Link Building Tools To Streamline Your Campaign

First of our free link building tools is Linkchecker is an extension for Google Chrome that will crawl any web page, identify broken links and provide a summary of results for each link checked, good or bad. The page title, info, warning, and result response from the server (e.g. 404, 303, etc.) are all included. It also helpfully provides the parent URL, making it easy to go directly to the location of the broken link and fix it. It’s also a simple matter to set the recursion depth i.e. how many sub-folders are examined. And all this at the click of a button; very efficient for those popular pages that have been around forever and have collected a host of links.

Marie Haynes, an expert in Google Penalties and Penguin algorithm, has carried out a vast number of link audits. Sharing her expertise, she built a free tool that enables anyone to check a domain against her blacklist. If you have a suspect domain but you’re not sure if you should disavow the URL, just enter it and click ‘Check it!’ Marie’s tool will return a message explaining more about the domain and giving her recommendation. Thanks to Marie’s wealth of experience, there’s a good chance of your iffy domain being on the database, which is also regularly updated.

Among the best free link building tools, Domain Hunter Plus isn’t just about domain hunting; its link analytics couldn’t be easier. DHP scans your page, then identifies all the broken outbound links, the number of links pointing to the individual page and the domain according to the Linkscape API, as well as noting whether or not the domain is available to buy (often not; authoritative domains are in high demand). In just a couple of clicks, you can check hundreds of links on a site. If you want a report, the results can be exported into a .csv file, or if you want to purchase a domain(s), you can select the one(s) you want and click straight through to GoDaddy to register.

For those who have been notified of a manual action due to ‘unnatural links’ pointing to your site (or discovered some in the course of regular housekeeping), disavow.it compiles your list of spammy URLs into a disavow file ready for submission to Google via Google Webmaster Tools. Etiquette dictates that one should first contact the webmaster of the linking domain and ask for link removal (or annotating the link with a rel=”nofollow”), but too often webmasters refuse or demand payment in exchange for the removal, in which case disavow.it can address the issue for you.

Siege Media’s Embed Code Generator makes it easy to create a code, which can then be simply pasted in, for your multimedia infographics. Infographics are more often shared than plain text, so making it easier for your visitors will not only encourage sharing, but also generate backlinks as the embedded image will automatically link back to your site.

A time-saving must-have for serious link builders, QuickURLOpener.com is a simple online tool that lets you quickly open multiple http and https URLs in separate browser tabs in one easy step. QuickURLOpener.com is supported by all major web browsers and regularly updated.

Another free Chrome extension, LinkMiner works similarly to Linkchecker, but with additional data. LinkMiner locates broken links on a page and shows how many links the broken link has pointing to it. It also shows how many outbound links a page has (displayed as a Google SERP), thereby identifying your broken link building prospects. All the information can then be exported to a .csv file. You can customise how you want LinkMiner to work on the ‘settings’ page, including the option to use Ahrefs or Majestic API’s.

The handy Similar Content Prospecting Tool gives you a launch point for your link building project by identifying high-quality, authoritative prospects that have links to the same type of content that you have on offer and therefore may have an interest in your own great content. Simple to use, just enter relevant keywords for your content, and the tool will prepare a list of prospects that already link to the top ranking content on those terms. You can either export prospects to your preferred outreach method (Buzzstream, Pitchbox and Ninja Outreach are all name-checked) or add them to a spreadsheet. Then begin your outreach campaign and start earning valuable links for your content.

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. The regular updates incur no extra fees, plus there’s a no-quibble, 30-day money back guarantee.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.