23 Link Building Tools To Build Authority This Year
Due to LLM based search engines like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews, it’s more important than ever before to have your brand cited by authoritative sources in your niche.
Arming yourself with the right link building tools will make it easier for you to execute your link building strategy of choice.
So I want to show you the best free and premium link building tools that you should be using to drive authority to your websites and get featured more often in LLMs like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews.
As an added bonus, I’ve made a 7-Day Link Builders Quick Start Kit.
Which includes:
- Premium & Free Tools Directory – 25+ vetted tools
- 7-Day Implementation Roadmap – Prospects to backlinks in one week
- Proven Email Templates – Copy-paste outreach messages that work
- Quality Control Checklist – Avoiding toxic links
- Success Tracking Spreadsheet – Monitor results and scale
Now let’s jump right into the list…
Pro Link Building Tools
Ready for the big-hitting tools?
These are the 4 best paid link building tools money can buy.
1. Pitchbox
⭐ Popularity: High
💰 Cost: $195 to $495/month
🎯 Best for: Large-scale link building campaigns for SEO agencies.
Pitchbox is the best outreach tool that you can get.
After using hundreds of link building and outreach tools nothing comes close to what it offers. If you really want to build links at scale Pitchbox is the tool to do it.
Pitchbox has a ton of unique features that will save you time and money.
The tool can help you…
- Quickly find niche relevant bloggers, publishers and influencers
- Build fully customisable and personalised link outreach campaigns
- Create a completely automated link building process that allows you to predict how many backlinks you will get
- Make data-driven decisions as Pitchbox helps you understand your efficiency at each stage of the link building process
- Run multi-step outreach email sequences and see open rate data for each individual email
- Filter outreach prospects using key metrics like Trust Flow and Domain Authority so you can focus on only the best links
But the biggest benefit of Pitchbox?
This tool automates a lot of tasks you would usually have to hire staff to do.
On top of that, Pitchbox has recently added AI features that make it one of the best AI SEO tools available for link building at the moment.
Almost every major link building service and SEO agency use Pitchbox.
In our own agency, we noticed that using features like automated, personalised follow-ups increased our response rates by 40%.
That’s a big jump!
There isn’t an outreach tool that even comes close to Pitchbox in terms of quality.
Take a look at how we use it in our podcast jacking strategy for example.
Read my full Pitchbox review to learn more about the tool.
2. Ahrefs
⭐ Popularity: High
💰 Cost: $129 to $449/month
🎯 Best for: Comprehensive backlink research and competitor analysis.
Ahrefs is my favourite link-building tool.
They have a complete link building tool suite designed for serious pros.
Ahrefs also has the world’s largest index of live backlinks, which makes it such a powerful tool.
Their index has almost:
- 475.8 billion live pages
- 28.9 trillion internal backlinks
- 275.6 million domains (post vetting)
- 35 trillion external links
That’s a lot of data. And every 24 hours Ahrefsbot crawls and updates the data on about 420 million pages.
Ahrefsbot is the most active web crawler in the industry and 3rd most active crawler overall – behind Googlebot and Bingbot.
This makes Ahrefs truly unique! They have the most comprehensive backlink data of any SEO tool you will find.
Even though some tools claim to have a larger backlink index, we found that the quality of those links and metrics offered don’t compare to Ahrefs.
Check out my Ahrefs vs Semrush review and my Ahrefs vs Majestic breakdown to see what I mean.
With that in mind, these are some of Ahrefs top features:
Mention Monitoring
Mention monitoring allows you to set up alerts to be notified whenever your brand or website is mentioned online.
Then you just reach out to the website that mentioned you and ask for a link. This is the easiest way to build links.
Mention monitoring can also be applied directly to your competitors.
You can even go as far as to set up monitoring so that when a competitor receives a new backlink on a specific URL – you are notified.
With the right alert configuration and filters in place, you’ll be able to catch every important link without drowning in unnecessary notifications.
It also allows you to quickly swoop in and potentially steal the link for yourself.
These powerful features are unique to Ahrefs and enable you to build links without any hard work from your part.
Analyse Your Competitors
This is where Ahrefs really shines…
Because Ahrefs has the biggest backlink index, it’s easy to get an accurate comparison of your backlink profile against any of your competitors.
This means you can:
- See exactly how you stack up
- Work out what you need to do to outrank your competitors
You can even go a step further and reverse engineer your competitors’ link building strategy.
Once you have uncovered all of their backlinks, you can contact each of the websites that link to your competitors and get them to link to you as well.
