5 Essential Link Building Tools

Author: Paulina Piaskowska, Content Writer

Having a great backup in the form of tools for link building is a must-have for most outreach campaigns. The alternative is looking for backlinks opportunities by hand, which is both time-consuming and less effective.

While it certainly can be done, it makes sense to explore various link building tools and what they can offer you.    

We came up with our list of the five most essential link building tools that you’ll need. These tools are equipped with lots of fantastic features to make your job as effortless and effective as possible. Some of them are paid, and some are completely free. All offer outstanding quality. 

1. Google

Google is a fantastic (and often overlooked) resource for any SEO pro who wants to enhance their link building process. Why wouldn’t you want to use the tool with the largest index of web pages in the world? 

By using advanced search operators and commands, you can search the engine efficiently and locate relevant sites to gain backlinks from. 

Core Features

• Engine with the largest index of web pages worldwide.
• Search operators can be used to help identify link prospects. 

Google’s advanced search commands can be used to help you to:

• Find link building prospects
• Find the social profiles and information for these prospects so that you can reach out to them for a backlink
• Find mentions of your brand/website to identify other link building opportunities

The most helpful operators for locating link building opportunities are: 

• inurl: – use this to find specific words or phrases within URLs
• intitle: – use this to find specific words or phrases within the page title
• OR – use this to search for X or Y.

Here’s a search command that you can use to find link building opportunities within your niche: [keyword] (intitle:ranking OR intitle:rankings)

In the example above, you can see there are many sites publishing articles about the best dog food. If you have a dog food business, you can reach out to these websites and ask them to consider including you within their list along with a backlink to your website.

Check out our blog post on Google advanced search operators to find even more tips on how to improve your link building tactics.

Why Does Using Google Make Sense for Link Building?

Make the most of Google’s index base and quickly identify relevant link building opportunities for your website. It’s very easy to use, so anyone can benefit from it, regardless of your expertise level. 

Pricing

It’s completely free. Google is one of the best free link building tools available to use today.

2. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is an invaluable resource for all SEO-related processes, including link building. This tool offers one of the most extensive backlink indexes in the world, which contains over 3 trillion live backlinks.

Even if you’re making your first steps in the industry, Ahrefs is a must have tool as it comes with many essential features that can help with link building research.

Core Features

Apart from its outstanding backlink index, Ahrefs presents you with:

• Content Explorer – a database with over 9 billion pages to explore. The feature allows you to find relevant content and many link building opportunities. The most important part is that it’s not overly complicated to use (see the tutorial here), and you get really useful information for your link building strategy. 
• Keywords Explorer – a feature that gives you in-depth information about keywords and suggests how many backlinks you will need to rank in the first positions on Google. This allows you to plan your link building efforts according to your competitors for the keywords you want to target.

• Link Intersect – this feature offers you a look into sites that link to your competitors but not you. Quick and easy way to find backlink opportunities with domains that link to your competitors.

All you need to do is enter your competing domains (or pages), then your down domain and click “Show link opportunities”.

You’ll then see a list of all websites where your competitors have backlinks from, but you do not.

Why Do We Recommend Ahrefs for Link Building? 

It’s quite simple – Ahrefs is a comprehensive tool that offers you many features for deep analysis and finding great link building opportunities. For example, Link Intersect significantly improves the process of searching for potential backlinks.

By showing you which sites link to your competitors, you get a list of domains you may approach in your link building campaign. 

Pricing

Ahrefs plans start at £79 (or $99) a month. It’s not a free tool, but it’s well worth its price. 

3. Hunter.io

Tools for selecting sites to acquire links from are very relevant, but this is not the only type of tool available for link building. Once you’ve found your link prospects, the next step is to reach out to them to get your backlink. That’s where something like Hunter.io should be your go to tool. 

All you have to do is type in the name of the person you’re looking to contact and the domain they’re publishing on or are involved with, and you can get their contact information in no time. 

If you’re not sure who you are looking for, you can also start with the name of the company and go from there. 

Core Features

• Email Finder – allows you to find the email address of people you wish to contact.

• Email Verifier – verifies email addresses.
• Google Sheets Add-on – makes it possible to add all the email addresses to your Google sheet.

What Makes Hunter.io One of the Best Tools for Link Building?

Although it’s not 100% foolproof, Hunter.io is an excellent resource for finding people, which is the backbone of any successful link building campaign. With this tool finding the right people is easier and more time-efficient. 

Pricing

Hunter.io is free if you make less than 25 monthly searches.

If you want to have access to more, there are several plans in different price ranges, starting from $48 a month. 

4. HARO

HARO (Help A Reporter Out) offers you another opportunity to get backlinks by providing valuable information to journalists.

The tool is a network through which specialists can answer questions sent by journalists, who then feature these answers with links to the source in their pieces. 

First, journalists send their requests to HARO. Then HARO sends the request to their users via email. HARO users pitch their answers, and if they get selected, they are featured in a piece and usually receive a backlink. 

Core Features

• Keyword Alerts – you get to set up your filter according to specific keywords, which makes it easier to target relevant topics for your link building campaign. It’s important to mention that this feature is available only for users with paid plans. 

Why Is HARO Essential for Link Building?

HARO offers you a great opportunity to use your knowledge and experience within your niche to gain backlinks from relevant websites. It is a valuable strategy to receive links from sites that potentially wouldn’t feature you otherwise. 

It takes some effort and time to monitor requests and offer your responses, but HARO makes it easy to diversify your efforts in order to gain more relevant backlinks. It’s a perfect tool for experts in their industries who want to share their knowledge and gain valuable exposure in exchange. 

Pricing

HARO is free, but you can gain access to additional features like Keyword alerts by purchasing one of their paid plans. Their prices start from $19 a month.

5. Pitchbox

Another incredibly comprehensive tool made specifically for managing outreach and link building campaigns is Pitchbox.

With Pitchbox, you can create and manage various outreach campaigns – anything from Blogger Outreach to “Hot Off The Press” outreach, that allows you to find opportunities for backlinks in the latest press releases. 

Core Features

Pitchbox has many features in store, but here are a few most essential.

• CSV Import – gives you the ability to import your data from existing campaigns and manage them on the platform. 
• Advanced Operator Search – made for searching with specific entitled, inurls, and relevant keywords.
• Contact Database – a database of influencers who would be valuable in your marketing strategy.
• Link Monitoring – an incredibly important feature that allows you to closely monitor everything that goes on with your links. You can see how many links you have acquired through each email and the links you’ve lost. 
• Broken Link Discovery – a great tool to see which links that link to your domain are broken and should be removed. 
• Email Sequencing – this feature helps you automate your campaigns with automatic follow-ups.

Why Do We Recommend Pitchbox?

It’s an impressive platform that offers its users a multitude of tools to carry out outreach campaigns. You can personalise your emails, monitor all the links, set up automatic follow-up messages, monitor the work of your team, discover opportunities for backlinks, and have access to many valuable reports. 

Pitchbox gives you all of that and more, so it deserves the spot on our list of the best link building tools. 

Pricing

Pitchbox offers a few paid plans, with the most affordable one costing $195 a month. 

The Bottom Line

Carrying out the most effective link building campaign takes time and dedication. But you can achieve this goal easier with these helpful link building tools that are comprehensive and user-friendly. 

We hope that our recommendations included in this article will prove to be helpful in your link building endeavours! If you need help with building authority to your website with backlinks, don’t hesitate to reach out – our team will help you grow your site’s organic visibility with a strategic link building project.