You are about to discover the top ten link-building tools that are considered the best in their category.
What I learned during the time I’ve been in this industry is that you don’t need many link-building tools. You only need a small number of the top-performing tools.
So without wasting time, here are the 10 best link-building tools that you need for your link-building strategy
1. Semrush
Semrush is my go-to tool for all things SEO, including link building. What makes Semrush unique is the quality of its backlinks data.
Apart from links, Semrush also has a TON of other features like a solid Keyword research tool, On-page SEO checker, Position tracking, and Content optimization tool.
Their interface is clean and easy to navigate through all their tools.
Pricing: $119.95-$449.95 per month
My favorite feature is: Link Building Tool
Semrush comes with a built-in outreach tool. With Semrush’s in-built outreach feature, you can find prospects, prepare your outreach sequence, and track your campaigns in minutes.
It also keeps a tab on your backlinks and notifies you if they’re removed. Monitoring domains.
If you want to learn more about other features of Semrush, check out my Semrush guide.
Finally, If you can only invest in one link-building tool, it should be Semrush.
2. Respona
Respona is a powerful link-building outreach platform that offers a full suite of features to streamline your outreach campaigns and save you time.
One of the standout features of Respona is the wide range of pre-built campaigns available to choose from. These campaigns provide templates for various link-building strategies, making it easy to get started. Some of my favorite campaign templates include:
- Skyscraper Technique: Input competitor articles, and Respona provides you with a list of URLs linking to them.
- Product Review: Input competitor domains and Respona generates a list of blogs that recently reviewed them.
- Guest Post: Input topics and Respona provides a list of websites accepting guest posts.
- Podcast Outreach: Input a person in your industry, and Respona gives you a comprehensive list of podcasts they’ve been featured on.
- Resource Pages: Input keywords, and Respona presents you with top resource listicles on those topics.
Once you’ve chosen a campaign template, Respona guides you through the entire outreach process. It helps you find high-quality opportunities, obtain contact information, and even assists with sending personalized emails.
Find Opportunities from this Template
Pricing: Respona offers affordable pricing plans ranging from $99 to $399 per month, making it accessible for both agencies and in-house teams.
Simplified Outreach
Respona simplifies the entire outreach process, allowing you to focus on building relationships and acquiring high-quality backlinks. With its user-friendly interface and automation features,
Respona saves you time while running outreach campaigns at scale.
3. Pitchbox
Pitchbox is an outreach platform built specifically for advanced link builders. It offers a comprehensive solution to streamline your outreach campaigns and maximize your link-building efforts.
Pitchbox Outreach Platform
Once you initiate a campaign using Pitchbox, the platform guides you through each step of the process, starting from finding prospects to obtaining their contact information.
Steps to Find Prospects
Pitchbox simplifies the task of prospecting by providing intuitive tools and functionalities. You can easily identify potential prospects relevant to your niche or industry and gather their contact details for outreach.
Collaborative Campaigns
One standout feature of Pitchbox is its ability to facilitate collaboration among team members. Multiple individuals can actively participate in the same campaign, each assigned with specific responsibilities.
For instance, one team member can focus solely on composing emails, while another can specialize in personalizing them, ensuring efficient and targeted outreach.
Pitchbox Pricing
Pitchbox offers flexible pricing plans ranging from $550 to $1500 per month, with an annual commitment option.
The pricing structure caters to different business sizes and requirements, allowing you to choose the plan that best suits your needs.
My Favorite Feature: Metrics Filters
A noteworthy feature of Pitchbox is the Metrics Filters. This functionality empowers you to refine your search results based on specific quality metrics.
By utilizing metrics such as Majestic Citation Flow, Trust Flow, Page Authority, and Domain Authority from Moz, you can easily identify high-quality prospects that align with your link-building goals.
Pitchbox combines powerful outreach capabilities with collaborative features and advanced metrics filtering, making it an indispensable tool for serious link builders.
With its comprehensive functionality and user-friendly interface, Pitchbox enables you to optimize your outreach efforts and achieve impressive results in your link-building endeavors.
4. Buzzstream
BuzzStream is an outreach CRM that helps you stay organized with link building.
BuzzStream CRM
Instead of spreadsheets and random Gmail inboxes, you can use BuzzStream to track conversations and manage campaigns across multiple projects.
Arguably the best feature of the entire platform is the Buzzmarker Chrome extension.
It automatically scans the site you’re on for any email address or contact page.
Buzzmarker Chrome Extension
Pricing: $24-$999 per month
My Favorite Feature: Custom Fields
I view custom fields as the bread and butter of BuzzStream. They let you organize and customize campaigns in any way you want.
My favorite custom field is the Relationship Stage. It means: “What is our current status with that person?”
Relationship Stage
BuzzStream has many other cool features I didn’t have room to cover here. But if you want to learn more, I recommend reading my BuzzStream review.
5. Hunter
After trying over 25 different tools for finding contact info, I can confidently say that Hunter.io is one of the best. It’s lightning-fast, and the contact info you get from it is insanely accurate.
Find contact emails fast
That’s because Hunter doesn’t just scrape a single website for email addresses. Instead, it pulls data from several different sources.
