14+ Link Building Tools

‌One of the most effective ways to improve organic rankings and get more traffic to your site is through backlink building. Backlinks are links that lead back to your website, and they are a major factor when search engines rank pages for users’ search terms.

Backlinks signal to search engines that another site recognizes you and thinks you’re legitimate. It’s just one way that Google determines the authority and quality of web pages. Thus, backlink building is a worthy endeavor to boost your search engine visibility and connect with your target audiences. 

It also helps you to create partnerships with other websites, blogs, and authors in your industry. When you reach out to these sources to throw out a guest post idea or ask if they’ll link to your site, you’re growing your network and potentially generating more buzz around your business in the long run. 

Fortunately, there are a lot of tools that can help you with backlink building. They help you discover link opportunities, find the right contacts, reach out via accurate email addresses, and deliver key backlink tracking and data solutions. 

This post will walk through 14 top tools for your link-building strategy and 3 platforms that can help you specifically with email discovery.

Here’s a table that summarizes the main features of each link building tool.

	Link Opportunities	Contact Research	Email Outreach	Backlink Tracking	Backlink Analysis
Ahrefs	X			X	X
CognitiveSEO	X			X	X
Hunter		X
LinkAssistant	X	X	X	X	X
Linkio	X	X	X	X	X
Linkody	X			X	X
Link Prospector	X
Majestic	X			X	X
Monitor Backlinks	X			X	X
Moz	X			X	X
Raven	X			X	X
Respona	X	X	X		X
RocketReach		X
Semrush	X	X	X	X	X
Ubersuggest	X
URL Profiler	X	X
VoilaNorbert		X
Whitespark	X

1. Respona

Respona is an all-in-one blogger outreach platform outfitted with all of the necessary tools to set up and launch an email campaign of any kind, be it for link building, digital PR, marketing, or even sales.

It’s integrated with Google’s search engine for streamlined prospecting, and pulls metrics like Domain Rating and Ahrefs Rank directly from Ahrefs.

An easy-to-use email finder is also included, making it extremely easy to find the right person’s contact information without having to rely on any other tools.

Respona’s intuitive interface guides you through every step of creating and launching your outreach campaigns, keeps track of your performance, and also the status of your conversations with each prospect.

The tool will be especially useful to link builders, as it was initially used to help Visme scale their link building outreach efforts, helping the website gain over 2 million organic visitors a month.

• Automated email outreach
• Great for prospecting and finding contact information
• Deep personalization
• Built-in analytics and reporting

2. Ahrefs

Ahrefs offers link opportunity discovery, backlink tracking, and backlink analysis. While this tool doesn’t give you that same access to lead emails, there are a few ways it stands apart from other tools. It has the world’s largest live backlink index, and It’s pretty easy for anyone to use. 

• Link opportunities: The Link Intersect feature allows you to see who is linking to your competitors. Key metrics help you discover pages that were just published that mention your keyword, competitors’ newly acquired backlinks, and more. These tools bring you opportunities for link building.
• Backlink tracking: The Backlink Checker tool also allows you to track any website or URL to see SEO metrics. Pull reports on the number of backlinks or referring domains, domain rating, and more. The Site Explorer tool allows you to put in any domain, and you’ll get a list of all backlinks to it.
• Backlink analysis: Ahrefs has the second-most active crawler on Google and a robust data infrastructure that they have created. It uses Google Keyword Planner to pull in keyword information.

3. CognitiveSE‌O

CognitiveSEO delivers tools that improve SEO and increase traffic. Backlink analysis tools include the following:

• Link opportunities: Conduct side-by-side comparisons of your competitors’ link strategies so you always know what their approach is. Research situations and commonalities between sites to discover new opportunities.
• Backlink tracking: Use the Link Navigator tool to browse all your links and generate reports, including the Google Disavow File.
• Backlink analysis: CognitiveSEO brings in data from trusted databases, and the platform also crawls and analyzes links, delivering a backlink audit.

4. LinkAssistant

You can find thousands of link-building opportunities with LinkAssistant. This comprehensive software crawls 7.1 billion pages daily. 

• Link opportunities: Discover opportunities via guest post tracking, active giveaways, and more. The Competitor Backlinks tool gives you hundreds of the most relevant prospects based on a competitor’s backlink profile. Find out which prospects have already linked to competitors. 
• Contact research: LinkAssistant helps you gather contact emails automatically, so you can contact prospects using the platform’s outreach tools.
• Email outreach: The tool provides templates to help you speed up the process, or you can create your own.
• Backlink tracking: You can run tests regularly to verify links and make sure they’re up. Generate reports to see how everything is going on any device. Monitor the value of a prospect with SEO factors like domain authority and age, social media analytics, and more.
• Backlink analysis: LinkAssistant allows users to integrate with third-party accounts like Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and Moz API key. The Penalty Risk metrics prevent harmful links from being used.

