8 Best Link Building Tools for 2021 and be on Top of SERPs

Are you wanting to take your link building strategy to the next level? Here are 8 of the best link building tools to use to increase links and climb your way to the top of SERPs.

What is link building?

Link building for SEO is the process of obtaining links, externally and internally, to your website. These links pass what is often referred to as ‘link juice,’ which helps to boost the SEO of your website and increase your domain authority. Positively impacting your search engine ranking positions (SERPs) and organic traffic. This is the ultimate goal of SEO, increasing traffic and generating higher conversions and sales for your business.

Links are considered one of the highest regarded ranking factors for Google and other search engines. The more backlinks and higher quality links your website has the higher you are likely to rank in search engine results. Therefore, link building is an extremely important aspect of your SEO strategy and requires a dedicated strategy all of its own.

How to create an effective link building strategy

There are many approaches to link building for SEO and a combination of techniques can be used to create an effective strategy.

• Guest blogging is a popular link building technique that obtains both links and recognition from other websites. Providing a valuable and useful piece of content to another website builds a relationship with them and their readers. Encouraging more traffic to your website and good link juice.

• Broken link building involves searching other websites for broken links within their content. Once the broken link is identified, you can create content to replace the broken link or you may already have relevant content to suggest as a link replacement.

• Mentions is another link building technique used to build links from existing brand mentions. This may be one of the easiest methods to obtain links as your brand name is already being mentioned and may be loved by the content creator.

You can read more about other link building strategies on our SEO guide.

Although these are a few great techniques to use to build backlinks, simply conducting outreach and requesting guest posts or link placements might not have the impact you desire. For example, links from websites with a low DA can negatively impact your SEO and limit your ranking in results pages.

However, an effective and successful link building strategy takes SEO metrics into account. Ensuring that the links being placed are of high quality and will positively impact your website’s SEO.

8 of the best link building tools

Metrics such as trust flow, citation flow and domain authority can all be obtained using link building tools. These online tools can also help track the progress and metrics of your own website. Helping you to monitor progress and ensure your SEO outreach is going in the right direction.

In addition, link building tools can help with competitor analysis and broken link building by analysing content. Some tools even offer email integration and can help you manage the entire strategy and outreach in one place. Thankfully, there are many link building tools to choose from and below are some of the best link building tools out there.

Majestic SEO

Majestic SEO prides itself on being the home of flow metrics: citation flow, trust flow, visibility flow and topical trust flow. These metrics indicate the quality and quantity of the links pointing to a website as well as its relevancy in its niche. All helping you to choose the right and most beneficial websites to place links.

Majestic SEO also tracks your website’s progress using Majestic campaigns. As well as providing extremely in-depth information about competitors and websites using on-site explorer and backlink checker tools.

You are entitled to a free URL check but access to their best tools are a paid service available as Lite, Pro or API versions. Below is a snapshot of what is available using Majestic:

Moz

Moz is another great free and paid link-building tool. One of my favourite parts of Moz is the chrome bar extension. Giving you a quick snapshot of the domain authority (DA), page authority (PA), spam score and the links pointing to that page. These metrics, although brief, are helpful to inform your choice of website’s to place links. The higher the numbers, the better.

Moz also has other tools such as their Link explorer. Providing detailed website link profiles of links and top pages. As well as, showing competitive link opportunities when comparing your website to 4 competitors.

This link building tool also provides keyword research, site audits to help with on-site SEO, and rank tracking to monitor your website’s progress. Ultimately, helping with almost all of your SEO needs, starting at only $99 per month.

Here’s what link explorer looks like…

Semrush

Semrush is a tool that can help most with competitor backlink analysis. Helping you to bulk check competitors backlinks, lost and gained links, and compare your progress against your competitors.

In addition, Semrush’s link building tool can help you organise and create an effective link building strategy. Providing suggested domains for links, organising your outreach by connecting to your Gmail account and tracking all of the progress. Managing your link building strategy from one place can help keep it under control and make it more manageable.

Semrush is a huge competitor in the SEO tool space and the range of tools it offers is reflected in its pricing with its pro membership at $119.95 per month. But you can sign up for free for access to some metrics. Below is what their backlink explorer looks like…

Ahrefs

Another heavyweight in the SEO tool sphere is Ahrefs. Offering one of the most comprehensive SEO analysis with their site explorer, keyword explorer, and content explorer tools. The site explorer is the tool you will use most for your link building strategy.

Ahref’s site explorer allows you to analyse your own and your competitor’s backlink profiles. Including new, lost, or broken links which is good for broken link building techniques, As well as, checking linking domains to also obtain similar links as your competitors.

Although Ahrefs doesn’t manage your outreach, it has one of the most efficient, extensive and powerful databases available. Therefore, it is able to offer in-depth data and information to fully inform your link building strategy.

Ahrefs does have a 7 day trial for $7 and their standard pricing starts at $99 per month

Ninjaoutreach

Ninjaoutreach is all about link building in as many ways a possible. From guest posting, influencer marketing, podcasts and roundups to build links effectively. This tool starts by finding the best contacts in your niche to reach out to. It can also connect to your email account to seamlessly conduct your outreach to the right email accounts.

Take advantage of their scheduler and outreach automater to send out as many emails as possible. Helping you to get results faster with bulk outreach and automated follow-ups so no contact misses your email again.

Ninjaoutreach starts at $119 per month and gives you access to all of their tools including their influencer marketing agency software and thousands of influencer contacts.

Linkody

Linkody is one of the top link building tools to monitor your link building strategy. Firstly because it sends email notifications of lost backlinks and other link updates to help you monitor progress.

Conduct competitor analysis and identify their links, top pages and broken links for your strategy. You can also use this tool to evaluate your website’s backlink profile and identify harmful backlinks that could be impacting your SEO efforts.

Linkody offers a 30 day free trial and pricing starts at $13.90 per month so can more affordable for small businesses.

Link research tools

Link research tools is an extensive, link focused online tool you can use to conduct your link building strategy. Offering a wide variety of tools such as link auditing. The penalty recovery tool helps Google to index your disavow file quicker and avoid any penalties. As well as, their link quality checks ensuring your outreach to the best websites for high-quality links.

Competitor analysis is an essential part of this link building tool that help to inform and obtain new contacts for outreach. Link research tools also offer backlink monitoring to track SEO progress and see if the strategy is successful or not.

This tool also has a free trial for $17 for 7 days and standard pricing starts at $499 per month.

Buzzstream

Buzzstream combines PR and SEO to bring you a fully comprehensive system for link building. Connecting with your email account, this tool can help you manage your entire link building strategy, different projects, and outreach all in one place.

Start with research and build contact lists from Google SERPs, URL uploads, and social profiles. Send and personalise your outreach emails to the right contacts and automate follow-ups directly on Buzzstream. Monitor progress and evaluate the effectiveness of your current strategy and make adjustments where necessary.

Overall, Buzzstream offers a great end to end service for your whole PR marketing and link building needs. Pricing starts at $24 per month to $999 per month with all plans having a free trail to ensure it’s right for you.