Whatever link building strategies you like to use, Ahrefs makes it easier and faster to execute them.
Link Intersect Report
One of the easiest ways to build links is by contacting the sites linking to your competitors.
Why?
Because if they link to a competitor, they are more likely to link to you.
This is where the “Ahrefs Link Intersect” report will help.
Here’s how it works:
Insert your competitors into the link intersect tool. Ahrefs looks through each of their backlink profiles and compares it to yours.
The report then highlights the websites that link to your competitors but not you.
Want to take it up a level?
The link intersect tool also comes with a bunch of filters.
You can filter the report to show:
- Sites that link to multiple competitors
- Sites with a specific “Domain Rating”.
- Sites relevant to your own niche
This feature makes it easy to identify the websites most likely to link to you – so you clean up the low-hanging fruit.
Whatever link building strategies you like to use, Ahrefs makes it easier and faster to execute them.
Ahrefs isn’t just a link building tool.
It is an all-in-one SEO tool with tons of features you can use. And the best part is that Ahrefs is relatively easy to use, even for beginners.
Want to learn how to take advantage of Ahrefs? Take a look at my full Ahrefs review and discover all of the other cool things you can do with it.
3. Semrush
⭐ Popularity: High
💰 Cost: $139 to $499/month
🎯 Best for: All-in-one SEO tool for competitive data and link building outreach campaigns.
Before Ahrefs came along, there was Semrush.
Semrush is another all-in-one SEO tool that has great link building features.
But where Semrush really shines is data analysis.
Semrush has a lot of powerful reports that provide really deep insights into your link building campaigns.
This makes it an excellent tool for those that love sifting through data to find unique opportunities.
Looking for a comprehensive link building tool?
Semrush can handle your link building campaign end to end. It will help you-
- Find link building opportunities
- Analyse and vet them
- Reach out to website owners
In theory, you can run your entire link building campaign through Semrush alone.
This is because unlike it’s competitors, Semrush has an outreach feature built into the platform. That means you can import data from Semrush and reach out for links all in one place.
More on that in a minute.
These are my favourite link building features from Semrush:
Competitor Backlink Analysis
The Semrush backlink analysis tools are comprehensive, to say the least.
You can analyse and research any of your competitors. You’ll get a wealth of information and can easily see what you’re up against.
Want to dive deeper?
You can look at any URL and see all the backlinks that point to that URL.
This is a great feature if you want to build links to a piece of content to rank for a specific keyword.
Add in the URL, click “Backlink Analytics” and click “Backlinks”.
You’ll be able to work out what links you need to build to get ahead of them.
Outreach Link Building Tool
Semrush allows you to do outreach from directly inside of the tool.
This is a great feature because you can do all of the analysis and immediately kick off an outreach campaign.
Simply connect your Gmail or Google Workspace account to Semrush and start sending outreach emails directly inside the tool.
You can even take advantage of the link building templates they have.
Semrush has done a lot to improve this over time.
They now have a good range of personalisation options, and creating effective outreach messages is simple.
Plus, the follow-up automation rules ensure you never miss an important opportunity.
Backlink Gap Analysis
Semrush’s Backlink Gap analysis tool is super powerful.
It’s similar to the Ahrefs link intersect tool but has some unique features.
Simply add your top five competitors and review the gap analysis report to find quality link opportunities.
You can then export the data to your outreach campaign and start securing those links.
Not sure who your “SEO” competitors are?
Let Semrush take care of that for you with the competitor “auto-suggest” feature.
It compares your content to similar sites and makes it easy to identify competitors you might have missed.
It also ensures you only find niche-relevant link gaps in your backlink profile.
One thing I like about Semrush’s backlink gap analysis is their unique filters.
You can filter reports by:
- Best – Websites that link to all of your competitors but not you
- Weak – Websites that link to you less than competitors
- Strong – Websites that link to you only and not your competitors
- Shared – Websites that link to you and your competitors
- Unique – Websites that link only to one other website (competitors or yours)
Why is this valuable?
You should build a mixture of links that your competitors don’t have and links that all your competitors have (but you don’t).
This helps you build a stronger and more diversified backlink profile.
Semrush is a great tool to add to your link building arsenal. They also have a massive amount of other powerful SEO features you can use.
Want to learn more about Semrush? Take a look at my full Semrush review or see how Semrush compares to other SEO tools in these posts:
4. Respona
⭐ Popularity: Medium
💰 Cost: $198 to $799/month
🎯 Best for: Automated outreach campaigns and relationship building.
