Here are a sea, nay an ocean of link building tools to choose from.
And as a digital marketer, finding the right tools for the job can feel like an overwhelming task.
Luckily for you, I have a shortcut.
Throughout my career as a link builder and SEO, I have invested thousands of dollars and countless hours into finding and testing the best tools and software systems on the market.
And after almost a decade in the game (and God know how much money) I have compiled a list of the best link building tools on the planet.
And I am here today to share that knowledge with you.
Whether you want to level up your outreach, remove dead links, master influencer marketing, or analyze your competitors, it’s all here.
No matter your experience level, budget, or goal, I guarantee that this guide will help you find a tool to fit your needs.
Link Building is Not What it Used to Be
Before I dive into the best link building tools, I want to take a moment to explain how link building has changed in recent years.
Many of you probably have some misconceptions that were derived from the black hat days of link spamming and constant commenting.
Let me be clear, those tactics will no longer work.
Link building in 2017/2018 is not what it used to be.
If you want to be a successful link builder, you can no longer just spam the comments section of a competitor’s blog or land the occasional guest post on a low level website.
To achieve success in the modern era, you must develop relationships, earn high quality links, and find ways to create a beautiful cobweb of backlinks from websites all across the internet.
Putting it simply, link building in 2018 is the art of building relationships and offering enough value to other bloggers and industry experts that they will reward your hard work with a link to your content.
Google will then look favorably upon this backlink and use it as a determining factor when their algorithms decide how to rank you.
Why Do I Need These Tools Anyway?
So now you might be asking, “Link Building sounds pretty simple… why do I need a bunch of advanced and potentially expensive tools to do it?”
The simple answer is: Because you will never achieve real SEO success without them.
Sure you can build some great links without any of these tools.
But it will take you years of work, countless pieces of content, and more rejections than most people can handle.
By taking advantage of a few simple extensions, softwares, and services, you can build an impressive backlink profile and earn a #1 ranking on Google in record time.
If you put this link building software to use, you will quickly overtake your competitors in the search engines and grow your company to new heights.
So with all of that out of the way…
Let’s begin!
SE Ranking
SE Ranking is the main competitor to SEMrush, and a quick look at their website makes it easy to see why this is an SEO Tool battle royale.
At around $89 for their most popular service, SE Ranking is the all-in-one SEO tool to help you take your search engine game to the next level.
While SE Ranking comes with comprehensive backlink monitoring and tracking tools, these are just the icing on the proverbial cake.
With accurate rank tracking, competitor analysis, and deep website audits, SE Ranking comes with more tools than most SEOs know what to do with.
If you are looking for an all in one tool to upgrade your SEO game, the SE Ranking might just be for you.
SEMRush
SEMrush is positioned as your “All-in-one” SEO toolkit.
And no statement could be more accurate.
SEMrush not only helps you perform day-to-day tasks, but also provides in-depth analysis that is very clear and can be easily incorporated into your digital marketing strategy and significantly improve your performance. ~Umit Yilmaz, SEO Engineer at Ebay.com
SEMrush comes with more tools, bells, and whistles than you can shake a stick at.
And not just for link building.
I mean, sure, its content and PR tools allow you to monitor mentions, track industry trends, and perform backlink audits and analysis.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg.
With SEMrush we are able to identify opportunities and react to them in less time by having a trusted source of data that is extremely easy for the whole team to access.
~Kenyon Manu, Director of Search at Overstock.com
SEMrush also allows you to complete technical SEO audits, paid traffic analysis, and generate content trend summaries.
Considering the sheer volume of tools at your disposal, the $99/month price tag is almost laughable.
And with a money back guarantee, you really have nothing to lose.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a phenomenal, well-rounded tool that provides a plethora of link building goodies. Analyze backlinks and referring domains, narrow them down with filters, secure your profile against spammy links, – feel free to do whatever you have on your list.
What fuels up this link powerhouse is a speedy crawler. While you can probably read a few hundred words per minute, Ahrefs can crawl 4.1 million pages. That’s how you’ll get the most accurate backlink info with no delay.
“I use a couple of different sources for examining link profiles, but Ahrefs has got some really impressive tools that make it stand out… the way they break down anchor text into different numbered terms makes identifying issues very easy.” ~Adam Connell, Blogging Wizard
With Ahrefs, you can get your hands on competitors’ private data – top linked pages, link growth, links (new, lost, broken), and any other things of your interest.
The Link Intersect feature is something else when it comes to competitor analysis. With a few clicks, you will see domains linking to your competitors, but staying away from you. It will be your source of link building opportunities.
“Simply put, the premier tool for checking links. Their mentions tracker is also highly underrated.” ~Gregory Ciotti, Help Scout
Majestic
“I know there are a variety of 3rd party link tools available but Majestic has always been one of my favorite sources. It’s affordable, fast and provides the majority of information I’m looking for..” ~Sean Stahlman, Outspoken Media
Majestic SEO contains over 875 billion backlinks in its index making it one of the leading backlink tools in the world.
It comes with a wide variety of features that allow you to audit your website and determine what style of content is most appealing to your audience.
You can quickly pinpoint where your backlinks are coming from, and you are even given a graphical illustration of how your website compares to the competition.
Plans range from $49 to $399 monthly making it an incredibly affordable resource for SMBs of any level.
Open Site Explorer
No list of link building tools would be complete without Open Site Explorer
In fact, according to a comprehensive poll compiled by Rich over at Clambr.com, Open Site Explorer was voted the third most powerful link building tool by over 55 experts.
