Updated January 12, 2023
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It’s Easy With the Right Tools
Link building is an essential tool in your SEO toolbelt. If raising your visibility in organic search is one of your digital marketing goals, then building a website chock full of quality links (incoming, between pages, and to outside resources) is on your to-do list. And you’ll need link building tools to help you get there.
Update June 18, 2019:
Like many things related to SEO, strategies and tools change. We recently completed a comprehensive link management analysis with updated tool recommendations. Visit How to Manage Your SEO Links Like a Pro for current information and additional link management strategies.
A Powerful SEO Signal
Link building is one of the most important (and time-consuming) activities associated with building and maintaining a website’s SEO. Search engines are relentlessly focused on delivering credible and authoritative websites that are relevant and contain recent information that fulfills to a search query. How a page appears in organic search is impacted by quality and quantity of inbound links to a specific page and the overall domain. Once links are established, it’s an ongoing process as you add new or revise web pages and blog posts.
Recommended Link Building Tools
There are several SEO link building tools available designed specifically to help research, analyze, and manage links. However, there is no substitute for human monitoring, as content is meant for human interaction – creating a call to action like filling out a contact form, downloading a white paper, or picking up the phone – that leads to revenue generation. At its core, effective link building is based upon the human relationships (online and offline) and the credibility established.
With that said, here are four Link Building tools to aid you in finding the best links for your website:
1. Link Research Tools
LRT is my favorite tool for aggregating links. Although they source 24 other link databases, I love the ability to upload links from Google Search Console and dig into the analytics. The Link Research Tool is perfect for identifying links, cleaning your link profile, and identifying new relevant links for your website. Warning: this tool is not for the faint of heart or technically challenged.
2. Moz
Most likely you’ve probably heard about Moz as their tools are well-known in SEO circles. And for good reason since their tools are well respected and affordable (starting as low as $99 a month). Using a proprietary web index of 9.2 trillion links, they offer a wide variety of helpful link building applications including Open Site Explorer (OSE) and MozBar. Open Site Explorer helps uncover content and link building opportunities, track your site’s link profile over time and compare to competitors for intelligent, targeted link building. MozBar allows you to examine and analyze important search, social and other critical page metrics directly from a Chrome browser. While it can look like an expensive investment, it should start paying itself back quickly if you’re using it properly.
3. Whitespark
This is a goldmine for citation building. Whitespark has made it simple to find the best categories and websites to connect to. With their extensive resources, you can see the best citations by category, city, country and more. Quickly discover where to list your business, examine your competition, and monitor your citation growth. The Link Prospector tool was designed to help you find relevant link opportunities for guest blogging, niche directories, link pages, sponsorships, and more. Plans start as low as $79 per month, however several of the resources are also available with a free subscription.
4. Search Console & GA
I saved the best for last. While these may be obvious for some, I’m surprised when advanced SEOs aren’t mining the information gathered in these two systems. In my opinion, these are the most useful link building tools available. Search Console and Analytics provides data directly from Google. No API needed, the intel about your website is a huge bonus. Between Search Console and GA, you get a great picture of how Google perceives your site and the health of your links. Seeing things through Google’s eyes can give you a valuable insight.
Do you have a favorite link building tool to recommend?
Pretty section of content. I just stumbled upon your site and actually enjoyed your blog posts. Anyway I’ll be subscribing to your feeds.
I think article marketing or simply guest posting still has a place if the content is good and the site is quality.