Responsa is a powerful outreach tool that flies under most people’s Radars.
Similar to Pitchbox, Respona offers a full suite of outreach tools in one neat package.
It automates every aspect of link building – from prospecting to personalization.
Most notably, it offers:
- A search engine with three modes: Google search, backlinks (data comes from Moz by default), and Podcasts – powered by ListenNotes
- A real-time email finder and verifier
- AI-powered variables (not just your typical “first_name”, but full-on, unique personalizations for each opportunity in your campaign)
- A unified, shared Inbox, bringing all of your email accounts into one place
- In-depth analytics
You can’t think of Responsa like your traditional outreach link building tool.
They have a ton of AI-powered templates and workflows to build different types of links and even create connections with other experts in your niche.
For example, one of the key features I love is the podcast outreach feature.
It allows you to find, vet and pitch yourself on a podcast all in one platform.
Plus, the AI personalisation features mean that the outreach emails you send feel genuine.
Much better than basic templates!
This is why Responsa is such a great tool link building outreach – even if you have zero previous experience.
Respona comes with campaign templates and tutorial videos explaining each strategy in more detail, and practically handles all of your link building for you – you just need to press “launch”.
It doesn’t get much easier than that, right?
The truth is that Responsa will speed up all of your link building outreach.
It’s perfect for SEO agencies, link building services and large websites looking to scale.
5. FindThatLead
⭐ Popularity: Medium
💰 Cost: $49 to $99/month
🎯 Best for: Find the right emails for prospects and verify them.
FindThatLead is my favourite email address finder.
It’s the tool we use most when tracking down the right prospect’s email.
There are lots of tools that will help you find email addresses.
The problem is that most of them find old emails that are no longer used.
FindThatLead has an advanced email checker built in to validate and verify emails for you.
It uses catch-all email checking, MX record testing and SMTP authentication testing to ensure the email is current and accurate.
This will ensure you reach the right people while reducing your outreach bounce rate. It also means that FindThatLead can be much more accurate than competitor tools like Hunter.io.
FindThatLead also comes with a number of other features:
- Complete outreach email campaigns
- Email personalisation
- Local prospecting
- Chrome extension
Because FindThatLead is a full B2B outreach software, you could use it to run an entire outreach campaign.
It’s great for those on a budget who can’t justify big hitters like Pitchbox or Responsa yet.
All of the features come packed into an easy-to-use interface that makes putting together campaigns easy.
I recommend taking advantage of their 7-day free trial to see if it’s right for you.
6. Ontolo
⭐ Popularity: Low
💰 Cost: $97 to $297/month
🎯 Best for: Link prospecting and discovering new link opportunities.
Ontolo is a link prospecting tool that helps you find better link building opportunities quickly.
It has a bunch of unique features that will help any link building team.
Let me explain:
Ontolo has 80+ different prospecting methods.
These are the different strategies that the tool uses to find link building opportunities.
You can even customise the prospecting techniques to get an even more targeted search.
That’s where the real power of Ontolo is…
Because of how customisable the tool is, you can blend link building techniques to suit your needs.
Essentially, once you’ve dialled in your settings, you can reuse them again and again across different methods and campaigns
Over time you build your own strategy based on what converts best.
Cool, right?
Another place where Ontolo really shines is data visualisation.
Every link builder that is trying to build links at scale understands the importance of good data analysis.
Ontolo’s data visualisations don’t just look good – they actually help you spot patterns like which types of prospects and strategies convert the best.
I found it particularly useful to track the types of content that receive the most links and identify which strategies have the least time to convert a new link.
You don’t want to waste time pitching prospects that will never convert, right?
No other link prospecting tool allows you to find and highlight the right link opportunities better than Ontolo.
Quickly identify the prospects most likely to convert and load them into your outreach campaign.
The best part is that Ontolo is more affordable than Pitcbox and Responsa, and comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
It’s great for those with a smaller budget or agencies that want to find new ways to build quality links for their clients.
If you need to breathe new life into the prospecting side of your link building campaign, check out Onolo.
7. Link Whisper
⭐ Popularity: Medium
💰 Cost: $97/year
🎯 Best for: Smart, relevant and automated internal linking.
Link Whisper has long been considered the best tool for internal link building.
And for good reason.
Link Whisper gives you intelligent link suggestions so you never miss an opportunity for internal linking again.
What’s more?
You set the rules and Link Whisper builds the internal links automatically.
