If you said backlinks, you’re absolutely right.  Search engines like Google take backlinks as a ranking factor to rank a website. So if you REALLY want to boost your organic traffic, build backlinks. So if you want to build quality links and looking for the BEST link building tools, this post is exclusively for you. In this post, we’ll show you:

Free and premium tools to build links The pros and cons of these tools Pricing and free trials  How to use these tools to create backlinks and much more

There are basically two major things involved in link building.

One is: Finding link opportunities (with the help of link research tools) Another is: Finding prospects to outreach (with the help of outreach tools)

So we’ll try to cover both these link tools to find link building opportunities in 2023.

Let’s first get started with the top tools you can use to build high-quality backlinks to your website.

1. Semrush

If you’re looking for ONLY one SEO tool for link building, Semrush is the perfect choice as it offers you over 45 SEO tools under one roof. Semrush is a popular SEO toolkit that’s used by over 10 million people worldwide. It offers an exclusive link building tool called the “Link Building Tool”. This incredible link building tool from Semrush gathers a list of link building opportunities for your website and helps you run an outreach campaign in order to acquire relevant backlinks from your industry. Use the link below to grab their free trial.  Grab Semrush Pro 30 days free trial (worth $119.95) Did you know that link building tool from Semrush helps you with everything including; You can do all of them in one place. That’s why over 10 million people are using Semrush. Here’s how you can make use of Semrush link building tool to start a link building campaign to build highly relevant links to your website. Step 1: Go to the Link Building Tool, start a new Project or create a new campaign for an existing Project. Here’s how it looks like; Step 2: Now, you can enter up to 10 keywords that you want to improve your search rankings for.  If you’re stuck, you can simply enter your competitor domains (up to 10). Make sure to pick only those domains whose backlink profiles you think are worthy. So entering authority sites in your niche can help. Once it’s done, press the “Start Link Building” button. Step 3: Now Semrush will process the URLs or keywords you provided. Then, you’ll be able to track the progress of your link building campaign including overall prospects, received replies, monitored domains and so on. Here’s how the overview of a domain looks like (from Link Building tool in Semrush); Now, simply start picking the prospects to find link building opportunities. As you can see above, you’ll be provided with a ton of information including; The tip here is to choose the prospects that are relevant to your website and move them to the “In Progress” tab using the “+” sign. Step 4: This is where Semrush link building tool excels as it provides you link building email outreach (In Progress tab). Here’s how it looks like; As you can see above, it lets you reach out to the selected prospects and monitor the status of each of your links. Quick note: The email addresses of your prospects are added by Semrush automatically. In case you find the email address field empty, try using tools like Email Hunter to find an email address before moving on to the next prospect. Step 5: In the Monitor tab, you can monitor your link building efforts over time. Here’s how this tab looks like; As you can see above, all your prospective backlinks are marked as Active, Lost, Broken, Undefined or Rejected after you add the domains you want to monitor. So there you go! That’s how you can use Semrush link building tool for everything including finding link opportunities to finding prospects and monitoring your link building efforts. Pros: Cons: Read: Semrush Free Trial: Try Pro or Guru Account Free for 30 Days Worth Over $300 How much does Semrush cost? Semrush offers you the following 3 pricing plans. Browse More:

Semrush Coupon Code 2023 + FREE eBook! Best Semrush Alternatives for 2023

2. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the best SEO tools out there that gives you access to a powerful SEO toolset. It offers everything from keyword research to site audits to backlink research tools. Ahrefs provides you a tool called “Site Explorer” which gives you an in-depth look at the organic search traffic and backlink profile of any website or URL. How to use Ahrefs to find link building opportunities? Enter a domain of your choice to find its backlinks once you’re on the Site Explorer. If you want to find all the sources of those backlinks, click on the Backlinks. Have a look; As you can see, you’ll be able to find all the backlink sources and you can also filter the results by “dofollow”. You can also use the “Link Intersect” feature to find link opportunities. Enter your competitors’ domains and in the next section enter your own domain to find link opportunities. Click on the Show Link Opportunities, it will show you all prospects. As you can see above, Ahrefs Link Intersect tool has generated over 83,000 domains (link building opportunities) that are not linking to our site BloggersPassion. Not just that, if you click on the down arrow any of the domains, you’ll get access to in-depth data of the particular domain along with its statistics. Pros: Cons: How much does Ahrefs cost? Ahrefs offers the following 4 pricing plans. Quick note: You can read our in-depth Semrush vs Ahrefs review if you want to find all the features along with their tutorials. Read: Best Ahrefs Alternatives to Use in 2023

