New to digital marketing and SEO (Search Engine Optimization)? Looking to improve your website’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs)? Do you know that one way to make this happen is through link building?
In Google’s page ranking algorithm, links are considered one of the top two criteria.
- 94% of the majority of SEOs said they think Google will continue to use links as a ranking factor for the next five years. (Aira)
- 41% of SEO experts find link building to be the most challenging part of search engine optimization. (Ascend)
- A survey conducted by Ahrefs says that 67% of SEOs use domain rating (DR) as their top metric to measure link quality. While a survey from Moz says that 42% consider domain authority (DA) to determine link quality. (Aira)
- 69% of marketers feel that buying links has a positive impact on search rankings. (Aira)
- Quality links often come at a high price for brands, typically costing $1,000 or more. (Siege Media)
The studies above show that quality links have a significant impact on search engine ranking, but building those links is not always easy. It can be an extremely time-consuming, resource-intensive process and requires a high-level of expertise.
There are several strategies that you can do straightaway to rank up the authority of your website. Guest posting is one method to further raise up the organic traffic of your website to 13% – 126% for SaaS websites in just a few months. And it doesn’t always need to be expensive as you’d think.
Try link building campaign as part of your SEO strategy. Building links is challenging but highly-effective. And gearing up with the right SEO or link building tools will help going through the process a bit easier.
In this article, we’ll share with you some of the best link building tools for SEO. Before that, first let’s understand the basics:
What is Link Building?
Link building is the process of creating backlinks, or links from other websites to yours.
Not all links are created equal. Google’s algorithms have evolved over the years to give more weight to high-quality backlinks from authoritative websites. So, when link building, it’s important to focus on quality of backlinks over quantity.
To make it look more organic, make sure your website has a diversified link profile. Here are the four types of backlinks for you to acquire:
- Do-follow backlinks: These are the most common type of backlink and they carry the most weight. When a website links to yours with a do-follow link, it’s telling search engines that they endorse your website.
- No-follow backlinks: No-follow links don’t carry as much weight as do-follow links, but they’re still valuable. A no-follow link is when a website links to yours but tells search engines not to endorse your site.
- UGC backlinks: User-generated content, or UGC, is when customers or fans of your brand create content that mentions or links back to your website.
- Sponsored backlinks: These are paid links, and they can be either do-follow or no-follow. Sponsored links are a form of advertising, and they typically appear on websites with a lot of traffic.
Why is Link Building Important for SEO?
Link building is important because it helps:
- Improve your website’s SEO. Backlinks are like upvotes for your website. The more quality backlinks you have, the more popular your site is, and the higher it will rank in search results.
- Get your content index by Google. When you have backlinks from other websites, it tells Google that your content is valuable and relevant. This helps them index your content faster so that it is visible in search results.
- Increase your website’s organic traffic. Links from other websites can help increase the organic traffic that your website receives. When done correctly, this can result in a significant increase in traffic (exponentially).
- Build relationships. Link building is a great way to build relationships with other website owners and influencers in your industry. These relationships can be beneficial for both parties involved.
- Increase brand awareness. When you build links from guest posting, you’re putting your brand in front of a new audience. This can help increase brand awareness and exposure for your business. And if you’re guest posting on a high-authority website, you’re also increasing the credibility of your brand. This can lead to more customers and sales for your business.
By creating quality backlinks, you can improve your website’s SEO and increase its visibility on SERPs.
What is a Link Building Tool?
A link building tool is a software or platform that helps you with your link building campaigns. There are a wide range of link building tools available, and each has its own set of features and advantages.
Some common features of link building tools include:
- Backlink analysis: The tool can help you analyze the backlinks of your competitors. This can give you insights into their link building strategy, and help you find new link building opportunities.
- Prospect website research: It can help you research potential link building opportunities from relevant sites. This includes finding contact information, website traffic data, and more.
- Outreach management: Link building tools can help you manage your outreach campaigns. This includes tracking your emails, scheduling follow-ups, and more.
- Link tracking: Link building tools can help you track the links that you’ve built over time. This can be helpful in understanding which links are working and which ones aren’t.
- Link management: Link building tools can help you manage your links. This includes organizing your links, tracking link metrics, and more.
- Reporting: Link building tools can provide you with reports on your link building campaigns. This can help you track your progress and see what’s working and what isn’t.
Link building tools is a valuable addition to your SEO toolkit. It helps you save time, get organized, and track your progress. If you’re serious about link building, then a link building tool is no question a must-have.
How to Choose the Best Link Building Tools?