This allows you to:
- Diversify your anchor text
- Scale the number of internal links on your site
- Balance link equity across your site
- Ensure there are no orphaned pages
…in a matter of minutes.
Another great feature we use all the time is the internal linking report.
Link Whisper shows which pages on your site don’t have any (or many) internal links pointing at them.
Need to build internal links to a specific page?
Within a couple of clicks, Link Whisper makes it easy to add new internal links.
This way you’ll never have orphaned pags.
Link Whisper makes it easy to balance out your internal link structure, making sure your most important pages have enough internal links pointing at them.
It is a must-have (internal) link building tool for anyone serious about their SEO.
Want to learn more about this plugin? Read my full Link Whisper review.
8. LinksThatRank
⭐ Popularity: High
💰 Cost: $177 to $377 per link
🎯 Best for: High-quality link building services with proven results.
Want to outsource your link building to a service you can trust?
LinksThatRank builds the kind of backlinks you are actually proud to show off.
Whether you want top-tier link building on demand or complete white label link building services – LinksThatRank has you covered.
What sets LinksThatRank apart?
Here’s why they are so respected in the industry:
- 23-point quality control checklist ensuring every link you get is quality
- Advanced anchor text selection is included for free with every link
- 1,000 words of content is placed with every link by default
- Strategic internal and external links are placed within the content so it feels natural
- They keep an internal blacklist of toxic backlinks and domains
- They’ve gone as far as to develop their own link building tool
And as if that wasn’t enough – they also offer discounted monthly packages for site owners and agency discounts for SEO agencies that want to outsource link building.
One of the big reasons that LinksThatRank has become such a popular link building service is because of their transparency.
They have a ton of recent case studies on their site and are extremely transparent about how they build links.
LinksThatRank is so serious about link quality they went as far as creating the Backlink Blacklist so that you can ensure you’re getting powerful links, from trusted websites.
Ordering is simple – All you have to do is choose the links you need and tell them your target keyword. The LinksThatRank team will take care of the rest.
Buying backlinks doesn’t get much easier than that.
9. BuzzSumo
⭐ Popularity: High
💰 Cost: $199 to $999/month
🎯 Best for: Finding popular content and topics that will get a lot of shares.
Want to see exactly what pieces of content and topics are getting a lot of attention online?
BuzzSumo is a social intelligence and content research platform.
I use BuzzSumo to see exactly what topics are trending in my niche right now and getting shared on social media.
How does this help?
Short Answer – Creating content on trending topics is a powerful strategy to attract natural backlinks.
BuzzSumo is excellent for creating link-worth content that you can be confident your audience will love.
But that’s really just scratching the surface…
Here are some of the top BuzzSumo features my team uses regularly:
- Content ideas to discover new trending topics in my niche
- Content research to find popular niche content with lots of social shares
- Tracking brand mentions for our sites online
- Benchmarking our content performance vs competitors
What I really like about BuzzSumo is how easy the tool is to use, even though it is jam-packed full of powerful features.
The user interface is straightforward – Just enter a topic, keyword, or domain and hit search.
In seconds, you’ll have a wealth of usable information and data at your fingertips. It really is as simple as that!
If you need help finding content ideas that your audience will love and attract a lot of backlinks, it doesn’t get better than BuzzSumo.
10. SE Ranking
⭐ Popularity: Medium
💰 Cost: $65 to $259/month
🎯 Best for: Very affordable, comprehensive all-in-one SEO tool.
Looking for a powerful SEO tool that won’t break the bank?
SE Ranking is an all-in-one tool that offers some solid link building features.
Let’s start with backlink analysis…
SE Ranking has a large database of 411 million indexed domains and 2.9 trillion total backlinks. That’s a good amount of data!
You can add any domain to see its entire backlink profile, including referring domains, new links, anchor text and more.
SE Ranking also provides a few essential metrics to evaluate the quality of links, such as Domain Trust and Page Trust.
Here are some of the other core features I like with SE Ranking:
- Backlink monitoring that alerts you if you gain or lose important links
- Regional link tracking to see where your links are coming from
- Ability to create a disavow file within the tool
- Quality anchor text analysis features to ensure your backlink profile looks natural
On top of that, you get all the other SEO tools that SE Ranking offers, including competitor analysis, keyword research, rank tracking, website auditing and more.
The truth is that SE Ranking is an incredible premium link building and SEO tool.
While it isn’t quite at the calibre of Ahrefs or Semrush, it is more than 50% cheaper than both of those tools!
It’s the perfect all-in-one SEO tool for users who need quality data or a tighter budget.
