Authority Spy

Also useful for affiliate marketing and product development, Authority Spy is an effective link building tool as it will identify the key people from your milieu with whom you could network to your advantage. Enter your keyword and location and AuthoritySpy does the rest automatically, analysing Twitter, FaceBook, Google +, Klout and Technorati among others, and presenting you with a report which may be downloaded into a .csv file. Not only do you receive contact information for these key players, they are each given an authority ranking enabling you to choose from the best of the best. The fee for this tool is a one-off payment of $27 for the basic package and $47 for the pro version while the platinum package commands a monthly fee.

Broken Link Builder

This is one of the best SEO link building tools for finding broken links quickly without having to manually search and click. Simply test and grade your keywords (an important step as Citation Labs charge per keyword), then let the software scour the Internet for broken links with its automated search queries, check the links for you and then within a matter of 30-60 minutes your report will be ready. It will provide such information as the number of links to that page, a grading between A-F for how relevant it is to your keyword and the archive.org page of the broken URL so you can see the former content. There is the option to ‘reserve’ a particularly profitable link for yourself so your competitors can’t find it and a ‘delete’ option to clear away the chaff. But best of all it offers a 4-column export detailing the broken link URL, the anchor text of the broken link, the linking page and the linking domain. A starter account will set you back $67pcm, which includes 15 credits which will buy you 15 keywords, plus $12 per additional keyword. There is a 30-day money back guarantee.

Dibz Link Prospecting Tool

Launched in April 2016, DIBZ was designed to be a time-saving advanced link prospecting tool suitable for the professional SEO agency or individual performing large-scale link building campaigns. DIBZ offers a convenient method of defining opportunities, searching for them with your preferred keywords and producing a downloadable table of prospects rated by relevancy, thus enabling you to select only the best opportunities. Alternatively, the table may be downloaded to Pitchbox. Presenting a complex process in a simple but comprehensive manner, DIBZ uses Google API for spam metrics, and Ahrefs API for measuring domain authority. It will also capture any contact information featured on sites in your results list. There are three packages available, different only in terms of number of results, degree of possible customisation, results depth and number of users permitted and each with a free seven-day trial available (upon registration of credit card). The cheapest/smallest package will cost you $69 pcm.

Guest Post Tracker

Guest posting on high-traffic sites can help to build your brand and boost your rankings by driving targeted traffic back to your site via the links in your text, provided that you choose the appropriate blogs to guest post on, and that the content you provide has value to your readers. Guest Post Tracker is one of the best link building tools in this regard. This directory will make short work of identifying suitable locations for your guest blog, but be warned – many of the 1000+ sites featured will charge a fee to allow you to post. Whilst there is also a fee to use GuestPostTracker, it is minimal at $47 (one-time fee), and good value at that since the list is kept updated and is therefore much more accurate than the free lists available. You also gain access to the GuestPostTracker software which helpfully keeps note of your submissions, the date you posted and the anchor text targeted. GuestPosTracker is straightforward to use as it is essentially a database; you just browse the categories, choose your sector, peruse the list and choose the blog that you want to submit a post to. There is a 30-day money back option with this product.

Linkbird

Linkbird is a relative newcomer, designed to be a holistic solution for SEO project management with a selection of tools available for search engine optimisation, content management and online PR as well as link building which we’ll look at here. Using Linkbird you can discover who it is your competitors have links with and then approach the same effective sources for links of your own. Combining keyword research, rank tracking, backlink analysis and link building, Linkbird offers one, centralised control panel for finding link building opportunities, analysing the links available and monitoring your outreach efforts if required. ‘Sitehunter’ is the main backlink analysis tool, operated by inputting a competing domain and downloading their links. Sitehunter combines Google Suggest, Google Search, XOVI and other metrics into one powerful tool. You can then choose to add the best links to your ‘link manager’ to approach via outreach. The link manager stores information on your links like a mini database (to which you can also import any links you’ve already identified) and you’ll receive an email alert when you gain a new backlink. LinkBird offer a free 14 day trial period, no credit card details required, but if you decide to sign up, membership is by 12-monthly contract. The small package, suitable for one team member starts at €99pcm and the largest, suitable for three team members is €399pcm, with the option to add more projects or keywords at a fixed cost.

Linkstant

Linkstant, a snippet of code that you can add to each page of your site, monitors your website for new links and notifies you immediately by email or RSS feed. Sign up using your Google account and Linkstant will keep you abreast of the effectiveness and quality of your new links and reach, instantly discover links from reviews of your product, and even permit you to send an instant message to those who have linked to you, providing you with the opportunity to correct link destination or anchor text errors other sites may have made. This feature also incidentally provides a chance to contact any plagiarists who may be negatively affecting your ranking by their use of your content. Link filters, operating on a page or domain level, offer the ability to exclude unwanted referrals and the ‘report links’ feature means you can report spammy links straight from your links page. Linkstant is priced at $7pcm for small businesses and $27pcm for enterprise companies and offers a support email address.