‌5. Linkio

Linkio provides backlink monitoring, SERP link analysis, and more. Link building features include‌:

• Link opportunities: Linkio has a rank tracker that will pull backlinks for your ranking page and gets the top 10 Google results for a keyword to analyze backlink data. You then know how your backlink profile compares to competitors and how to beat them with link building.
• Contact research: Linkio scrapes blogger author names and finds their email. You can also find emails in bulk.
• Email outreach: Linkio includes automatic outreach to help build your prospect lists faster. It integrates with Gmail and Google Sheets, and you can create email and follow-up email templates.
• Backlink tracking: Backlink monitoring with Linkio helps you check backlink status, view SEO metrics, and monitor changes. You can get email reports daily or weekly that indicate backlink changes.
• Backlink analysis: Linkio integrates with Moz for the domain authority, page authority, and spam score of every link, and Ahrefs API for domain rating and URL rating.

6. Linkody

Linkody is a backlink tracking and monitoring solution that boasts above-average accuracy. All links and domains can be managed in one place. Backlink features include:‌

• Link opportunities: Learn about your competitors’ link-building strategies so you can alter your approach accordingly. Compare your link profile with your competitors and see their most linked pages to discover new opportunities.
• ‌Backlink tracking: You’ll get access to complete reports about your backlink anchor text and keywords, gaining a complete picture of your link profile that helps you with decision-making.

‌Backlink analysis: Use Linkody to uncover harmful backlinks using metrics like the spam score, Moz domain authority, Google index status, and more. You can connect Linkody with Google Analytics and Ahrefs as well to view even more data from a range of sources.

7. Link Prospector‌

Link Prospector from Citation Labs is solely focused on connecting you with the right opportunities to build backlinks and boost your online presence. Here are the details:

• Link opportunities: Identify guest posting opportunities and get access to bloggers and writers who might be interested in partnering with you. You can also search for certain topics in news stories and find pages where your site will fit in nicely. Link Prospector additionally connects you with domain experts you might want to interview and forums that apply to your industry. Your top prospects can then be easily exported.

8. Majestic

Majestic is an affordable backlink analysis tool that delivers insights from a number of backlinks to anchor text analysis, helping you discover who’s linking to your site. A snapshot of some of its features:

• Link opportunities: View data about competitor websites and discover mutual links between any two domains to find the best opportunities. 
• Backlink tracking: Majestic Campaigns helps you track sites and view scores like the Citation and Trust Flows that provide information about link quality.
• Backlink analysis: Majestic crawls the web and doesn’t rely on third-party backlink data. View every site’s top backlinks and compare metrics for any website or URL. A great feature with Majestic is Link Context, which allows users to search to discover what kind of link you’re looking at, what the surrounding content is like (images, text, other links, etc.), the estimated page position, and other sites with nearby links.

9. Monitor Backlinks‌

Monitor Backlinks is solely focused on links and allows you to keep tabs on your backlinks as well as those of the competition. Here are the key features to know:‌

• Link opportunities: Find out which backlinks are good and bad, for both your site and your competitors. You can see which high-quality sites you need to contact to build your links. You’re notified when new links go back to your site, too.
• Backlink tracking: You can track which sites remove your links after you’ve guest posted. Also, you can pull data about rankings on Google and how they change over time because of backlinks.
• Backlink analysis: Data from Moz, Ahrefs, Majestic, and Google Webmaster Tools can be integrated into Monitor Backlinks so your data is in one place.

10. Moz‌‌ Link Explorer

Moz is a holistic SEO software with many different tools for marketers. The Link Explorer tool from Moz gives comprehensive link metrics for any site. Key tools for backlink building are:

• Link opportunities: Discover broken links to your site to maintain quality traffic. You can also research competitor backlinks, comparing what comprises their link profiles, and see how they’re getting their links. Link Intersect will show who is linking to your competitors but not to your site.
• Backlink tracking: Link Explorer from Moz allows you to generate reports that contain link tracing lists for tracking link-building progress.
• Backlink analysis: Moz utilizes a link index crawler, Dotbot, and gives you a complete analysis for a URL. You can check the spam score, research top content that’s outperforming other pages, and analyze anchor text when sites are linking to you.

11. Raven

Run backlink analyses on complete domains or single web pages with Raven’s backlink analysis tool. This SEO solution and backlink checker provides:

• Link opportunities: Locate backlink opportunities and strategies with Backlink Explorer, showing you who is linking to your website or that of your competitors. Send a link to the Backlink Manager when you’ve identified opportunities for growth.
• Backlink tracking: Generate metrics that show how your link-building efforts are going, including link status and type, domain authority, data added, referring URL, and more.
• Backlink analysis: Raven pulls in data from Moz and Majestic to help you round out backlink research and create a backlink profile for competitors.