3. Serpstat

Serpstat is another popular SEO toolkit that is used by over 570,000 people across the world. It offers a wide range of tools including keyword research, backlink analysis, competitor research, site audits, and more. It gives you access to a link building tool called “Backlink Analysis Tool” which helps you analyze the results of your link building campaign. How to use Serpstat to find link building opportunities? Here’s how you can use the Backlink Analysis Tool from Serpstat to find link opportunities.  Once you’re on the Serpstat tool, go to the Backlink Analysis tool and enter any domain. As you can see, once you enter a domain, it will show you a list of all the important backlink data including;

Serpstat domain rank Referring domains Backlinks (including follow and nofollow links)

To find backlink opportunities, simply click on the Backlinks and it will show the specified domain’s backlink sources. Have a look; As you can see, you can easily find all the backlinks along with their source of the domain. You can also find any domain’s new and lost backlinks along with the backlink anchor texts. New & Lost backlinks data is extremely useful if you’re running a link building campaign as you’ll get an idea of who is linking to a particular domain and who’s removing (so you can use both ways to get links). Pros: Cons: How much does Serpstat cost? Serpstat offers you the following 4 pricing plans. Quick note: Enter the promo code “bloggerspassion” (without quotes, in small letters) to activate your Serpstat free trial. Read: Serpstat Review with 7 Days Free Trial Read: Serpstat Coupon Code + 7 Days Free Trial

4. Moz Pro

Moz SEO tool has been around in the business for a lot of years and it is widely used by marketing agencies and SEO experts around the world.  Moz Pro offers a powerful tool called Link Explorer which is the world’s best backlink checker with over 40 trillion links. It helps you get complete link metrics for any website, including Page Authority and Domain Authority. How to use Moz Pro to find link building opportunities? Here’s how you can use the Link Explorer tool from Moz Pro to find backlink opportunities. Once you’re on the Moz tool, go to Link Explorer and enter any website that you need to do better link building research. Then, click on the Analyze button and it will instantly show the domain’s backlinks. Here’s how it looks like; As you can see above, the tool shows you a ton of useful backlink data of the specific domain including; You can also check for spam score (a metric developed by Link Explorer folks) which shows about the type of links pointing to a site. Note: Spam score represents the percentage of sites with similar features we’ve found to be penalized or banned by Google. To find pages that acquired more backlinks, simply go to the Top Pages section on the same tool and it will instantly show you the pages with more links. As you can see above, once you’ve a list of all the pages with more links, you can find ways to acquire those links by creating better content, reaching out to the sites that have linked to the specified domain, etc. Pros: Cons: How much does Moz cost? Moz offers you the following 4 pricing plans. So what are you waiting for? Use the following link to grab their free trial. Read: Moz vs Semrush: Which is Better SEO Tool? Read: Best Moz Alternatives to Try to Improve Your SEO

5. SpyFu

Most SEO tools are expensive as they give you access to a ton of tools. So if you’re looking for an affordable SEO toolkit within a limited budget, SpyFu is exclusively for you as their pricing plans start only at $33 per month. SpyFu offers an amazing tool called “Competitor Backlinks” which helps you target your competitors’ backlinks on specific keywords. How to use SpyFu to find link building opportunities? Here’s how you can use the SpyFu Backlinks tool for finding relevant link building opportunities in your niche. Once you’re on the Backlinks section on SpyFu, enter a domain or keyword to begin searching. As you can see above, once you enter a domain, it will start displaying all the backlinks the domain currently has. It also shows you all the important metrics like;

Domain monthly organic clicks Page monthly organic clicks Overall strength of the domain Ranked keywords Outbound links and more

