Are you feeling totally confused about which link-building tool to choose for your website?
That’s definitely a difficult choice to make, as most of the tools come with carefully crafted features and specifications.
Some tools will help you find verified emails on websites and LinkedIn; others are focused on finding relevant backlinks; some other tools are designed specifically for one or the other link-building strategy.
So, to help you not to drown in options and to save you time (a lot of time) on research, we’ve prepared a tested list of 8 best link-building software options. No bias - just pure, reliable recommendations.
Best Link Building Software Solutions
Initially, we manually analyzed Google SERP and non-sponsored listicles from reputable sources and chose the tools that most frequently appeared in them. As a result, we created a list of 15 tools that were tested by our team and assessed considering certain qualification criteria. The initial list was narrowed down to only 8 software solutions that met all the criteria.
Here are the criteria used to shortlist the best link-building software solutions:
This article is not monetized through your clicks; our focus is to assist you in making informed and best choices for your link-building strategies.
All the information and stats about the tools were taken from official websites, honest and reputable reviewers, and users from review platforms such as G2 and social media.
Also, note that the numbering in the blog post is arbitrary and doesn't reflect any specific order of preference. Consider it more like a casual roundup, and remember, each tool in this ranking is already a top one, and these are just nuances and differences.
The table describing the key features of each tool will help you compare the software solutions and pick the one that meets your needs. The features mentioned in the table were tested by our link-building specialist. So, if you're a visual learner, here you go.
| LINK BUILDING SOFTWARE | OWN DATABASE | PERSONALIZED OUTREACH | EMAIL FINDER | BROKEN LINKS FINDER | UNLINKED MENTIONS | BACKLINK TRACKING | COMPETITOR ANALYSIS |
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| LINKKEE |  |
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| SEMRUSH | |
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| MAJESTIC | |
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| MOZ | |
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| RESPONA | |
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| PITCHBOX | |
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| HUNTER | |
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| AHREFS | |
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No matter what your link-building strategy is, you need to go through a standard procedure:
To perform this chain of actions, you might need 2 or, in some cases, even 3 link-building tools. Sounds not quite optimal, right?
This is where Linkee steps in. It’s a complete and unique link-building tool powered by innovative features. A one-stop solution for your link building. Let’s see what it does and how it works.
You can either upload your own list of prospects, exported from Ahrefs or Semrush, or you can make use of Linkee’s growing database of 12 million websites. Once you have the list, then using the smart filtering feature of Linkee, you can make your long and overwhelming list neat and tidy. You can have a quick look at the filtering options in the screenshot below.
One of the filter specifications is prospect deduplication, which is one of the features that we liked. If you activate this filter, you will see only those prospects that haven’t been contacted by you or one of your colleagues before for a current or other active project.
The relevancy score is another handy feature to filter the list and find the best opportunities. As link-building is not about scale but quality and relevancy, this feature will help you improve your backlink profile to acquire only relevant backlinks.
So, how does this work? Linkee scans the content of the provided URL, and the trained AI provides the percentage of relevancy to the specified industry. Our recommended minimum relevancy score is around 20%.
Linkee provides all possible verified emails associated with the website alongside the contact’s name and position for more personalized email outreach. It checks several databases to find the most commonly appeared email addresses.
With Linkee’s user-friendly interface, it is super simple to send outreach emails. It also has the functionality to integrate popular email platforms into your workspace and directly send emails, schedule automatic follow-ups, and personalize emails. Moreover, you can make your own outreach templates to make the campaign more effective.
Why do we recommend Linkee?
If you need to find relevant link-building opportunities, together with the right person’s contact info, and send a personalized pitch to them on auto-pilot, all done within a couple of minutes, then Respona is the way to go.
Respona is an all-in-one link-building outreach software that helps businesses earn quality backlinks to their website.
Its key feature is to automate your A to Z link-building process with everything you need, providing any type of templates for outreach campaigns. It also automatically finds the right contact person, their verified email, and LinkedIn profile for each website.
This tool is suitable for both business owners with less SEO knowledge and agencies seeking advanced features.
We believe there is no need for a long introduction to Semrush as it is one of the best all-in-one SEO tools available in the market.
The key feature of the link-building tool is to identify prospects automatically according to your targeted keywords and competing websites.
SEMRush's other key feature is an outreach tool that helps you add your business email to the tool, send emails via the platform, and track prospect deliverability, open rates, and replies.
Pitchbox is an all-in-one link-building tool for both agencies and in-house SEOs. It's best, especially for those who have a large outreach team, as pricing is relatively high.
It offers various options to outreach prospects. Plug-and-play templates for popular link-building strategies such as broken link-building and resource page outreach help you launch campaigns quickly. You can also create your own custom campaigns by importing a CSV file with a list of prospects.
This tool is great for setting up email outreach sequences for link building and automated follow-ups. It enables effective collaboration and delegation as several people can participate in the same campaign.