Here are some factors to consider when choosing link building tools:
- Ease of use: Link building tools should be easy to use. They should have a user-friendly interface that is easy to navigate.
- Key features: The tool should have the features that you need. If you’re just starting out, then a basic tool with essential features may be all you need. But if you’re more experienced, then you’ll want a tool with more advanced features.
- Pricing: Link building tools vary in price. Some are free, while others can cost hundreds of dollars per month. Choose a tool that fits your budget.
- Integrations: The tool should integrate with other SEO tools that you’re using. This will help you save time and get the most out of your link building campaigns.
- Customer support: If you’re new to link building, then you’ll want a tool with good support. This way, if you have any questions or problems, you can get help from the tool’s support team.
Best Link Building Tools in 2022
As a SaaS SEO agency, our team here at SaaSlaunchr has published hundreds of content and built thousands of high-quality links for our clients. And the results have been impressive so far. Here, I am sharing a few tools that I can personally recommend to help you achieve your SEO and organic traffic goals.
Tools used for Backlink Audit and Analysis
These tools help you analyze your own backlinks and those of your competitors, so you can discover opportunities for link building.
1. Moz Link Explorer (Backlink Audit, Research and Competitor’s Analysis)
Moz Link Explorer is a tool that helps you research and analyze backlinks. It enables you to find link opportunities, monitor your link building progress, and improve your SEO. This platform is ideal for medium and larger size SaaS marketing agencies.
- Ease of use: The platform is easy to use and the interface is straightforward.
- Key features: It provides various features, such as discovering the links to any site, analyzing competitor backlinks, finding broken links to your site, checking the spam score of backlinks. Plus finding link building opportunities, assessing top-performing content, observing new and lost links, analyzing anchor text along with a domain authority checker.
- Pricing: The platform offers a free 30-day trial with access to limited features. Paid plans start at $99/month for the Standard plan and go up to $599/month for the Premium plan.
- Integrations: With Moz API, you can easily create a tool to report on link metrics and Authority data. Simply connect the Moz API to your software, and you’ll be able to start building data pipelines much more quickly.
- Customer support: The platform offers email and live chat support.
2. Ahrefs (All-in-One SEO Toolset & Backlink Checker)
Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO toolset that provides users with everything they need to rank higher in search engines and get more traffic. The platform includes a backlink checker, keyword research tool, site auditor, and more.
- Ease of use: If you’re new to SEO and are looking for an easy tool to help get started, Ahrefs is ideal. I’ve been using this tool for years now. It’s user-friendly interface makes it a great choice for beginners.
- Key features: Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker features include monitoring the growth and decline of backlink profiles, getting a complete breakdown of the target’s backlink profile, seeing estimated organic traffic to each linking page & referring domain, seeing all websites linking to your target with domain metrics, seeing the most linked-to pages, seeing a complete breakdown of all outbound links, disavowing link spam, seeing dofollow and nofollow links, and backlink anchor text. Additionally, you can export data in PDF and CSV formats.
- Pricing: The platform offers a trial plan. After that, you can choose from the paid options, which start with a Lite plan at $99/month and go up to $999/month for an Enterprise plan.
- Integrations: Ahrefs’ API enables you to integrate its data with 70+ other applications and tools for a more comprehensive client reporting experience.
- Customer support: The platform offers email, live chat, and knowledge base support.
3. SEOJet (Backlink Management Software & Link Building Tool)
This tool compares your website to your top competitors in detail, including a review of your backlink profile and analysis of the key phrases you’re attempting to rank for. SEOJet is more than just your average backlink management software – it’s a strategy tool that can help you easily build a solid and reliable backlink strategy for all of your SEO clients. I recommend this platform for SaaS SEO agencies.
- Ease of use: Easy to use and packed with the metrics you need, SEOJet is an off-site SEO optimization tool for real SEO professionals.
- Key features: SEOJet has several features that will help improve your SEO ranking, including providing you with link building strategy, easy backlink importing, backlinks monitoring, excluding disavowed backlinks, showing important backlink metrics, tracking your progress, buying and increasing your backlinks, and improving anchor ratios.
- Pricing: The platform offers a free plan with access to limited features. Paid plans start at $690/year and go up to $1990/year.
- Customer support: The platform offers email support.
4. Linkody (Backlink Analytics, Monitoring and Reporting)
Linkody is a tool that helps you track your backlinks and monitor your link building progress. It enables you to find and disavow bad links, track your link building campaigns, and improve your SEO. The tool creates a strong link profile evaluation to enable you to make the best decision for your SEO strategy.
