linkody
Linkody is another full-featured link building tool with lots of ways to monitor and build your backlink profile:
- Dig into your backlink profile data
- Identify and disavow bad links
- Find out when you gain or lose links
- Analyze the link-building strategies of the competition
Notably, Linkody lets you run details reports with all types of helpful data, including social shares.
7. Moz Link Explorer
With the Moz Link Explorer, you enter the URL of a competing website and run a search. This shows you the competitor’s backlinks, along with data like Domain Authority and the anchor text used.
The best part is that this tool is free once you sign up for an account. Moz also has link building tools to find broken backlinks, discover sites linking to your competitors but not to you, and monitor if your content is gaining or losing backlinks.
8. Pitchbox
The Pitchbox link-outreach software is great if you’re in an advanced stage of link building.
After launching a campaign, you’ll be guided through the next steps to source prospects and their contact information. Filters let you sort and weed out prospects by details like Moz Domain Authority and Spam Score.
Bonus: If you have a team, you can invite multiple people to take part in an outreach campaign, and you can delegate which tasks you want each person to do.
9. Postaga
The AI-powered link–building tool Postaga lets users run outreach campaigns and track their results. It can also analyze your website to make customized suggestions for potential campaigns.
Helpfully, Postage has ready-to-use templates for different kinds of link-building campaigns, such as guest post contributions or being a guest on a podcast.
With the Opportunity Finder tool, you can figure out who to contact on a target website, then personalize an outreach template and send it along.
10. Respona
Respona falls among the dedicated link building tools on this list, but this one is specifically intended for a B2B SaaS audience.
What’s particularly helpful about Respona is that there are pre-built campaigns that you can use. For example, with the Skyscraper Technique Template, you enter articles from your competitors and you’ll get a list of the URLs that link to them.
Additionally, Respona has tools to discover niche podcasts you can pitch to, press inquiries that need responses and affiliates in your niche who you may want to partner with.
11. Semrush
Semrush is an all-in-one SEO tool, and backlink discovery and outreach are among its features.
The outreach tool lets you find prospects create an outreach campaign and then track results. Additionally, Semrush monitors your backlink profile and lets you know if any were removed.
There’s also a Backlink Gap tool that lets you add your domain and then the domains of three competitors. Your backlink profile is compared to those of the competition so you can see potential linking opportunities you’re missing out on.
Wrapping Up
When considering which link building tools are best, think about your budget vs. the time investment. Yes, the most reliable tools will also cost the most, but without them, you’d probably spend a ton of time doing all that research on your own. Or, worse, you could forgo doing it at all and miss out on backlink opportunities.
There are a lot of SEO strategies to juggle, from on-page and off-page SEO to technical considerations. With backlinks being such a strong signal to Google that your content is worthy of ranking highly, it’s definitely not something you should ignore.
You’ll also want to take a look at these free websites for getting more backlinks.