It allows you to create an incredibly detailed backlink analysis of both your own website and those of your competitor’s and gives you unique insights to help you hunt down potential link building opportunities.
“Of course, for backlink research everyone has their preference (whether it be OSE, Majestic, ahrefs). Personally I use all of them, but my “go to” is usually OSE. The export of competitor’s backlink profiles in order to identify their top links is one of my first things I check.” ~Ryan McLaughlin, Clarity Ventures
Raven Tools
Raven tools are one more suite of awesome link building tools that specialize in competitor research and outreach management. It has extensive competitive analysis which will help you know what keywords your competitors are ranking for. ~Anil Agarwal, Blogger Passion.
Raven SEO tools provide you with extensive options for competitive analysis as well as comprehensive marketing reports that will help you find weaknesses in your link profile and quickly remedy the situation.
In addition to their detailed tools and reports to help you improve your link building strategy, Raven Tools also comes with a few extra goodies to help you level up your SEO.
With the Start Package starting at $79 a month, not only will you receive 40 backlink reports, but you will also get Raven’s Site Auditor, automated marketing reports, and analytics data.
MozPro
Moz Pro gives us the data we need to justify our projects and strategies. It helps us track the ROI of our efforts and brings significant transparency to our industry. ~Jason Nurmi, Marketing Manager Zillow
Few names have become more synonymous with “Kickass online marketing tools” than Moz.
And while they offer a wide variety of specialized tools for various SEO endeavors, one of my personal favorites is Moz Pro.
As they say in their product tagline, MozPro is an “all-in-one suite of SEO tools.”
They offer everything from unique insights into link performance and ranking, a streamlined interface to save you time and money, and comprehensive reports that make sense of the notoriously cryptic data that most SEO tools provide.
“The automation in Moz tools allows my team to focus on strategy and insights vs. running keyword reports manually or scheduling individual site crawls every few weeks. The simplicity of their tools mitigates the learning curve for new hires, allowing them to immediately jump in and add value.” ~Jon Clark, Director of Audience Development at NBCUniversal, Inc.
MozBar
With nearly half a million installations, MozBar is one of the industries leading SEO tools on the market, providing you with a complete SEO toolbar that is compatible with all leading browsers.
“The MozBar has been a critical part of my link building strategies and competitive analysis for 5 years now, through agency work and in house SEO. It’s the tool that gets the most excited responses when you share it with your clients: It’s easy to use, easy to understand, and adds an extra layer of information to every website you visit. Definitely a must have for any SEO.” ~Kristina Kledzik, SEO Manager for Rover.com
MozBar provides you with instant metrics and feedback and an incredible variety of tools including Data Export, Authority Scores, and an On Page Highlighter.
No matter where you are in your link building journey, MozBar provides you with easy access to the tools that you need.
Two-clicks is all you need for basically any SEO-related data point you could ever want. On-page elements, HTTP status codes, link metrics, schema markup, keyword difficulty … it’s all only 2 clicks away! MozBar is the single most useful item in my SEO toolbox, and it keeps getting better. Stop wasting your time, download MozBar! ~Logan Ray, Digital Marketing Expert at Beacon
Ontolo
If you are looking to automate your data mining, then few tools on this list stand up to the sheer power and capacity of Ontolo.
Drawing from more than 80 sources Ontolo’s custom built software helps you find hard-to-get information about potential prospects including their contact information, pages, and outbound links.
It also offers an incredible level of insight and easy to understand categorization and customization to the information in question.
Ontolo is a powerful tool that searches for quality prospects to help you increase your SEO rankings, like back-linking opportunities, guest blog posts and other marketable content. ~Andrea Riveras, Top Ten Reviews.
Link Prospector
When it comes to link building, there are many ways to acquire links. No matter what you do or which vertical you’re in, in order to rank well you need quality pages hosting your links. That’s where using a tool like Link Prospector can help, it will research and analyze a large amount of data before listing potential link partners. It cuts your search time down considerably. ~Debra Mastaler, Search Engine Land
If you are looking for a comprehensive and easy to use tool to help you find and organize potential link building opportunities, then look no further.
Link Prospector is one of the most highly acclaimed link building tools on the market.
Looks good, don’t it? IT IS. The tool is simply fantastic when it comes to discovering link opportunities that you never knew you had. ~Scott Dodge
Offering over 16 report types, Link Prospector presents you with a plethora of ways to quickly find and take advantage of link building opportunities.
From guest posts to PR to forum discussions, it’s all here and yours for the taking.
Rmoov
If you need to find ways to quickly remove and eliminate old backlinks that are not hurting your Google ranking, then Rmoov is the tool for the job.
With Rmoov you can quickly contact webmasters for any given website with a request to remove bad links from several URLs. The process then is completed in a very timely manner, a task that would otherwise take an extensive amount of time to complete.
Rmoov is free for basic members and instantly gives you access to the tools you need to ensure the highest level of quality for your link profile.
Cognitive SEO
Cognitive SEO is the authority tool to help you quickly and easily find the weaknesses and holes in your backlink campaign.
It analyzes your link profile to find unnatural links that might be incurring penalties and gives you the tools you need to quickly remedy the situation.
CognitiveSEO combines the best link data with some great innovations, creating a truly ambitious and elaborate SEO Technology. Well done! ~Dixon Jones, Marketing Director at Majestic SEO
With a wide variety of tools that allow you to audit, analyze, and track your backlink performance, Cognitiveseo is one of the leading tools on the market.