Ninja Outreach

Ninja Outreach is an outreach tool, which will use your keywords to find guest posts, podcast guests, bloggers, Twitter prospects, leads, contact information, affiliates, and influencers from a database of hundreds of thousands of potential contacts. In terms of link building, Ninja Outreach’s main feature is its ability to search for keywords that you want to target for your site. Results are taken from multiple search engines so the results presented are drawn from the entire indexed Internet. Once you’ve got your resulting prospective sites, you can compile them into a list, which is crawled to retrieve email contacts from each site. You can then use Ninja Outreach’s Influencer Outreach Tool and the email templates supplied to begin your outreach campaign. The smallest package, ‘Blogger’, is for one user and stores 1500 contacts for $49pcm and if you wish to automate any of your emailing or searching you can choose a larger package. A free 14-day trial of each package is available.

Remove’em

If you have been hit with an unnatural links penalty or negative SEO, enter a URL or domain into Virante’s Remove’em and the tool will collect your backlink data from various sources, de-dupe the list, and assign quality scores to each link. You are presented with a list of links it thinks you should remove, along with a form letter and contact information for the owners of those domains. You’ll still need quite a lot of human intervention to review the links it flags, choose the ones you want removed and email the owners, so it may be advisable to engage an affordable SEO firm instead. You can export the list and use it with Google’s Disavow tool. Remove’em is offered in two ways, either ‘self-service’ or ‘full service’. The self-service options are ‘Lifetime Account’ for a one-off payment of $249, a one-site subscription for $99 pcm or ‘Agency Subscription’ for $899 pcm. Full service costs $2,000 for initial set up, followed by $10 per link removal for which they require a deposit in advance. Support is by email only and limited to office hours.

Pitchbox

Pitchbox provides a single platform for Influencer Outreach & Content Marketing making it easier to find link building opportunities in real quantity. The key features are prospecting, supplying you with targeted opportunities including contact information, URLs, social media profiles, etc; scalable outreach with the option to automate or not, as required; flexible automated follow up which you can set to appropriate contact times and number of contact attempts; integrated email manager, relationship manager which corrals all your info for each relationship and, last but not least, performance reporting. The stand-out features of Pitchbox are the ability to personalise your emails to increase response rates and the automatically generated charts giving you and your clients useful data visualisation. Pitchbox is one of the more complex SEO tools and may take some time to fully explore, but will automate the ground work so you can get on with making the contacts you need. Pitchbox offers a 15-day free trial, no card details required. Four packages are offered here; the smallest ‘Start Up’ package for one user is priced at $95pcm, the largest ‘Enterprise’, is $1500pcm and all but the largest are discounted if you pay annually rather than monthly. If you are non-profit, a ‘special program’ is available.

Scrapebox

Scrapebox was originally built for black hat SEO but is useful for alleviating the monotony of white hat link building tasks including link prospecting, finding contact information and keyword research. Scrapebox has enormous functionality – as you’d expect from a self-proclaimed ‘Swiss army knife’ of SEO – so be prepared to invest some time exploring the features. It is a one-off payment of $197 (on offer at $97 at the time of writing) allowing you to run one copy of the software; the regular upgrades do not incur any additional fee. There are a number of tutorials on the site, and support is via contact form to which they aim to respond within 24 hours.

Impactana

For the research phase of your outreach campaign, Impactana is a linkbuilding tool that will analyse the top content on your topic and help you to discover much more about a piece of content than just its social sharing metrics. Here, you can find popular content, examine social signals to establish what is most effective over the long term with your audience and monitor user engagement. This tool will show you the number of backlinks, views, and comments a piece of content has received. Crucially, the views and comments metrics can also help to determine if a piece of content has a lot of shares or links but no traffic, and whether those shares or links have been purchased. Not only can you find killer content, but you can then identify key influencers to get your content seen. Impactana is offered in Basic, Enterprise, Agency and Pro packages ranging from €99 – €699pcm (discounted if you pay annually) and each features a free seven-day trial although credit card details are required.