Ahrefs is a complete all-in-one SEO tool. It contains tons of features that will help you find new link building opportunities via deep competitor backlink analysis.
Ahrefs’ crawler is the second most active one after Google’s, and its backlink index contains over 3 trillion live backlinks. This makes it the best tool to find link-building opportunities.
So, what makes this tool unique compared to its main competitors? Content Explorer is the key feature that provides a competitive advantage to this tool. Let's see how it works.
For example, you’re looking for link prospects for a blog post with the title “Best link-building softwares for 2024”. The potential link prospects will be websites linking to similar posts that haven’t been updated for years, as no one wants to link to an old list of softwares.
How to find the relevant posts using Content Explorer:
Now you see pages that haven’t been updated since 2017. Easy, yet impressive.
Unlike Ahrefs, Semrush, or Moz, Majestic is fully concentrated on backlinks. And because they are so focused on backlinks, they've announced their Historic Index to be "one of the most comprehensive sources of backlink data on the Internet.”
One of the key features of this tool is Site Explorer, which gets you an overview of the domain’s or exact URL’s backlink profile. The result of the analysis showcases the following important metrics:
Topical trust flow shows the topics discussed on the website or on a certain page. However, the results are not based on the content published on the website but on the backlink profile. This is a unique feature that we haven’t encountered in any other link-building software.
But, why do we find this feature great? It is considered that Google figures out what your site is about by looking at the websites that link to you. If you see that the list of niches indicated on this tool corresponds to your website’s niche, it only means that you have done a great job in your link-building strategy, and Google has considered your website to be a respected authority in that niche.
Unlike the other tools discussed in this article, Hunter is not really a link-building software. Hunter is an email outreach platform that can be used for various business relations purposes. However, it can be a really handy tool for a link builder that already uses tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush, or Majestic.
Hunter is a pro at finding emails almost instantly, using proprietary technology and AI. With its cold emailing campaigns, you can increase the potential of your prospecting lists and boost your chances of receiving more replies.
What we like the most about this tool is that it is not just scraping certain websites to get emails but collects data from different sources and suggests the most common results.
Moz is one of the few SEO tools that can be used in almost all SEO-related tasks, starting from keyword research to competitor analysis and many more.
The most useful feature for link builders is Link Explorer. This tool indicates which sites link to your domain or URL, providing the most essential and accurate metrics, such as page authority, domain authority, anchor texts, spam score, and many others.
Later, these metrics should help the link builder adopt a reverse engineering link-building strategy. After analyzing the backlink profile of your competitor, consider reaching out to the sites that link them to see if they will also link to your website.
Another unique and important feature is the Spam Score. This will help you to check your own backlink profile and identify all low-quality backlinks.
Moz also has a number of other SEO tools, and one of them is the Link Intersect feature (Ahrefs offers the same feature). This helps to identify the sites that link your several competitors but not yours.
So, after walking through the list of 7 best link-building tools and learning about their core and additional features, pros and cons, prices, and other attributes, it is time to pick the right one for you.
All these tools are the best of their kind, having a lot of unique features and specifications. So, let's discuss some cases and see which tool suits best for each.
If your goal is to conduct a full SEO campaign on your website, then you will need to choose one of the all-in-one SEO tools, such as Ahrefs, Semrush, or Moz Pro. Just answer some key questions before choosing one of these three.
If you plan to conduct only a link-building campaign, we recommend choosing Linkee as it has all the key features for link-building, from showcasing backlink opportunities to automated email outreach.
If you are already a subscriber to one of the all-in-one SEO tools or want to find opportunities manually using Google, Hunter is the right tool for you. Having the opportunities ready, you can find the right contacts, verify the emails of prospects, and create ideal outreach campaigns.
1. What is link building software, and how does it work?
Link-building software is a tool designed to assist in the process of acquiring backlinks to a website. It typically automates tasks such as prospecting, outreach, and monitoring of backlinks. These tools help streamline the link-building process and save time for SEO professionals.
2. Are all link building software tools safe to use?
While most reputable link-building software tools prioritize ethical and white-hat practices, it's crucial to research and choose trusted platforms. Avoid tools that promise quick fixes or engage in black-hat tactics, as they can lead to penalties from search engines.
3. What features should I look for in reliable link building software?
A reliable link-building software should offer features such as comprehensive backlink analysis, customizable outreach campaigns, integration with popular SEO tools, and transparent reporting. Additionally, look for tools that prioritize building high-quality and relevant backlinks.
4. Can link building software guarantee higher search engine rankings?
While link-building software can facilitate the process of acquiring backlinks, it cannot guarantee specific rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs). Search engine algorithms consider various factors beyond just backlinks when determining rankings, including content quality, user experience, and website authority.
5. How can I measure the effectiveness of link building software?
To measure the effectiveness of link-building software, track metrics such as the number of acquired backlinks, the quality of referring domains, changes in website traffic, and improvements in search engine rankings over time. Regular monitoring and analysis of these metrics can help gauge the software's impact on your SEO efforts.
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