I recommend using the SE Ranking Free Trial to learn more.
11. URL Profiler
⭐ Popularity: Low
💰 Cost: $29.95 to $99.95/month
🎯 Best for: Bulk URL analysis and extracting key data points.
I’ll be honest…
URL Profiler isn’t the prettiest tool around, but it is very powerful.
Most people think URL Profiler is an on-page SEO tool used to optimise your site. But the truth is that you can turn in URL Profiler into the ultimate link evaluator.
Let me explain:
URL Profile is like a scraper and data aggregator rolled into one.
That means you can run a mass analysis of thousands of individual websites to see which ones are actually worth targeting.
Here’s how I use it:
- Analyse large sets of URLs for our outreach campaigns in minutes (not hours)
- Assess the content readability of individual sites to get a quick overview of quality
- Bulk extract the email addresses of website owners
- Gather the social media metrics of sites so I can evaluate the brand authority
- See the domain authority of each site by connecting key tools like Moz and Ahrefs
The bottom line is that URL Profiler can be engineered to quickly asses the quality of link prospects in literally minutes.
Once set up, you can continuously upload huge lists of potential sites for backlinks, evaluate them automatically, and extract their contact information.
Then just feed that data into a tool like Pitchbox for outreach.
Cool, right?
The only downside is that you will need to have other premium tools to connect to URL Profiler.
For example:
If you want URL Profiler to include Domain Rating in its data extraction, you must connect it to Ahrefs’ API (which isn’t cheap).
But the benefit is that you can connect multiple tools together in one place and use all of the available data to really asses the quality of link prospects before doing outreach.
Take advantage of this URL Profiler 14-day free trial to speed up your link-building workflow.
12. Linkody
⭐ Popularity: Medium
💰 Cost: $14.90 to $153.90/month
🎯 Best for: Affordable way to track link building campaigns with comprehensive data.
Linkody may look like a simple tool, but don’t be fooled…
It offers some incredibly powerful link analysis tools without the huge enterprise price tag.
Linkody is a comprehensive backlink analysis platform that does one thing really well – monitor your backlinks in real time.
Here is what I like about Linkody:
- Real-time backlink monitoring with automated alerts so you can recover lost links
- Spy on your competitors and get insights into how they are building their links
- Get a comprehensive overview of your entire link profile
- Evaluate individual links with tons of data points
- Identify toxic links before they have an impact on your site
- Track your link anchor text and discover any gaps
The big reason why Linkody is a great link building tool is because of its simplicity and affordability.
The interface is clean, and you can get insights quickly.
And because Linkody offers a great range of plans, it’s perfect whether you run a single site or a large SEO agency with lots of clients.
Free Link Building Tools
Link building doesn’t need to be expensive.
If you haven’t got a massive budget for your tools, I’ve got you covered.
These are the best free link building tools to use.
1. Link Building Strategy Builder
⭐ Popularity: High
💰 Cost: Free
🎯 Best for: Replicating your competitors’ best links.
Ready to leverage your competitors link building strategy for free?
My Link Building Strategy Template automatically analyses your competitor’s backlink profiles and shows you their best backlinks:
It then tells you which backlinks are most important to focus on stealing first.
Pretty cool, right?
You don’t have to go to all the trouble and spend hours building a link building strategy. Just download my Link Building Strategy Template and you’ll get a customised link building strategy in minutes.
2. The Backlink Blacklist
⭐ Popularity: High
💰 Cost: Free
🎯 Best for: Ensure that you (or your agency) are not building backlinks that could hurt your SEO.
The Backlink Blacklist is a free tool that will help you to make sure you are not building links from sites you should be avoiding.
Just copy and paste your backlinks into the blacklist tool and see if any of them are blacklisted instantly.
On the results page, it will tell you precisely why a site is blacklisted…
And you can click on any of the reasons to see a screenshot of the evidence, for example, if it was sold publically on Fiverr or via a cold outreach email.
Bonus: You can also use this tool if you bought expired domains and want to check their links aren’t blacklisted and hurting their backlink profile.
3. Open Link Profiler
⭐ Popularity: Medium
💰 Cost: Free
🎯 Best for: Comprehensively evaluating your website’s backlink profile.
Open Link Profiler is a powerful free link analysis tool that provides in-depth insights.
Just head over to their website and search for any domain:
The tool will crawl the site and show you all the data you need to determine the strength of their backlink profile such as:
- The total of backlinks
- The total of referring domains
- The domain rank
And much more!