The cognitiveSEO toolset is a great toolset for any savvy SEO. A lot of great features and tools for a reasonable pricing. Just take the tools for a spin! ~Marcus Tandler, Online-Marketing Expert Mediadonis
BuzzStream
Buzzstream is hands down the best enterprise class outreach management tool out there. It gives me the easy top down view to make sure we are delivering. I find the tool saves me time and is extremely intuitive. ~Wil Reynolds, Founder of Seer Interactive
BuzzStream is perhaps one of the most well known and widely used tools on this list.
Equipping you with all of the tools that you need to manage and grow your relationship with industry influencers and other key persons, BuzzStream allows you to easily automate the link building and relationship management process with its comprehensive software.
Ninja Outreach
Ninja Outreach has not been around as long as many of the other top names in the industry.
However, don’t mistake its lack of time on the market with a lack of power.
I have been using Ninja Outreach for over 2 months now and after tweaking my campaigns, I have made 2 sales with a total of $4400 in revenue. I have 4 other companies requesting more information. Needless to say, Ninja Outreach is a great tool for outreach & lead generation. 2 thumbs up! ~Yasir Khan, Founder/CEO of Reputation Enhancer
Ninja Outreach is a phenomenal tool for compiling lists of prospects for different SEO link building campaigns and then automating the necessary outreach.
With over 5 million influencers in their database, Ninja Outreach makes it a breeze to find, contact, and sell key industry influencers on your content.
I’ve been doing SEO for over five years and Ninja Outreach is the best tool I’ve used to manage outreach campaigns across hundreds of websites and multiple projects. Their contact info collection tool alone saves me countless hours each month. ~Ryan O’Connor, One Tribe Apparel
URL Profiler
If you are looking for the easiest way to quickly audit your links, content, and social data, then I strongly recommend that you check out the tool URL Profiler.
I can’t remember what my life was like before URL Profiler came along, but I knew I was on to a good thing when I turned up to an internal client meeting with more data than our Head of SEO ~Craig Bradshaw, Head Creative at Mediaworks
It provides you with link and social sharing metrics, tools to build your content inventory, and a comprehensive audit of unnatural backlinks.
URL Profiler makes it easy to extract and compile the data you need to optimize your link building campaign in a matter of minutes.
Scrapebox
Dubbed the “Swiss Army Knife of SEO”, Scrapebox comes equipped with a vast array of tools.
Don’t be fooled by its simplicity: ScrapeBox is very powerful. You can easily streamline dozens of monotonous white hat link building processes with this tool. In fact, many white hat SEO agencies consider the software one of their secret weapons. ~Neil Patel CEO, QuickSprout.com
From its Search Engine Harvester, Keyword Harvester, Comment Poster, and Link Checker, Scrapebox really is your all-in-one SEO tool.
“Scrapebox is inarguably one of the most important SEO tools ever. It has a lot of useful features that almost every serious SEO needs.” ~SEOoptimizers.com
With its premium features and plugins starting at $20 a month for a lifetime license, Scrapebox allows you to customize your user experience to get all the tools you need and none of the ones that you don’t.
Broken Link Builder
By simply typing in a keyword or phrase, Broken Link Builder will quickly hunt down dozens, if not hundreds, of broken links that provide you with excellent link building opportunities.
Their simple but powerful tools allow you to safely grow your link profile and find the “low hanging fruit” of the internet that are ripe for the picking. Regardless of the industry, your website is in – or the website of your client – Broken Link Builder can create an extensive list of link outreach opportunities for you.
After locating quality SEO link building opportunities, Broken Link Builder simplifies content creation and outreach and allows you to minimize the amount of time that you spend on link building activities and maximize the profit.
Whitespark
Whitespark is one of the premier SEO and link building tools for local SMBs.
If you are looking to build local links, Whitespark scours the local web to find the best link building opportunities that are congruent with your company and location.
And Whitespark does more than just help you build backlinks.
It also enables you to gather client testimonials, maximize your local reputation and social proof, and audit your list of current citations to optimize your search engine presence.
With services starting around $27/month, Whitespark gives you some incredible bang for your buck and should definitely be on your radar.
Google Webmaster Tools
While this particular “tool” might not be what first comes to mind when you hear the phrase link building, Google Webmaster Tools has provided countless SEOs and entrepreneurs with the data and insights they needed to take their campaigns to the next level.
“Although not necessarily within the “tools for your offsite link building campaigns”, it has to be one of the main tools I use day-to-day. A lot of my time, especially within the last few months, has been focussing on identifying measurable backlink data. Therefore utilising the ability to download ‘discovered’ backlinks over the last few years is incredibly useful. Especially when conducting backlink audits for new and potential clients.” ~Darren Paterson, Query Click
Unlike most of the tools on this list, Webmaster Tools is completely free, and is owned and operated by the very people whose search engine you are most likely trying to rank on.
Google’s Webmaster Tools helps you track analytics to your site, receive the support you need, and it also provides you with in depth courses and guides to make your website search engine friendly.
If you haven’t already setup your account, go ahead and get that taken care of in another tab.
I will be here with the remaining tools when you get back.
Followerwonk
Yet another great tool from the folks over at Moz, Followerwonk is a slightly less conventional link building tool.
That is to say that it is not really a “link building” tool at all.
Followerwonk allows you to analyze and track your Twitter followers, compare users, and search bios.