- Ease of use: Get a clear picture of your backlink profile with a simple dashboard that provides you with a full overview. Check out how your backlinks are split up across all essential metrics (DA, Spam Score, IP, country, and brand) to get an idea of where they’re failing or succeeding.
- Key features: It offers a variety of features, including backlink analysis, link monitoring, instant link location, competitor analysis, including email alerts, disavow tools, easy link management, link visualizer, excel & PDF export and more.
- Pricing: The platform offers paid plans that start at $14.90/month for a Webmaster plan up to $153.90/month for the Larger Agency plan.
- Integrations: Linkody has a wide range of integration options, including with many of the most popular tools on the market. Linkody provides a user-friendly and efficient API that makes it easier for developers to access data and get outcomes.
- Customer support: Linkody offers email and live chat support.
5. LinkFool (Link Building Tool)
LinkFool is a tool that enables you to build high-quality backlinks and improve your SEO. The platform uses a unique approach that combines the power of content marketing and link building to help you rank higher in search engines. LinkFool also provides you with a link building report so you can track your progress.
- Ease of use: The software is designed for both beginners and experts, with an intuitive interface that is easy to use.
- Key features: It offers a variety of features, including targeted referral traffic, intelligent backlinks, search rankings dashboard, regular link reports, citations for local rankings and offers dedicated SEO specialist.
- Pricing: The platforms offer a flexible pricing that starts at $79/month for the Standard Plan up to $199/month for the Premium Plan.
- Integrations: Simply enter your Google Analytics tracking code and the tool will track everything for you.
- Customer support: LinkFool offers email support.
Other Tools used for Backlink Audit and Analysis
6. SEMrush (Backlink Analytics)
7. Serpstat (Competitor SEO Backlink Analysis Tool)
8. DataforSEO (Backlinks API – Backlink Profile Analysis)
9. Linkresearchtools (Monitoring & Link Building Optimization)
10. SE Ranking (Backlink Checker Tool & Backlink Finder)
11. Rank Signals (Free Backlinks Checker & Explorer)
12. Majestic SEO (Checking & Monitoring Backlinks)
13. Sitechecker (Backlink Checker & Tracker)
14. Ubersuggest (Backlink Discovery Tool)
15. Urlprofiler (Content Audits & Link Prospecting)
16. Backlinkgap (Free Backlink Checker)
17. Linkgraph.io (Backlink Analyzer Tool)
19. Cognitiveseo (Backlink Analysis Tool)
20. Monitor Backlinks (Monitoring Tool For Backlinks)
Tools used for Link Building Outreach
These tools help you identify link building possibilities for your domain and give you a management interface to launch an outreach campaign in order to acquire links. It also enables you to research prospects and send outreach emails.
21. Respona (Backlink Prospecting & Outreach Tool)
Respona strives to enable brands to form connections with bloggers and journalists who write about similar topics, thereby earning quality backlinks and improving their ranking on Google search. The platform enables you to find verified contact information and opportunities in real-time, create automated email sequences, and personalize your campaign using our AI assistant.
- Ease of use: Respona is easy to use with its user-friendly interface and comprehensive dashboard.
- Key features: It offers a variety of features, including cold email, blogger outreach, digital PR, backlink analysis, prospect website research, outreach management, link tracking, link management, and reporting. It also provides insights and automation features.
- Pricing: The platform offers a free trial. Paid plans start at $99/month for the Starter plan and $499 for the Unlimited plan.
- Integrations: Respona integrates with SEMrush, Ahrefs, Hunter, RocketReach.
- Customer support: Respona offers email and live chat support.
22. PitcBox (Link Building Outreach)
Pitchbox is a tool that helps you automate your link building outreach. It enables you to find relevant bloggers and influencers, create personalized emails, and track your progress. The platform helps top-tier brands, publishers, and agencies publicize their content.
- Ease of use: The dashboard for the software provides you with all of the tools you’ll need to stay organized and achieve your objectives.
- Key features: It offers a variety of features, including email automation, prospecting, CRM, contact management, outreach & follow up, link tracking, link building, SEO metrics and reporting.
- Pricing: You can book a demo and request for the pricing.
- Integrations: Integrates with SEO Integrations, Zapier, GDS, Slack and more.
- Customer support: Pitchbox offers email, phone call and live chat support.
23. BuzzStream (Backlink Research, Prospecting and Email Outreach)
BuzzStream is an effective outreach platform that will help you achieve successful digital PR and link building results, whether working independently or with a team. With BuzzStream, promote your content through earned media to receive more attention. You can generate lists and pitch influencers with ease, allowing you to get maximum distribution for your content.
- Ease of use: The software is designed to be user-friendly, with a wide range of features that can be accessed easily.