Link Research Tools

Drawing link data from 24 separate sources, Link Research Tools (LRT) is a comprehensive tool suite consisting of ten individual tools for link analysis, identifying link building opportunities and monitoring your competition. One of the many useful features of LRT is the ‘DTOX’ report which highlights spammy links. Straightforward to use, just supply your backlink files (exported from Moz, Majestic, SEMRush or your own URL list), and LRT will explore inbound links and provide you with a DTOX score rating the quality of your links (a score of 1000+ is going to cause problems with Google). LRTs filtering capabilities then help you check through links much more quickly than you could otherwise manage. LRT also includes tools which can assess the potential risks of new links, notify you when you gain new links and recover lost links. The Missing Links Tool compares your backlinks against your competitors and produces a list of domains where your competitors have links but you don’t. There are four monthly payment plans for LRT ranging from Starter at €149pcm to Agency at €1799pcm with extra time offered for free for advance payments. If you only require Link Detox, that is available as a separate product for €449pcm + VAT. There is plenty of support on the site; each tool has both a written and video tutorial, there’s also a Help and Feedback link on each page, and one-to-one support is available by email or phone.

Buzzstream.com

Buzzstream is a relationship and outreach CRM that allows you to manage and grow a large volume of outreach campaigns. It is not as straightforward to use as the other SEO tools we’ve seen so far, so we only recommend it if you are planning a really large scale link acquisition campaign or for professional SEO experts. If you are doing it yourself, there are tutorials to watch and a helpful support team on hand to get you started, and there’s no doubt that Buzzstream will speed things up considerably, although you might want to audit your data regularly to make sure it’s being used to best effect.  But there’s nothing automatic about this process; the people that you will outreach to with the aim of having them link to you will assess your site and make their decision based on what they see, so you must make sure you have plenty to offer.  On the plus side, the chance of being penalised for this type of link by Google is minimal because they’re editorially reviewed and approved which is exactly the kind of link Google wants you to acquire. If your campaign is about gradual, organic traffic growth that survives updates, Buzzstream fits the bill. There is a free 30-day trial period followed by negligible monthly fees.

Link Prospector

A link building research tool, Linkprospector will reduce your search time significantly. Supplied with a complete list of your keywords it will quickly provide an enormous number of potential partner sites, but, as Citation Labs freely admit, you will still need to spend time selecting your opportunities from the resulting data, so you might prefer to consider retaining an organic SEO company instead. The tool has a user-friendly interface and has the ability to export what it finds to a .csv file or Buzzstream. We recommend that you first watch the help videos on the site and then take some time to streamline the way you process the mass of data produced, but with a basic account costing only $5pcm and a 30-day money back guarantee Linkprospector is a boon to the large-scale link builder.

Group High

Taking a slightly different tack, GroupHigh helps you identify influential blogs, automates research, and measures reader engagement to give your outreach marketing pinpoint accuracy. With around 15 million active blogs on their database ready to search by a huge range of filters, this will take the legwork out of establishing new, suitable contacts for your outreach campaign. You can also use the software to evaluate your existing database. GroupHigh will find the contact person or form and add their details to your account. The lists you create can then be exported as a .csv file. You’ll still need some human input to eliminate occasional irrelevancies or duplications, but GroupHigh claims that this software reduces your search time by a factor of 4. Designed with the PR firm and content agency in mind, this product does not come cheap; you can expect fees to run to the region of $9,000 per annum.

Inkybee

Inkybee is one of the available free online link building tools that provides a means of simplifying blogger and PR outreach by identifying the key influencers in a particular field. Their software allows you to search for influencers by posts, blogs, or even tags within their posts, and will return a mass of data. Knowing things like location, engagement (based on social shares, blog comments, etc.), audience size, posts per week, days since last post, inbound links, Twitter followers, Facebook likes, Moz metrics, mozRank, Page Authority and Domain Authority allows you to select the most appropriate locations for your blog. A ‘discovery’ job, using keyphrases commonly used by bloggers in your niche, should take a matter of minutes, but you will get an email notification when it’s completed. Unless you specify otherwise, the search will run again every 6 hours, which gives you some idea of just how up-to-date your information can be. You can sort the resulting list of influencers in any order you like from the metrics presented and also have the option to export to PDF, .csv or Excel, although if you keep it within InkyBee, you can use their suite of outreach tools, too. These will track who you have reached out to, and you can also add blog posts, allowing you to monitor engagement and social shares with Google Analytics. There is a 14-day free trial – no credit card required – and a range of packages starting at $79 per month for one client/user up to $249 per month for a large team of up to 8 users and 20 clients. Bespoke plans are also available.