And while its link building applications might not be immediately obvious, you need to remember that link building is really relationship building.
With Followerwonk, you have the power to find amazing link building opportunities that are lying dormant inside your Twitter account.
If you notice that a specific influencer is following you, or notice that a few of your followers have created blogs that are starting to blow up, you can easily leverage your existing “relationship” with these individuals to earn high quality links.
Link Miner
Link Miner integrates Majestic SEO with Point Blank SEO’s Chrome extension to make sourcing and generating backlink counts a breeze.
This is an excellent tool that I highly recommend to anyone who is serious about taking their prospecting efforts to the next level! ~David Farkas
Link Miner allows you to instantly check pages to find broken links.
But this is nothing new…
Where Link Miner really shines is in it’s ability to dive even more deeply into the links in question.
With the click of a button, you can instantly find the total link count, referring domains, and the URL’s top 5 links.
Muck Rack
Muck Rack is one of the industry’s leading tools for finding and contacting relevant bloggers and journalists.
This tool will help you discover and contact the highest quality bloggers and journalists in your niche and make sure that your content is part of their conversation.
Whether you are looking to improve PR, or simply increase the number of links back to your content MuckRack is the tool for the job.
We depend on Muck Rack, especially the alerts, to make sure we’re a part of conversations with journalists.~ Christina DiRusso, Director Communications, BuzzFeed
Pitch Box
Pitch Box is an all in one platform for influencer outreach and content marketing.
It allows you to find publishers, bloggers, and marketers in record time, and then send personalized outreach and follow up.
“Unlike many outreach platforms that are clunky and confusing, Pitchbox is a breeze to use.”
But it doesn’t stop there.
Pitch Box also provides analytics services that help you track and manage the performance of your outreach campaigns so that you can tweak your strategy until you are operating at the highest levels of efficiency.
While the service is a little pricey (coming in at $195/month for the basic package) it provides you with all of the tools you need to level up your influencer outreach and content marketing almost overnight.
Linkassistant
Linkassistant is one of the most powerful tools on this list.
It is your one stop shop for back link outreach.
You start by selecting your preferred method of prospecting (guest posting, directories, etc.) and then Linkassistant compiles a comprehensive list of high quality prospects and insights into each of those prospects in a matter of minutes.
LinkAssistant does everything I have been doing by hand for years. It finds link prospects from all over the internet, even in the forums that I would never find myself. And it does it in seconds. Incredible time-saver.
~Michael Anderson, SEO at Effective SEO
Then, you can contact these prospects from within the app and check on the status of your links once they are live.
To top it all off, Linkassistant also provides you with customized link building reports that will help you analyze your progress and plug any holes in your strategy.
It also comes with a free (no credit card required) trial so that you can take the software for a test drive before making your purchase decision.
BuzzSumo
I almost didn’t include BuzzSumo on this list.
And not because it isn’t a phenomenal tool (which it is) but rather because nearly everyone in the world of online business and SEO is already using it.
Founded by Noah Kagan in 2012, Buzzsumo has seen a meteoric rise in the past 5 years, quickly growing into one of the most widely used and highly acclaimed SEO tools in the world.
“BuzzSumo has to be the most important tool that I use for my content marketing and SEO campaigns. The ability to quickly identify what content is working well in an industry and who the major influencers are. For me, no tool comes close to providing the kind of insight that BuzzSumo gives.”
Matthew Barby Digital Marketing Expert, Hubspot
Buzzsumo allows you to quickly gain fantastic insights into industry trends and popular content so that you can create the most linkable and shareable content possible.
It gives you all the insights you need to figure out what the leaders in your industry are doing so that you can create a comprehensive content marketing and link building strategy based on data not conjecture.
If you haven’t already given it a go, I highly recommend that you try it out today!
You will not be disappointed.
“I love the ease of use and the immediate value I get from using the product. I can search for terms/phrases and quickly identify content that’s performing well in a niche or with an audience. Likewise, I love how visually simple and compelling BuzzSumo’s data displays.”
~Rand Fishkin Founder, Moz.com
SEOQuake
SeoQuake is a simple and free to use SEO extension that comes with a wide array of tools, including in-depth link information, keyword research opportunities and much more.
It allows you to rapidly conduct on page SEO audits, examine internal and external links, compare domains in real time and then export all of the data you have gathered into an easy to read file. Once the in-depth file is obtained, you can then use the information to create the most effective and efficient link building campaign possible.
With the comprehensive data provided by this tool, you can not only quickly create an epic link building strategy but also continually refine that strategy based on new data that comes available.
SEO Spyglass
SEO Spyglass is one of the best tools for monitoring, analyzing, and comparing backlinks to ensure that you can create an effective, penalty-proof, link building strategy.
It allows you to find all backlinks pointing to your site, reverse engineer your competitor’s links, and get an in-depth analysis of backlink factors.
“We purchased SEO Spyglass just over a month ago, and were shocked to see how quickly we started experiencing results. Its suggestions have enabled us to double our website traffic all simply from our executing SEO SpyGlass recommendations. Following SEO Spyglass’s recommendations allowed us to pay for the cost of the license long before a month had even passed!” ~Jason Collier, CertFX Certification Practice Tests
With both free and paid options, SEO Spyglass is a no brainer for your link building strategy.
Link Detox
With the constant updates to Google’s search algorithms, you never know when a previous link building strategy will incur penalties and damage your website’s authority.
Link Detox is the remedy to this problem.