Hunter scrapes multiple sites
Pricing: Free-$399 per month
My Favorite Feature: Email Verification
Hunter automatically verifies each email that it gives you. Verifies all emails. That way, you know the inbox is still active BEFORE you hit “send.” (You can also bulk upload email addresses for verification.)
When it comes to finding email addresses for outreach, it’s hard to beat Hunter’s accuracy.
6. Buzzsumo
Even though BuzzSumo is designed for content marketing, many SEO pros use it too.
Here’s how:
First, BuzzSumo makes it easy to create content that people WANT to link to. BuzzSumo eases content analysis
Second, you can use BuzzSumo to find influencers in your niche that recently shared your competitor’s content:
(Which means they’re likely to share your stuff… and link to it.)
Pricing: $119-$999 per month.
My Favorite Feature: Brand Mentions
Think of Buzzsumo’s “Brand Mentions” as Google Alerts on steroids.
You can create a brand alert for you and your competitors. Create brand alert
And it’ll show you new blogs and news articles that mention your brand. See results mentioning your brand
You can also filter mentions without links:
Buzzsumo offers a ton of other features than what I covered here. If you’re looking to learn more, I suggest reading my guide to Buzzsumo.
Sure, BuzzSumo isn’t designed for link building. But as you just saw, you can still use it to get white-hat links to your site. Recommended
7. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a link-building software designed for SEO pros. Much like Semrush, it also has a lot of features that have nothing to do with link building, like:
- Keyword research tool
- Content Explorer (similar to BuzzSumo)
- Rank tracking
- Technical SEO site audit
If you’re having a hard time deciding between Ahrefs and Semrush, check out my detailed comparison guide.
Pricing: $99-$999 per month
My Favorite Feature: Content Explorer
Ahrefs’ Content Explorer is a mini search engine for link builders.
In my experience, a friendly “can you please link to us?” email can turn those unlinked brand mentions into legit backlinks:
The bottom line
Ahrefs is the go-to SEO tool for pros. It’s a solid alternative to Semrush if you don’t mind the more complicated interface.
8. Moz Link Explorer
Moz Link Explorer, a flagship feature of Moz Pro, offers powerful capabilities for analyzing backlinks. Let’s take a closer look at how it works.
To begin, simply input a competitor’s domain or specific URL into the tool: Enter your URL
Instantly, you gain access to a comprehensive list of their backlinks: View all backlinks
In addition, Moz Link Explorer provides essential link metrics such as the site’s Domain Authority: Get link metrics
Pricing: Ranging from $99 to $599 per month, depending on the subscription tier.
My Favorite Feature: Anchor Text Analysis
One standout feature of Moz Link Explorer is its ability to analyze anchor text usage within a site’s backlink profile: Explore anchor text
Why is this feature valuable?
Well, if you notice a significant prevalence of exact-match anchor text, it often indicates the use of questionable black hat link-building techniques.
While Moz Link Explorer holds the position of the third-best link analysis tool in the market, a Moz subscription includes access to a suite of other valuable tools, such as an on-page grader.
This comprehensive package makes the investment in Moz worthwhile for many digital marketers.
9. Majestic
Majestic is yet another backlink analysis tool. It has the features you’d expect, like the number of backlinks, referring domains, and anchor text analysis.
Majestic Awesome Features
Pricing: $49-$399 per month
My Favorite Feature: Topical Trust Flow
This metric measures how many links a site has from a set of highly-trusted “seed” websites. It’s basically Majestic’s version of TrustRank.
I recommend checking out my Majestic review if you want an in-depth overview.
Majestic SEO has a massive link database. However, the UX is ancient and hard to use. That said, you definitely get your money’s worth at $50/month.
10. URL Profiler
URL Profiler is a powerful tool that allows you to pull a wide array of metrics and data associated with URLs.
Just paste in your URLs, tick the boxes for the data you want to pull and hit “go.”
One of my favorite unique features of URL Profiler is contact scraping. It comes in handy when you’re pulling link prospects from sources that don’t provide author names.
By ticking the “readability” checkbox, URL Profiler attempts to pull author names from the list of URLs.
URL Profiler is also one of our application partners, so you can use the data allowances included in your subscription to pull Ahrefs’ metrics for thousands of URLs at once.
This is useful when you have found link prospects with tools lacking SEO metrics.
Pricing: URL Profiler offers a 14-day free trial, and after that, plans start from $19.95 per month.
Conclusion
Those are the top 10 link-building tools that I recommend. Now, how do you choose the best tool for yourself? Here’s a simple checklist to help you make a decision:
- Consider your budget: If you have a very limited budget, you can always rely on free options like conducting Google searches.
- Determine the number of users: If you are the only person responsible for link building, you don’t need to worry about user accounts or features designed for teams. But if you work with a team on outreach, tools like Semrush or Respona are essential.
- Assess the link visibility: Backlink analysis tools such as Semrush, Moz, and Ahrefs provide extensive competitor link data. While there may be cheaper alternatives, it’s important to remember that you often get what you pay for in terms of the quality and quantity of link information.
- Evaluate the importance of reporting: If you need to report your progress to clients, having detailed and visually appealing reporting features can be extremely helpful.
Now, it’s your turn to share your thoughts:
Which tool from the list is your personal favorite?
If there’s a tool you love that I didn’t mention here, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment below right now.
