As Google becomes more advanced, SEOs want to get better at building natural backlinks. The way to do that is through using link building tools.
This post complements our link building guide for 2023 and our 2023 link building strategies explainer, since these platforms help a ton with executing the techniques laid out there.
These link building tools can help you start making a real difference in your link building efforts.
Here are our seven favorites.
1.) Ahrefs
The go-to tool for working on backlinks.
Here’s a little nugget of truth: most marketers, when they need to research and build backlinks, proceed immediately to Ahrefs.
Pricing:
The reason everyone loves Ahrefs for link building tasks is because the tool just has it all. When you enter a domain, look over on the left in the Backlink profile section.
Here are your options:
Clicking on Backlinks shows you – you guessed it – every single backlink pointing to your domain.
Then there’s the Broken backlinks section, where you can see all the backlinks you’ve gotten in the past that have now broken (usually because you moved your page and caused a 404).
These features by themselves would be enough to make Ahrefs an awesome link building tool, but when you have options such as Anchors – where you can see the words that link to you on your referring domains – and Link intersect – which shows you the domains linking to your competitors but not you – you know you’re into something great.
2.) BuzzStream
Where to go to organize link building outreach.
If you’re an SEO professional managing the link building of a handful of small clients, you can handle your prospect outreach with any old email account. For larger-scale operations, you need BuzzStream.
Pricing:
Here’s the story on BuzzStream.
The platform lets you organize and manage all your link building outreach and other emails in one place, period.
But it’s more than just an outreach platform.
You can do your prospecting in there, too.
If you’re just starting out with link building or with the clients you have, you can begin by using BuzzStream to search for websites in your niche that you can then contact for link outreach.
Or, if you know where you want to try to get backlinks from, you can put those domains into BuzzStream and then use the link building tool’s Google Chrome extension to access contact information for those sites.
When you’re ready to reach out, you can keep everything together in BuzzStream.
But that’s not even the best part.
It isn’t just that you can use the platform to see all your emails in one place. You can also mark the status of each reachout thread using custom tags such as “Reached Out,” “Awaiting Response,” and “Link Placed.”
The tool lets numerous users access the same account, so this is a platform that’s optimized for link building teams.
It’s actually incredible.
3.) HARO (Help a Reporter Out)
HARO is where SEO link building and professional journalism meet up.
HARO, or Help a Reporter Out, is a platform where journalists submit requests for expert-source quotes and industry experts provide those quotes in exchange for backlinks.
Pricing:
At its core, HARO is incredibly simple to use but can still promise relevant and authoritative backlinking opportunities.
If you’re looking for backlinks, you sign up on the platform as a source. That means you’ll be providing quotes at the requests of the tool’s journalists.
HARO sends three emails daily based on the categories you have checked for yourself. In those emails will be the requests for quotes based on the journalist’s brief.
For instance, as a HARO source, you might get an email containing a request that reads: “Hi, I’m looking for expert tips on starting a flower garden in extremely humid climates.”
If you’re an expert in that area, that should be enough to go on.
The idea is that, when you respond with a quote, and it gets used, the writer will reference your name and who you are and link to your website.
Keep in mind, though, that getting backlinks attached to your quotes isn’t a hard and fast rule with HARO. You should check out the site where your quote would be appearing to confirm that they link to their sources.
4.) Hunter.io
A nice and easy link building tool that no SEO should be without.
When you’re doing link building, there’s almost nothing more important than acquiring the email addresses associated with a domain. Hunter.io lets you collect them.
Pricing:
It’s pretty simple. You want to do some outreach to a handful of cool sites you found in your niche, and they seem to have a good amount of broken external links that you know you can replace.
Just head over to Hunter.io and put in the domains.
The tool then produces all the email addresses it has for that domain, and it draws its data from as many sources as it can.
It’s worth it to mention that, after using it many times ourselves, the addresses aren’t always completely accurate.
However, at the same time, Hunter will verify email addresses for you, letting you be sure you’re emailing a real person. If you have email lists already, you can also upload those to Hunter to see if they’re verified and real.
If you’re a professional SEO link builder who does reachout pretty much all day, we’ll say again: you can’t be without Hunter.io.
5.) Semrush
Semrush is another go-to link building tool for the experienced SEO professional.
Semrush is one of the heavy hitters in the SEO tool space, bringing the heat when it comes to keyword research, site audits, and backlink data.
Pricing:
Semrush’s link building tools provide just about the same capabilities as Ahrefs:
The Backlinks Analytics feature breaks everything about a domain down like this:
You can see your whole backlink profile, referring domains, lost referring domains, and broken backlinks.
Find broken backlinks by going to Backlink Audit, putting a domain in as a project, and then going up to Target Pages. Check the “Target URL error” box to see all your backlinks that are returning an error (404):
Semrush provides you with all the data you need to manage your domain’s backlinks. That, along with everything else the tool can do for your digital marketing efforts, makes Semrush a winner on this list.
6.) Linkody
We’ve covered a lot of advanced link building tools here. Linkody is one for beginners.
If you’re just introducing yourself to link building for one or two sites, you don’t necessarily have a ton of money to throw around on big tool plans. Enter Linkody.
Pricing:
It isn’t just the inexpensive plans that make Linkody an interesting backlink tool. It also presents its data in simple, user-friendly ways while still pulling its weight as a link indexer (you can see above that the best plan gives you 40,000 monitored links).
Linkody shows you things such as the top pages that get the most backlinks, the DA and page authority of those backlinks, and the anchor text used to link to you.
We’ll say again that Linkody isn’t the most comprehensive link building tool that you’ll ever use, but for what you do get for these price points, it’s still awesome for beginners and deserves a mention here.
7.) GroupHigh
Let’s end with a real winner: the influencer-blogger outreach tool GroupHigh.
If doing link building is all about connecting with others in your niche across the Internet, then you’ll want to check out GroupHigh, as it is a repository for thousands and thousands of blogs and their owners’ contact information.
Pricing: $179-$499 monthly
GroupHigh plays a little coy with its pricing on the website, but we’ve provided plan figures above.
The tool is essentially a search engine for influencer-level bloggers in just about every industry niche you could imagine.
If you build links for yourself or your clients, just think of the opportunities for outreach with a tool such as GroupHigh. You get the bloggers’ followers, engagement rates, and recent content so you can really check them out.
Don’t worry, though; you can filter your results by all of those metrics so you see only what you want.
You’ll have to get creative with how you approach these parties for link building. With their followings, they probably get hundreds of emails per week looking for guest post opportunities.
This could be your chance to be different. Take the broken link building method instead. Who knows what the results might be?
Make no mistake, though: GroupHigh is an awesome platform if you know how to leverage it.
Let LSEO Drive Your Organic Growth Using These Link Building Tools
Did you see a tool you liked on this list? As true SEO nerds, we admit these are all pretty nifty, and we enjoy using them to build our clients’ backlink profiles here at LSEO as part of our link building services.
If you, like us, appreciate the ongoing importance of link building in 2023, and you’d like to start digging into the backlink game using tools like these, let’s have a conversation.
Contact LSEO today to get rolling on your link building campaigns.