It provides an in-depth audit and analysis of your current link profile to help you mitigate the risks from Google’s Panda updates, and ensure that you can maximize your ranking while minimizing your risk.
“With the help of Link Detox and Link Detox Boost, we have removed at OLAMobile, a Google Manual Penalty in just 14 days. Amazing! LRT It’s a set of tools, that any professional SEO need to possess in his day-to-day toolbox set.” ~Eugen Platon – Head of Search at OLA Mobile.
Traffic Travis Pro
Traffic Travis Pro is a professional SEO software that can be used to monitor backlinks, analyze a competitor’s performance and most importantly bring more traffic to your site.
The software works by searching the web and providing you with detailed information on your website’s ranking performance as well as the performance of your competitors.
Whether you need to know which keywords to go after, how to improve your link building strategy or what makes your competitors rank high, you can be one step closer to accomplishing your SEO goals with Traffic Travis Pro. For $97 you will get instant access to the Traffic Travis Pro software, and subsequently be able to effectively monitor links and improve SEO efforts.
Utilizing Traffic Travis Pro is a good way to ensure you reap the benefits of your SEO efforts.
Fresh Link Finder
Fresh Link Finder is a great tool for aggregating all pertinent backlink data into one, easy to access location.
This tool will help you keep tabs on backlinks as they arise and allow you to quickly find new opportunities for prospecting based on your current link profile, which will allow you to create a more informed and detailed link building strategy based on what has already worked in the past.
Fresh Link Finder is one of the few highly trusted SEO tools on the market that are specifically designed for link building.
Fresh Link Finder gives you a one-month free trial and plans start at $49/month.
LinkOdy
LinkOdy eliminates the need to manually track backlinks, and provides you with a simple and automated way to keep tabs on your link profile.
Without a doubt, Linkody is the best backlink software on the market today.
Pete Duffy SEO Agency Owner
They provide link notifications, a link disavow tool, Moz data, link analytics and much more.
Their affordable plans start at only $10 a month and give you all of the tools that you would expect from premium grade software.
XOVI
XOVI is an effective all-in-one SEO resource and link building tool that allows you to track and improve various aspects of your digital marketing strategy.
This tool gives users the ability to monitor existing backlinks and even identify potential high-quality links to try and obtain in the future.
Along with the benefits XOVI offers as an effective link building tool, they also allow you to understand the performance of your social media, affiliate marketing and on-page efforts. Whatever your link building efforts may include, there is no doubt that XOVI will have the ability to meet you where you stand and help you accomplish your SEO goals.
Funnel Science
Funnel Science is not your traditional automatic link building tool, but it can help to convert website visitors into paying customers by ensuring your sales funnel is effective. A good link building strategy should involve obtaining links and optimizing your own website once the newly acquired traffic begins to pour in.
Funnel Science helps users by providing detailed analytics on a website’s performance, ensuring the website is receiving a return on their investments and helping them optimize the website in the event an ROI is not achieved.
Their process works by not only helping you analyze your own site but by also tracking competing website’s performance and helping you to make the necessary efforts to pass them in search engine rankings.
Microsite Masters
The most important part of any link building campaign is simple…
Results.
It doesn’t matter how many backlinks you get or how many authority websites are sending traffic to your content, if you are not getting the results that you want, then you are wasting your time.
With Micro Site Masters, you can easily keep tabs on results to ensure that all of your effort is being spent in the right ways.
They provide comprehensive data, breaking down everything you need to know in an easy-to-understand report that will help you analyze, pivot, and optimize your link building campaigns almost overnight.
“You really only need to know the single most important difference between this service and the competition: IT ACTUALLY WORKS. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. I am happy that I’ve finally found a system that has not once gone down. It’s about time. Thanks guys for making it happen!”
Mike Roberto
SEO Site Checkup
While this tool comes with all of the bells and whistles of tools like SEMrush and the previously mentioned SEranking, it’s backlink tool is what really makes it stand out.
Not only does SEO Site Checkup allow you to easily monitor and analyze your backlink profile, but it also analyzes and aggregates the data, radically simplifying the process for you and your team.
It allows you to see backlinks in order of importance, examine the quality of your backlinks, and export your backlink reports into a separate file that you can use to track their performance over time.
In addition to SEO Site Checkup’s ability to serve as an SEO link building tool, it encompasses many other useful SEO tools as well. With a 14-day free trial and pricing starting at around $40, it is certainly worth a try.
SERPS
Serps.com is one of the most widely used SEO tools on the market. They provide you with a plethora of tools to optimize your search engine performance and maximize your link building efforts.
You can use SERPS to create extensive lists of all of your backlink information, which includes the exact URL, anchor text, page authority and domain authority for each and every one of your backlinks. In addition to being one of the best link building tools on the market, SERPS offers its users an all-in-one digital marketing system to maximize your online marketing efforts.
With a rank index chart, google analytics integration, keyword tagging, bulk rank checker, and a backlink explorer, serps.com has all of the tools that you need and more.
“If you’re in SEO and don’t use SERPs, you’re not doing it right”
~ Ian St. Clair, Clicks and Clients
Seoptimer
Seoptimer is a fantastic SEO tool that analyzes your website and gives you a comprehensive grade and suggestions based on their findings.
If you want a quick and simple tool that will allow you to determine how your website is performing (and whether or not your SEO link building strategy is working) then Seoptimer is your way to go. Their software provides you with an in-depth analysis of vital information for carrying out numerous types of digital marketing campaigns, including link building efforts.