Not only that, but Open Link Profiler will show you the complete breakdown of:
- The website’s backlinks
- The quality of those links
- Where each link is coming from
And if you scroll down, you get to see all the websites that have actually linked to the domain you analyzed- which can help you find great link building opportunities.
In other words, Open Link Profiler is a great free SEO tool that allows you to do some serious backlink research quickly and easily.
4. Backlink Checker From Seobility
⭐ Popularity: Medium
💰 Cost: Free
🎯 Best for: In-depth analysis of your site or your competitor’s backlink profile.
The free backlink checker from Seobility is another powerful analysis tool that provides in-depth insights not only about your backlink profile but also about your competitors’.
To use it, just head over to the Seobility website and click on “Backlink Checker” (or click on the image below directly).
This will redirect you to the right page:
Then, just paste the URL or domain you want to check inside the tool and click on “Check Backlinks”.
It’s important to note that:
- If you choose to check an URL – it will show you the backlinks of the specific page you analysed.
- If you choose to check a domain – it will give you the entire backlink profile for the domain analysed.
For each check, it will give you:
- The total of backlinks
- The number of referring domains
- The domain rating
- The percentages of Follow / No follow backlinks
….For the URL or domain checked.
On top of that, it will give you a complete top backlinks report that you can export for free as CVS or PDF.
You can do up to 3 checks a day for free.
If you want to check more URLs or domains, you’ll have to sign up for a free Seobility account. This will allow you to check up to 1,000 subpages.
Not bad, right?
Looking for a backlink checker? Take a look at the case study to find out which tool is the best backlink checker.
5. Wiki Grabber
⭐ Popularity: High
💰 Cost: Free
🎯 Best for: Find quality Wikipedia link building opportunities.
Wikipedia is one of the most authoritative websites in the world.
It has been the go-to source of information for millions of people for years. That makes Wikipedia links some of the most powerful links available.
Wiki Grabber is a great tool to do Wikipedia link building easily.
Here’s how it works:
Let’s say you are writing a blog about Bitcoin. Go to Wiki Grabber and search for that topic:
It will bring up a list of all the relevant Wikipedia pages that either has a:
- Dead link – The link is now broken
- Citation missing – There needs to be a citation placed.
Now you just need to sift through all of the pages and see if there is a suitable place to put a link to your content.
That’s it!
Wiki Grabber does all of the heavy liftings for you and makes it easy to acquire strong backlinks from Wikipedia.
As an added bonus…
Wikipedia gets tons of traffic every month. Getting placed on a relevant Wikipedia page is a great way to increase website traffic.
Make sure you check out my Wikipedia link building tutorial to learn how to get more links from Wikipedia.
6. Hunter.io
⭐ Popularity: High
💰 Cost: Free
🎯 Best for: Find any email address from any website for free.
To increase your link building success rates, you need to contact the right person when you do outreach.
You don’t just want to email a website’s generic email address such as: contact@exampledomain.com.
This is how you end up with a lot of rejections and often no responses at all.
That’s where Hunter.io comes in.
Hunter.io is an email address lookup tool. But it isn’t like the other email address lookup tools you’ll find online. It gives you direct access to real people’s emails using advanced verification to provide insane accuracy.
All you have to do is enter the domain of the website you want to contact.
It searches the internet to find all the email addresses connected to that domain for you. It will even show you the sources it used to find those email addresses.
Hunter.io will make your link building so much easier and more scalable.
It’s the best tool to use to ensure your outreach emails are actually reaching the right people.
On the free plan, you get 25 email address searches per month.
7. Scraper
⭐ Popularity: Low
💰 Cost: Free
🎯 Best for: Extracting usable data quickly from any site.
Scraper will save you hours trying to find prospects for your link building campaigns.
This powerful Chrome extension can extract almost any information you need from any page with just a few clicks.
There are many ways that I leverage Scraper for link building, including finding contact information for free.
But the best use case for Scraper is to find quality link building prospects.
Here’s how:
Let’s say I want to connect with other blog owners and build links for my SEO blog. First, I would find a relevant blog post like this one on Backlinko.
Now if you scroll to the bottom you will see that it has 374 comments.
This is a popular blog on a popular website, so most of these comments will likely link back to personal websites, business websites or SEO blogs.
Highlight the link, right-click and select “scrape similar”.
This automatically selects all of the links in the comment section.
Now just export them to a Google sheet and you have a list of relevant websites you can do outreach to. Easy.