- Key features: It offers a variety of features, including digital PR, content promotion, research & email prospects, manage and create backlink reports.
- Pricing: The platform offers a flexible pricing that starts at $24/month Starter Plan up to $999/month Custom Plan.
- Integrations: BuzzStream API is available so you can integrate the software with other tools on your workflow.
- Customer support: BuzzStream offers email and live chat support.
24. NinjaOutreach (Influencer Outreach Tool)
NinjaOutreach is a tool that helps you with your link building and SEO efforts by automating repetitive, such as outreach and follow-ups. It also enables you to find influencers bloggers, create personalized emails, and track your progress. The platform has a strong on helping you build relationships with influencers in order to get them to promote your content
- Ease of use: Toss out those old, outdated spreadsheets and heavier software solutions that take up too much space. With our built-in CRM, you can manage projects, clients, and conversations all in one easy to use place.
- Key features: It offers a variety of features, including features for influencer marketing, business lead generation, finding instagram and twitter influencers, link building software, contact relationship management, influencer outreach tool and more.
- Pricing: The platform offers a flexible pricing that starts at $155 /month for beginners upto $459 /month for startups.
- Integrations: Connect NinjaOutreach to the applications you use on a regular basis in seconds. Zapier connects NinjaOutreach with 5,000 additional apps, making it the most convenient method to automate your workflow.
- Customer support: NinjaOutreach offers email and live chat support.
25. Mailshake (Personalize Cold Email & Outreach Tool)
Mailshake has a strong focus on helping you build relationships with potential partner sites in order to get them to publish and promote your content. It allows you to find potential collaboration partners, create personalized emails, and track your progress. Reach out to thousands of prospects with ease using email outreach campaigns and automated follow-ups.
- Ease of use: The platform offers a seamless experience. The dashboard is helpful and all the buttons are in the appropriate locations.
- Key features: It has a variety of features, including email automation, being where your prospects are with easy lead tracking and status updates, using artificial intelligence for writing emails and follow-ups, and contact management.
- Pricing: The platform offers two options – $58 user / month (best for marketers & founders) and $83 user / month (best for sales teams).
- Integrations: Connecting Mailshake with your CRM and email service will make your workflow more efficient. The software integrates seamlessly with systems like Pipedrive, Calendly, LinkedIn, Twilio, Hubspot, Google Forms, Slack and more.
- Customer support: Mailshake provides email, helpdesk, knowledge base for FAQs, and live chat support to improve customer satisfaction.
Other Tools used for Link Building Outreach
26. ContactOut (Best for Finding Emails on LinkedIn)
27. Justreachout.io (PR & Outreach Tool)
28. Hunter.io (Best for Finding Emails of Prospects)
29. HARO (Connect for Journalists, Publishers and Influencers)
30. Link Prospector (Massive Link Prospecting)
31. BuzzSumo (Discover Influential Bloggers Relevant To Your Niche)
32. Apollo.io (For Cold Email Backlink Outreach)
33. Authority.builders (Find Sponsored Links Relevant to Your Niche)
34. Linksmanagement (For Buying Backlink)
35. Whitespark.ca (Local Citation Finder)
36. Adsy (Access to Paid Guest Posting Sites)
37. Linkio (Cold Outreach & Automated Anchor Text Suggestions)
38. Ontolo – (Prospecting Tools for Link Building)
Content Distribution Tools for Link Building
Content distribution and syndication tools are used to publish and promote content on PR websites, social media, and other channels. You may significantly boost the number of mentions, links, exposure, and brand reputation of your website by distributing your content on these platforms.
39. Brandwatch (Content Distribution Platform)
40. Meltwater (Press Release Distribution)
41. Cision (Get Your Content in Front of Journalists and Influencers)
42. Brand24 (Access To Brand Mentions)
43. Critical Mention (Online News Tracking)
44. Newswire (Press Release Distribution Software)
Google Tools for Link Building
45. Disavow Link Tool (For Disavowing Links)
46. Google Alerts (For Monitoring Brand Mentions)
47. Google Search Console (Monitoring External & Internal Links)
These are just a few of the best link building tools for SEO in 2022. Be sure to do your research and choose the tool that is right for you and your needs.
Your Turn…
Link building tools can save you time, help you stay consistent and organized, track your progress and get you results.
Link building is an ongoing process. Once you’ve built a few links, you need to continue to build more links to maintain and improve your SEO ranking. The best way to do this is to create a link building strategy and plan for long-term success.
Do you have a favorite link building tool that we didn’t mention? Let us know in the comments.