While Seoptimer may not do the work for you, it provides you with insightful information to ensure you are able to deliver quality link building results from your campaigns.
They offer a free 14-day free trial. If you love their service – as most do – you can choose a payment plan that fits your budget, options range from $19 per month to $59 per month.
Serpstat
Serpstat comes filled to the brim with excellent SEO tools and capabilities.
The most notable (for our purposes) is their Backlink Analysis feature.
Serpstat allows you to quickly analyze referring domains, see your backlink history from the past 2 years, and analyze your competitor’s strategy to so that you can optimize your own.
With plans starting at only $19/month Serpstat is a great way to get your feet wet without spending your entire marketing budget.
Traackr
Traackr allows you to create a list of influential individuals and work your way through the outreach and conversion process of your link building campaign. Being able to reach out to the biggest names within your industry provides a huge advantage over your competition.
It’s easy to use interface gives you the ability to build and leverage large lists so that you can, as they say, “Influence the Influencers.”
Their unique algorithm completely removes vanity metrics to ensure that you are only connecting with people who have real reach and influence, so you won’t waste your time with influencers who cannot provide you with a link that is helpful to your domain authority or is simply unattainable.
And most importantly, Traakr makes it easy to, well… track the results to ensure that you are only doing what works.
Mailshake
Cold email outreach is a historically challenging task.
With so many people vying for influencer’s attention, it is hard to stand out from the crowd and achieve success with “cold” leads.
Mailshake solves this problem once and for all. With Mailshake, you can select from a set of prewritten messages, personalize it and send it out, which not allow improves the effectiveness of an email campaign but the efficiency as well, saving you precious time to improve other key areas of your business.
Once the email campaign is underway, you can monitor clicks, replies and more all through the Mailshake system.
Mailshake is freaking awesome. At Paperform, celebrating users as individuals is core to our brand, and Mailshake empowered us to continue to engage personally despite rapid growth. Highly recommend.”
~Diony McPherson, Paperform
At only $29/month, Mailshake is an absolute steal for the budding link builder and it will provide you with all of the tools you need at a price that cannot be beat.
Haro
HARO – or Help a Reporter out – is one of the premier places to connect journalists and expert sources.
It distributes over 50,000 journalist queries each year and allows you to easily source topics that are relevant to your industry so that you can minimize the time required to source new content.
Using Haro as a SEO link building tool is a great way to give yourself a chance at obtaining a quality backlink on a large, trusted new site, which can work wonders for your domain authority and search engine ranking.
And best of all, it’s totally free to use.
Dibz
Dibz is a link prospecting tool that simplifies your workflow and helps you optimize every minute you spend on your link outreach.
With a useful spam filter, content prioritization, and Pitchbox integration, Dibz helps you get your prospect list built and optimized as quickly as possible, allowing you to focus on outreach and other high-level tasks.
Plans start at $25/month and are extremely flexible, which means you can tailor your subscription to fit your exact needs.
Sheer SEO
Sheer SEO is an SEO software program that allows users to track their search engine rankings, optimize their on-page SEO and analyze their backlinks.
In addition to being able to analyze a variety of useful backlink data – such as meta tags, no follow links, etc. – you can also find great link outreach opportunities, including blogs and web directories, with their service.
Also with Sheer SEO, if one of your backlinks is altered or dropped, then you can receive updates, alerting you of the change and allowing you to take action.
They also offer a generous two-month free trial. After the free trial, you can choose the payment plan that is right for you, and they range from $7 per month to $40 per month.
Alexa
Alexa by Amazon is a great tool to build a comprehensive content marketing and link building campaign based on what works.
With their Competitive Intelligence Tools package starting at only $49/month, Alexa provides a cheaper alternative to some of the more popular (and more expensive) competitive research software mentioned in this article.
When you are able to conduct more in-depth research, create better content and reach out to more link building opportunities, you are able to conduct better overall link building campaigns. Many are already benefiting from Alexa by Amazon as a link building tool, and you too can take advantage of their in-depth, sophisticated features to improve your Google rankings as well.
And, if you are willing to upgrade to their premium package including a few extra SEO tools, Alexa can really pack a powerful punch for your SEO efforts.
It is wonderful that the site audit is very actionable. We check site audits monthly, and return to its checklist at least twice a week to check off items that need attention.”
~Girish Redekar, Co-Founder, Recruiterbox
SEO Tools for Excel
One of the greatest struggles that you will face on your journey to grow a successful SEO agency, (or simply streamline your own SEO efforts) is organization.
While this might not be a link building tool in the traditional sense, SEO Tools for Excel allows you to pull metrics directly into Excel files so that you can quickly analyze and aggregate data from multiple campaigns and websites.
With Google Analytics and Majestic SEO integration, SEO Tools for Excel is a must have for the modern SEOs toolbox.
Upon request, you can receive a 14-day free trial, after which the pricing starts around $112.48 and increases depending on your exact need.
Disavow.it
Disavow.it is a simple but powerful tool that allows you to create a batch file of links that you want to disavow and upload it to the Google Search Console.
While this might seem almost too simple to some of you, with the constant changes to Google’s algorithms, especially the Panda Update, this task has become more important now than ever before.
It is important to ensure you disavow any links that are detrimental to your Google rank for any reason whatsoever. Otherwise, you run the risk of severe penalties from Google.