8. ChatGPT
⭐ Popularity: High
💰 Cost: Free
🎯 Best for: Personalising outreach messages and identifying link-worthy content ideas.
Most people think of ChatGPT as a research or writing AI tool.
But the truth is that ChatGPT can be a powerful link building assistant. You just need to know how to use it!
These are some of the practical ways we use ChatGPT for link building:
-
- Writing personalised outreach emails
- Finding relevant prospects to reach out to
- Generating link-worthy content ideas
- Analysing backlink data and patterns
- Writing API scripts and integrating with other link building tools
My favourite way to use ChatGPT at the moment is personalising outreach emails. We’ve noticed a massive improvement in link acquisition rates since we started incorporating it into our workflows.
For example, because ChatGPT can crawl the web, you can give it your prospects-
- Website
- X account
- LinkedIn Profile
Then, simply use ChatGPT to create a relevant, personalised email using the information it finds.
The better your prompt and angle, the better the result – That’s the human part.
We’ve found that the key is to pair the power of ChatGPT with one of these proven link building strategies.
Then, test and double down on what works.
You can even take this up a level by creating a custom project within ChatGPT!
9. Internal Link Juicer WordPress Plugin (Formerly SEO Auto Linker)
⭐ Popularity: Medium
💰 Cost: Free
🎯 Best for: Automatically build tons of relevant internal links.
Want to take the heavy lifting out of internal linking?
Think of Internal Link Juicer as your website’s personal assistant for building a robust internal linking structure for free.
I consider Internal Link Juicer one of the best WordPress plugins for SEO.
Here’s how it works:
On every page of your website, you simply add in your target keyword (or keywords).
When you mention those keywords on your website, Internal Link Juicer will automatically build an internal link.
There are now a number of tools that do this.
So what sets Internal Link Juicer apart?
Two words: Complete control.
You can:
- Blacklist URLs you don’t want linked
- Customise your link output with tags
- Get intelligent link suggestions
…and so much more.
It allows you to scale your internal linking strategy while still providing the control you need.
Internal Link Juicer’s paid version has even more features, but the free version should suit most site owners.
If you don’t have the budget for Link Whisper, then Internal Link Juicer is a great alternative.
10. Google Footprints
⭐ Popularity: Low
💰 Cost: Free
🎯 Best for: Advanced search operators to find quality backlink opportunities.
Don’t underestimate the power of Google when it comes to link building.
You don’t always need fancy tools to find great link building opportunities.
Google “footprints” are advanced search operators that help you get more specific results in a Google search.
If used correctly, they will help you find unique link building opportunities you would have never otherwise found.
We have used Google Footprints to build a number of great external links from .Edu and .Gov domains (and other quality websites as well).
Here’s how you can do the same:
To find Edu and Gov backlink opportunities, head over to Google and search for:
- site:.gov + your city/region + “resource”
- site:.gov + your city/region + “community”
- site:.edu + niche keyword + inurl:resource
These searches will give you a wealth of potential backlink opportunities on hard-to-reach domains.
You may have to dig in the search the results, but the payoff is worth it.
You can learn more about these strategies with our Edu backlinks and Gov backlinks tutorials.
They have a ton of strategies to build links from these powerful domains.
Want to book podcasts and build links at the same time?
This is called podcast jacking. And Google footprints can help you do it for free.
Search in Google:
- [your niche] + “podcast”
- [influencer] + podcast
This will give you a list of potential podcasts to be a guest on. It’s an easy way to get your voice heard while building the quality backlinks you need.
Lastly, Google Footprints are one of the best ways to get listed on resource pages.
Just search for:
- [Your niche] + “resources”
- Inurl:[your niche] + resources
Now all you have to do is reach out and see if they are willing to add your site as a resource.
Check out my complete resource link building guide for more information.
11. Google Alerts
⭐ Popularity: High
💰 Cost: Free
🎯 Best for: Easily tracking brand mentions online.
Think of Google Alerts as a free way to build quality links on auto-pilot.
Sounds too good to be true?
The truth is that most people just don’t use Google alerts properly.
There are 4 ways that we use Google Alerts for link building:
- Set up relevant alerts
- Monitor your brand mentions
- Find guest blogging opportunities
- Track competitors mentions
The best part is that it’s super easy to set up.
All you need to do is log in to Google Alerts and create an alert anytime your website or business name is mentioned.
This will help you stay on track of mentions online where people don’t link to your site. The next step is to reach out and get a link to your site.
Easy, right?
You can even take it a step further to find powerful guest blogging opportunities or monitor mentions of your top competitors.