Linkody

Purely link-focused, Linkody is essentially an automatic backlink checker taking a three-pronged attack on link building. It will find and monitor your backlinks and tip you off when you gain or lose them, assess the value of your backlinks, and provide insight into your competitor’s link strategy. Upload a list of your links from your Excel or .csv file and Linkody will constantly monitor them, saving you the time and effort that would otherwise be required. If you get new backlinks, if one is removed, or even if your competitor gets a new one, you will receive an email notification. In short, Linkody will do everything automatically that you would previously have had to do manually. Other Linkody features include: a disavow tool, instant link location, assessment of your landing pages, daily or weekly email notifications, Moz data, PDF white label reports which you can customise with your company logo, Social Shares, the option to link your Google Analytics account to gain more metrics and link analytics. There is currently a choice of five subscription plans; Webmaster at $9.90 pcm, Advanced at $16.90 pcm, Pro at $34.90pcm, Agency at $69.90 pcm and Agency XL at $98.90 pcm, differing only in terms of quantity of domains and links to be monitored and the number of users. Linkody also offer a free 30 day trial period, no credit card necessary, along with a live chat feature and email support.

Muck Rack

Something of a long-term project, MuckRack can nonetheless result in extremely valuable links. Designed for enterprise or e-commerce companies wanting to raise the profile of their brand, get their content featured in media publications or to advertise a product launch, Muck Rack is a linkbuilding tool that brings together journalists, editors and bloggers with marketers and PR specialists. First, use the Journalist Directory, a wide database of verified journalists and bloggers, to find a relevant journalist’s profile, including their current contact information. Once identified, you can set up email alerts to advise you when your chosen journalist(s) tweet or link to articles matching your search terms. When you have a solid, newsworthy pitch, MuckRack allows you to connect with them; it’s a simple matter of clicking on ‘send pitch’ (as quickly as possible) and your message will be instantly dispatched to their inbox. Muckrack also enables you to follow the progress of your submission, calculate its’ impact and export media lists to Excel and PDFs to share with clients or colleagues. You can create annotated lists to keep track of your PR campaign, but the key here is to build and maintain mutually beneficial relationships with journalists covering your site’s industry which will eventually result in links. Muck Rack is not a cheap option with the standard plan coming in at $179 pcm and medium team $1,619pcm with minimum term contracts, although there is also a custom plan available. Support is available by phone, live chat and email.

Outreachr

Again, Outreachr is a SEO linkbuilding tool designed to speed up the process of finding relevant backlink and PR opportunities by connecting you with influencers in your niche. Choose your niche and enter your main keywords and Outreachr will produce a report featuring hundreds, perhaps thousands of relevant contacts in your niche from 40+ countries within minutes. Then you have a wide range of filters with which to manage your contacts, for example, you can sort by domain authority or other criteria in the metrics, giving you the opportunity to organise your targets into the most effective campaign(s). This done, you have the option to share content with your target audience and keep records of your campaign within Outreachr. This software is offered in three packages: Free, which offer three reports per month plus 40 leads but no access to the database, Pro at £145 pcm gives 50 reports per month, unlimited leads, access to the database as well as unlimited URL checks and competitor backlinks checks. If this is not an ongoing requirement, Outreachr also offers a one-time service for $199 with one one-off report, unlimited leads and full support from the Outreachr team. Alternatively, you can also choose to have Outreachr handle reports for you; contact them directly for a quote.

EpicBeat gives you the content, trends and influencers in your industry that are trending for a particular subject over the last month. Further, it will give very specific advice on the most successful format (text, infographic, podcast, etc.), size, best time to publish and best location for your content to ensure the best possible chance of getting maximum shares. There is a 14-day free trial available for all packages; Free, which does not require credit card details, Plus, $39pcm/$368pa, and Epictrack at $199pcm/$1999pa.

Whitespark

Whitespark is focused on the local aspect of SEO and is designed to help you find all the critical citation opportunities you have missed so you can increase your local search rankings. Increasing your leads from the web requires a few elements to be in place; your physical address, website address, a Google+ Local page, and many good quality local links and citations with consistent NAP details (name, address & phone number). NAP, instances of which are often referred to as ‘citations’, is a key factor in local SEO, influencing which companies Google and other search engines show for local searches. So the first thing Whitespark will tackle on your behalf is to check your existing listings for consistency, identifying those places you need to add or update a NAP and a link. The tool finds sites that are listed in Google Local’s ‘sources’ for local review data and maps that link or refer to multiple sites that rank in the local results. So using the ‘Local Citation Finder’ will show not only your citations but also your competitors’ citations enabling you to approach these same sites for links. You can expect to find hundreds of NAP citations with a few clicks. This done, Whitespark can also help you to earn more links and shares by finding new outreach opportunities; finding new blogs, content promoters or directories that will list your business, and adding all your details – services, hours, Twitter feeds, links etc. Pricing is per citation: $4 each for generic, national citations and $5 each for niche, local-level citations.