Fortunately, Disavow.it makes it extremely to ensure bad links do not affect your rank. Simply upload your .txt files into Disavow.it, create the list and upload the list of bad links into Google Search Console.
Best of all, their service is completely free to use, so you have no excuse not to take advantage of the opportunity.
Market Samurai
While Market Samurai is normally viewed as a keyword research tool, it does have a few specific features that make it useful for SEO link building.
Its “find content” module allows you to track down articles, directories, and blogs to quickly find great link building opportunities.
For many, finding high-quality websites that accept your link is the most challenging aspect of link building, and this link building tool makes the process of finding legitimate guest post and directory link opportunities effortless.
And while many of the other tools on this list are much more effective at this job, Market Samurai charges a nominal one-time fee of $149, making it much cheaper than its alternatives.
Netpeak Checker
Netpeak Checker is a desktop tool for SERP scraping and data aggregation from top SEO services to analyze and compare websites in bulk.
Netpeak Checker allows you to research the backlink profile of the websites and compare URLs by parameters of popular services, including Ahrefs, Moz, Serpstat, Majestic, SEMrush and Whois.
Along with the ability of Net Pack Checker to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of link builders to carry out campaigns, the software also provides detailed SEO insights that can benefit general SEO specialists, marketing and content teams and web developers.
When it comes to SEO link building and other SEO efforts, it can be incredibly useful to combine data from several different websites – including competitors – and find ways to reach the very top of the search rankings.
A 14-day trial version with no limits to the tool is available, and plans start at around $14 per month.
Marketing 360
Marketing 360 is an all-in-one digital marketing platform that provides its users with useful tools for completing successful link building campaigns.
Along with numerous online marketing tools, they offer an in-depth, easy to use CRM software system that makes it easy to manage your contacts and conduct link outreach in an effortless manner.
Although the all-inclusive plans can get fairly expensive – starting at $50 per month – the CRM software is completely free to set up and use. After a quick setup, you can be on your way to filing all of your link outreach contacts into one place, making it easy to reach out to them while link building.
From conducting basic SEO audits to taking advantage of the free CRM software, Marketing 360 provides a great opportunity for those looking to improve their search engine rank to do so by carrying out effective link building strategies.
Agency Analytics
Agency Analytics is the complete SEO site auditor tool that includes detailed backlink monitoring reports.
The tool gives users the ability to quickly create in-depth reports that can then be used to optimize website content, remove dead links, improve anchor text and much more.
With Agency Analytics you can even automate your reports and schedule daily, weekly or monthly updates, which are then sent directly to you or your client’s inbox. The pricing plans start as low as $49 per month and reach as high as $499 per month, and you can try it all for free for 14 days with no credit card required.
Agency Analytics is the perfect link building tool for anyone looking to automate their SEO reports and use those reports to improve their link building efforts.
Nightwatch
Nightwatch is a well-rounded SEO tool that specializes in rank tracking, providing detailed SEO analytics reports and backlink monitoring.
The tool enables its users to effectively automate backlink monitoring and receive up-to-date notifications on the status of backlinks.
After signing up with Nightwatch, you are provided a detailed backlink portfolio that includes information on the total amount of backlinks, the quality of the backlinks and much more. It allows you to effortlessly filter the backlinks by different categories and easily identify trends.
Nightwatch makes it easy to monitor external link activity, staying up-to-date on newly acquired links, links that have been lost and how diverse the links obtained are.
WebCEO
WebCEO is a one-stop shop for all of your digital marketing needs, providing users with the tools necessary to conduct keyword research, social media analytics and backlink monitoring.
Whether you are looking to produce reliable, accurate SEO audits on a recurring basis or need to conduct extensive link building campaigns to ensure quality links are obtained, WebCEO is able to meet your exact need.
Although it can be a bit expensive – with the starter plan pricing in around $99 per month – their service offers an extensive list of useful SEO and link building tools. With WebCEO, you are likely to be able to conduct the majority of your SEO needs all within the site, including carrying out successful link building campaigns.
WebCEO is perfect for both small and large businesses alike. While those only concerned with finding the best link building tool and not an all-inclusive SEO service may be better suited elsewhere, WebCEO provides all a business needs to ensure they rank as high as possible.
Searchmetrics Suite
Searchmetrics Suite is the ultimate search and content performance platform that allows you to optimize content and produce more SEO friendly blog posts and landing pages.
Quality content is often a huge part of a successful link building campaign and makes the process of link outreach and acquisition much easier. Searchmetrics Suite provides you with all the tools necessary to produce high-quality content.
Along with search and content performance, Searchmetrics Suite provides its users with access to the world’s largest SEO database, the ability to analyze any domain in real-time and PPC data. You can also compare site performance on both mobile and desktop devices and optimize websites accordingly.
Searchmetrics Suite has worked well for many who rely on their content for both their own site’s performance and for acquiring high-quality backlinks.
Rank Hacker
Rank Hacker is an SEO tool that allows its users to effectively find quality keywords that they are able to rank for, create compelling content and effectively carry out content backlink goals.
Along with the ability to help users create content that ranks well, Rank Hacker soon will also be able to monitor your current backlinks, ranking and much more.
They offer a free 15 day trial upon signup, after which a subscription is required. Receiving an ROI on your digital marketing efforts is the ultimate goal, and Rank Hacker is dedicated to helping its users do exactly that by providing them with quality SEO features and in-depth information.
There are numerous keyword tools and content optimization tools currently on the market. While many of them are not as effective as advertised, Rank Hacker subscribers attest to the profound ability of Rank Hacker to help them rank higher and obtain higher quality backlinks.