Check out our complete how to set up Google Alerts guide for 16 different ways to use this incredible free tool to grow your business.
The Best Link Building Tool On The Market
There are tons of link building tools available on the market.
But not all tools are of equal quality. Over the years, some tools have continued to evolve and become the go-to tools of the trade.
So I’m about to show you the best paid AND free link building tools.
My Favourite Link Building Tool
My favourite link building tool isn’t really a tool.
The truth is that link building takes a lot of time, effort and technical ability – even if you have the right tools for the job.
So if you want to avoid the headache of link building entirely, you can just hire one of these link building services to do it for you
The best service though is LinksThatRank.
LinksThatRank has a reputation for building links that improve rankings and increase traffic:
They take quality control so seriously they even built a blacklist database that contains over 60,000 blacklisted domains.
What Are Link Building Tools?
Link building tools help you to find and then acquire the highest quality backlinks for your website.
Typically they help you find and prospects thousands of opportunities quickly, whilst also making the acquisition process simple as well.
They make it easier to:
- Find link opportunities
- Execute different link building strategies
It would be impossible to build high-quality links at scale without link building tools.
Professional SEOs have a link building tool stack that allows them to predictably and consistently acquire quality links.
Why You Should Use Link Building Tools
Link building tools offer a lot of benefits.
Without them, it would be impossible to build quality links consistently. Here are 4 reasons to get a solid link building tool stack for your next campaign.
To Help You Build Powerful Backlinks Quickly
Good link building is all about quality.
You only want to build high-quality links from high authority websites.
Without the help of a quality link building tool, it would take forever to find high-quality sites that you can build powerful links from.
Link building tools speed up the process of finding great link opportunities and allow you to filter the results so you are only ever placing high-quality links.
To Generate More Quality Traffic & Leads
Link building isn’t only about improving rankings.
You can leverage link building to get links from websites that already have traffic.
For example, if you can place a link on a popular, well-known website, you will likely get tons of referral traffic.
People do click on in-content links.
You can use link building tools to find websites that already have good traffic.
Then you can target those websites not only for the external links but also to generate more referral traffic.
To Improve Your Rankings Faster
Low quality and spammy links won’t help your SEO.
And in the worst case, they can even lead to you getting a Google penalty.
Link building tools help you improve your rankings faster by:
- Avoiding bad backlinks
- Building good backlinks
There are lots of link building strategies you can leverage with any of the popular link building tools.
This allows you to acquire the right links to increase your rankings in the SERPs.
To Save Tons Of Time With Automated Processes
When you get it down to fine art, link building can be an automated process with predictable results.
Here’s what I mean:
I asked my link building team to track how long it took to acquire a link using different link building methods. These were the results:
The reason they are able to build links so quickly is that we have designed streamlined processes built around the tools we use.
We are constantly using the automated features with our link building to cut down the time it takes to build a link.
Link building tools combined with well-thought-out processes are the secret to building high-quality links at scale!
A Warning About Link Building Tools
There are tons of link building tools out there…
But not all link building tools are worth it. Here are a few things to keep in mind when using link-building tools.
Avoid Black-Hat Link Building Tools
Black-hat link building tools use risky or outdated strategies to get more links.
Avoid these at all costs.
While they might seem attractive because they’re easy to use, they can land you in a world of trouble down the road.
You might even see short term gains. But in the long-run, you can attract harsh Google penalties. And take it from me, Google penalty recovery is hard work.
It just isn’t worth the risk.
Avoid Link Building Tools That Don’t Respect Google “Good Practices”
The truth is…
All link building is against Google’s policies.
But some tools take it a step further and leverage unethical methods to build links. These tools at best are unethical and at worst – borderline illegal.
Don’t go searching for sketchy tools. Stick to well-known tools with teams behind them that have a very good understanding of Google’s guidelines and policies.
This helps you stay out of hot water.
Wrapping It Up
So there you have it.
The best free and paid link building tools to drive authority.
Both Google’s AI Overviews and LLM based engines like ChatGPT are showing huge preferences to authoritative brands.
So make sure your website is getting cited by as many relevant sources in your industry as possible!
My favourite link building tools to fast track authority are:
Are there any of your favourite tools that I missed?
I love to play with new software and tools, so let me know in the comments and I’ll check them out.
Don’t forget to download my free Link Building Strategy Template.
This is the fastest way to put together a complete link building strategy and it’s the exact tool we use with our clients.
You can also read my full link building checklist that explains all the process of link building, step by step.
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