Ahrefs

Next on the list of best link building tools is Ahrefs, which provide perhaps the most popular and effective link analysis tool available. Benefiting from an index of over 15 trillion links, Ahrefs is also updated every half hour. This suite of tools includes a Site Explorer, Backlinks Report, Keywords Analysis, Batch Analysis, Competition Analysis and Domain Comparison tools. The Site Explorer includes a Backlink Checker Tool which provides a report offering detail including an Ahrefs Rank, social data from Twitter, Google Plus and Facebook, anchor used, target page, type of link, and when the link was last updated in their index. A lot of this information has links leading to even more detailed reports. Your links are listed in descending order by Ahrefs Rank but the whole report may be sorted and viewed in various ways, including export. Another tool in the suite which is invaluable for link building is the Link Intersect tool with which you can find sites that have links to your competitors but not to you so that you can quickly compile a list of new linking opportunities. Ahrefs Alerts feature will keep you updated on your new and lost backlinks. The SEO toolbar will supply Ahrefs Rank, Domain Rating, URL Rating, number of referring domains and Social metrics for any page you visit.

Monitor Backlinks

Monitor Backlinks is one of the best link building tools because it will email you regular updates on your newly acquired or lost backlinks, keyword rankings and site speed, report old, broken links and send you alerts whenever one of your competitors gets a new link. To get started, just connect it to Google Analytics to allow daily monitoring, add your competition and any of your keywords that Monitor Backlinks has not already identified. Monitor Backlinks will prepare a list of potentially dangerous links which you may then address and, if necessary, download and enter into Google’s Disavow Tool. Receiving such information about your own site is obviously useful, but monitoring your competition’s newly acquired links provides a really easy way to build up your links without having to spend hours on research. So with Monitorbacklinks, you can not only identify your own bad links, but also find opportunities to build new, quality links. Offered in 7 different packages, one of which is fully customisable, Monitorbacklinks will cost between $24.90 and $249.90 depending on the quantities of domains/competitors required, although all of the set packages offer a free 30-day trial and two months free for annual, advance payments.

Ontolo

Ontolo is a SEO linkbuilding tool to help define and locate new potential link partners. By automating part of the research, Ontolo has the potential to be a huge time saver for the large-scale link builder, cutting down your search time significantly. Configure the tool for the specific keywords, the kind of links you want and competitor URLs for your industry, and Ontolo will produce a list of prospects with contact information, not by running a search there and then, but drawn from its pre-existing database, so the results are fast. In fact, according to Ben Wills, one of the creators of Ontolo, it extracts and downloads data ‘hundreds of times faster than any other publicly available technology’. Your search can be refined with a range of filters to generate very specific and relevant results presented in your own database. The Pro package costs $97pcm and the Agency version is $297pcm, both with a 30-day money back guarantee.

Your Outreach is an outreach software linkbuilding tool with pre-built campaigns designed to help you to organise your own campaigns and save you time. You can send and receive emails and set up automated follow-ups for specific times, expediting your link building efforts and social shares by automating and streamlining your outreach campaign. There are four variants; a limited free package, ‘Small’ for £29.99pcm, ‘Large’ for £49.99pcm and custom packages available on request.

Help A Reporter Out

Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is not strictly speaking a SEO link building tool, but rather a database of sources for journalists to tap for stories that, as a quid pro quo, incidentally provides opportunities for sources to secure valuable media coverage including high-quality backlinks from authority news sites. Just add your details to the database indicating your specific expertise, and you will receive three emails per day from journalists seeking material. When you receive one appropriate to your skills and knowledge, send an informative response and if it is used, you will be credited and thereby gain a valuable new link.

Rmoov

Rmoov is a SEO linkbuilding tool designed for professional SEO consultants or Internet marketing agencies. Unlike some of the other SEO tools we’ve seen, Rmoov requires that you prepare your own list of URLs to upload to begin the removal process. From the list, Rmoov will find contact information (which you will need to verify for yourself), compose and send an email to each domain owner and report back those links that have been successfully removed. Where there has been no response, it will continue to send reminder emails until either it is actioned or you terminate your campaign. At the end of each campaign, you will receive a report detailing links removed, responses received and action taken. Having dealt with your spammy links, Rmoov offers assistance with reconsideration requests to ensure everything is prepared to Google’s liking to maximise your chances of success. The ‘Basic’ account is free, will deal with one campaign and up to 250 URLs. There are four versions of paid-for account ranging from ‘Business’ at $49 pcm to ‘Agency’ at $399 pcm, differing in degree of link checking and quantity of URLs and domains per campaign. Support is offered 12/7 by email and phone for all packages.