Advanced Web Ranking
Advanced Web Ranking is a rank tracking tool that allows you to not only monitor your own ranking keywords but to also monitor your competitors as well.
Before you can improve your rank, you must first understand where you currently are, after which you can embark upon link building campaigns and other SEO efforts to try and raise your rank on keywords and content that is deemed worthy of your efforts.
Advanced Web Ranking provides detailed SEO reports that include backlink monitoring, rank tracking and project performance in an easy to understand format. After a free 30 day trial with no credit card required, their pricing plans begin at around $49 per month and reach as high as $499 for the most inclusive package.
Advanced Web Ranking is a complete SEO platform that provides everything needed to carry out numerous different digital marketing efforts, and it is perfect for small and large businesses alike.
Unamo SEO
Unamo SEO is an advanced SEO tracking and performance tool that can be used for a multitude of purposes.
Unamo truly provides all of the features necessary to conduct an all-inclusive SEO campaign, and it provides users with the ability to monitor keyword rankings, utilize various SERP features and study their local SEO performance.
Whether you are completing an SEO audit to find out which of your targeted keywords you are ranking for or are trying to gain high-quality backlinks, Unamo has all you need to carry out your efforts in an effective manner. Their pricing begins at around $19 per month, although the $100 per month plan is likely required for larger businesses.
From SEO beginners to enterprise customers, Unamo has something to offer anyone looking to improve their search engine ranking.
Dragon Metrics
Dragon Metrics is an all-in-one SEO platform that provides detailed SEO reports, which includes information on keyword rankings and backlink monitoring.
The tool works by allowing its users to effectively and efficiently being able to find and fix issues, and they provide detailed step-by-step guides to help you fix the more common SEO issues.
Dragon Metrics also makes it easy for users to analyze their entire backlink profile, including the ability to find out who all is linking back to your site, measure the value of each link and discover the next link acquisition opportunity.
Although the pricing is steep – starting at $99 per month – Dragon Metrics is one of the most well-rounded link building tools on the market.
Botify
Botify is the world-leading cloud-based SEO crawler that provides users with detailed information that they can then use to improve their site’s SEO.
Some users even call Botify an advanced version of Google Search Console – which is a fairly accurate way to describe its practical application.
Botify works by crawling the web in the same manner a search engine would and then providing users with information they can then use to master their technical SEO, find real keywords that are obtainable and create relevant content.
Botify is a great resource to have, and they can accommodate the needs of various business types, including eCommerce, publishers and classified websites.
Morning Score
Morning Score is an effective automatic link building tool that can provide a complete overview of the quantity and quality of your links in an easy to understand, sortable format. The Morning Score software scans the web on a daily basis, providing you with real-time analysis of your backlinks.
Morning Score provides an in-depth analysis of a number of different fronts in addition to backlinks, including keywords and search ranking, making it a truly all-inclusive SEO reporting tool.
With this link building tool, you can find out which of your link building efforts are the most effective, continue to track your progress in your link acquisition efforts and determine whether or not a link in question is do follow or no follow.
Morning score is a great tool for business owners, SEOs and complete digital marketers alike.
SEO Administrator
SEO Administrator provides a wide array of SEO tools to help you optimize and promote your website. Among other useful tools, SEO Administrator gives you the ability to monitor your inbound links and analyze the quality of your links.
You can use SEO Administrator to not only optimize your own link building strategies but by also learning more about your competitor’s backlinks and finding opportunities to capitalize in some of the same areas as your competitors through backlink acquisition.
Perhaps the most useful tool of SEO Administrator is there link exchange tool, which provides you with an extensive list of high-quality sites for link building.
The pricing packages for SEO Administrator range from around $49 for the standard package to around $99 for the expert package.
LinkHunter
LinkHunter is an easy-to-use link building tool built for SEOs, entrepreneurs, and marketers. Unlike most link building tools, LinkHunter is beginner-friendly and guides users through the link building process to help ensure links are built (no SEO or link building knowledge required!).
It can help you build backlinks to your website in a few different ways.
1. Get your products reviewed by influencers
2. Promote your content to relevant websites
3. Guest post on authoritative blogs
4. Reach out to the websites linking to your competitors
5. Find advertising opportunities on industry blogs
Not only can it find all the link opportunities for you, but it will handle the outreach as well with automatic follow-ups, instant email address discovery, built-in email templates, SEO metrics, and more.
OutreachMama
Can you say shameless self promotion?
While OutreachMama might not be a link building tool in the traditional sense, our elite level services provide you with everything you need to plan, execute, and track an effective link building campaign.
We help you secure links from some of the biggest and most authoritative sites on the web without any of the financial downsides.
After a brief talk, we will make recommendations to help you figure out which websites you should target for your outreach campaign and then we do all the heavy lifting for you.
From outreach to content creation to backlink analysis, we help you improve your ranking, grow your audience, and increase your revenue in record time.
You can check out our awesome list of services here, or find the answer to any questions that you might have at our FAQ.
Conclusion
So there you go…
The comprehensive list of the best link building tools and services on the market.
I know that the sheer volume of tools might feel a little overwhelming.
But every tool was included on this list for a reason and you can’t go wrong with any of them.
So if something strikes your interest, try it out, analyze the results, and then make a decision.
Give it a shot and let me know what you think!
If you have any other questions or want to recommend a tool that I missed, let me know in the comments below.