12. Semrus‌h

Semush gives you lots of options for link building. The tool is the largest backlink database out there and helps you find backlink opportunities to boost your SEO. Key features are:

• Link opportunities: Monitor brand mentions and competitor brand mentions in real-time to generate ideas.
• Contact research: The Lead Generation Tool collects information about website visitors, including their email addresses. This platform creates a customized widget to place on your website.
• Email outreach: Leads will receive their website audit results in an email, and you can customize your CTA and email message for new leads.
• Backlink tracking: Robust backlink tracking is offered as well, and you can track up to five competing profiles through the platform. 
• Backlink analysis: SEMRush uses its own backlink crawler and database of trillions of backlinks to help you discover and track backlinks and monitor any domain’s link-building progress. Get notified when backlinks are deleted and use the bulk analysis tool to look at data from a range of competitors at the same time.

13. Ubersuggest‌

Search Ubersuggest for any domain or keyword to improve your SEO approach and get valuable competitor information. You can see ranking data linked to organic keywords, and the keyword tool will deliver suggestions. You can also view what kinds of content get the most shares, giving you insight into which topics will perform the best as written content.

• Link opportunities: Discover what other brands are doing so you can gain a competitive edge. View the content that people are linking to, then reach out and ask them to link to your site. This will improve your understanding of which links lead to better rankings.

14. URL Profiler‌

Get URL data quickly with URL Profiler, which audits links, content, social data, and more with no limits on the number of domains you can scan. Other features include:

• Link opportunities: Discover more opportunities with the Backlink Checker and site scan from URL Profiler. You can view content quality statistics, anchor information, social engagement metrics for domains, and more. URL Profiler also connects with Mozscape, Majestic, Ahrefs, and Google Analytics API. You can generate reports, check site traffic, and target the right sites using topical link prospecting.
• Contact research: URL Profiler scrapes and extracts website email addresses to give you the contacts you need to start reaching out right away.

15. Whitespark‌

When you’re looking to boost your rankings and improve local search rankings, Whitespark can help with SEO tools and managed citations. As far as backlinks, here’s what you’ll get with Whitespark:

• Link opportunities: Whitespark’s Local Citation Finder uncovers your top-ranked competitors’ citations so you can find new opportunities. You can then submit your business to new citation sites to get more links and visits. Whitespark is concerned with helping you find the most relevant places to link and prioritize which prospects to focus on.

Contact Research Tools

Sometimes all you may need to get started is a qualified email. These three tools are focused on helping you find emails when you have other basic information about whom you want to reach:

1. VoilaNorbert

When you need to get more prospect emails, VoilaNorbert helps you do it quickly and accurately. This tool helps you find emails for blogs and authors to reach out to for link opportunities. The Email Finder Tool allows you to enter a name or company URL for a prospect, and the platform will give you a valid email address instantly. The tool finds emails via searches and a database and runs an email through a verification process to ensure it’s accurate. VoilaNorbert has incorporated a certainty score so you can assess the quality of each email address.

This tool integrates with lots of other solutions, including Salesforce, Google Chrome, Drip, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Formstack, Zapier, Pipedrive, Mailshake, SendGrid, Jotform, ReplyApp, and Close.com.

2. Hunter

Hunter is another email discovery tool with an index of over 100 million email addresses in the Domain Search solution. This unique search tool lists everyone that works at a business with the name and email information that can be found online. Users can get 25 free searches each month.

You’ll know how certain Hunter is about each verified email address with the confidence score for each. Save leads in the platform or export them to integrate with a CRM tool. The tool helpfully shows you where the email address came from along with access dates.

Aside from the Domain Search, you can search for the email addresses of article authors and any professional. Hunter integrates with Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho, and Zapier.

3. RocketReach

Finally, RocketReach is an impressive email-finding tool with access to 450 million professionals and 17 million companies around the globe. Use dozens of search criteria to narrow things down, including industry, location, position, and more.

The browser extension ensures you can locate leads on Google, AngelList, Crunchbase, and LinkedIn, and it pairs with application tracking systems and CRMs like Salesforce, HubSpot, Zapier, and others.

What’s great about RocketReach is that you can pull up full profile data, emails, and phone numbers from over 50 sites with one search.

Takeaway

These solutions all have their strong points. To find the right tool for your needs, think about where your brand is struggling the most with links. This may be finding qualified email addresses or conducting competitive analyses that help you strengthen the way you approach backlink building. 

Whatever your needs are, there’s a solution for it. Make sure the tool you decide on integrates with your existing tools and workflows to avoid a big learning curve. Factor in a budget, and remember that you can use some of these backlink-building tools together to craft a holistic approach.