You can also refine the backlinks in various ways such as blogs, forums, directory links, etc. Have a look; Pros: Cons: How much does SpyFu cost? Browse More:

SpyFu Review: Is It the #1 Competitor Analysis Tool? SpyFu vs Semrush: Which is Better for Competitor Research? SpyFu Competitors: Best SpyFu Alternative Tools for 2023

6. Majestic SEO

If you’re looking for an exclusive link building tool to discover backlinks of any website, Majestic SEO is just for you. Their Fresh Index contains the up-to-date list of everything they’ve found in the past 120 days. Also, it gives you huge historic index data that you can use to go back over the last five years.  How to use Majestic SEO to find link building opportunities? Here’s how to use the Majestic SEO tool to find link building opportunities.  Once you’re on the tool, enter any domain or website to begin the search. As you can see above, once you enter any domain, it instantly shows you a list of link building metrics such as trust flow, citation flow, etc which help you identify the authority of the domain. To find backlink opportunities of that particular domain, just click on the “Backlinks” section. See that? You’ll be able to find that particular domain’s backlink sources along with the backlink metrics such as trust flow, citation flow, destination source of the URLs, and more.

Pros of Majestic SEO:

Cons of Majestic SEO:

How much does Majestic SEO cost? Majestic offers the following 3 pricing plans.

7. Raven Tools

If you want to conduct in-depth SEO competitor research to find backlink opportunities for any website, Raven Tools is an amazing choice for you. The unique thing about Raven tools is that it gives you access to two tools for finding link opportunities including a backlink explorer tool and Link Spy tool.  You can use the Backlink Explorer to find link building opportunities from your competitors. You can use the Link Spy tool to find top-quality links based on those websites that are already ranking for your focus keywords. How to use the Raven tools to find link building opportunities? Here’s how you can use the Raven tools to find great links in any niche. Once you’re on the Backlink Explorer, submit any URL or domain into the “Explore” function to generate an in-depth backlink report. Once it’s done, it instantly gives you all the backlinks along with the source URLs. Have a look; Pros of Raven SEO tools: Cons of Raven SEO tools: How much does Raven tools cost? Raven Tools offers the following pricing plans. Click here to try Raven tools today!

8: SEOquake

SERP analysis is essential to find better link opportunities. Here’s where you can use a free toolbox like SEOquake which has over 3 million downloads and widely used by SEO experts worldwide. It gives you quick access to tons of valuable data of all websites you visit like social signals of a page, keyword difficulty of a query and full report on internal links and external links of a site. The best thing is whenever you search a topic on Google, the extension sits on the browser and gives you a detailed SERP analysis. As you can see above, you’ll get a thorough analysis of SERPs which includes a ton of useful data including; You can also export all the SERP data into CSV for further analysis. Pros: Cons: Pricing: It’s completely free to use. It’s a free browser extension which is available for Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Opera.

Now, let’s talk about the best backlink tools you can use for outreach.

1. BuzzStream

If you’re looking for link building and PR tools to build links and reach out to influencers, you should definitely try BuzzStream. It offers you the world’s best outreach CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools to help you grow your link building results. How to use BuzzStream? Here’s how to use BuzzStream for link outreach. Once you’re the BuzzStream, enter any keyword that you want to start a link building campaign. It instantly shows you a list of influencers along with their profiles, prospects, domain authority, etc. Once you’ve collected the prospects, you can start sending email pitches to build your campaign.  The best part about using BuzzStream is that it also helps you with free email templates that you can use for outreach. Here’s how their templates look like; Pros: Cons: How much does BuzzStream cost? BuzzStream offers the following three pricing plans.

2. BuzzSumo

If you’re looking for a powerful influencer outreach tool to reach out to experts in your niche to build links, BuzzSumo is a great tool for you. It is not only useful for blogger outreach but it also offers a content marketing tool that helps you find out what content is popular by topic or on any website. How to use BuzzSumo? Here’s how you can use BuzzSumo like a pro. Once you’re on BuzzSumo, go to the Backlinks section and enter a domain to find the pages that link to that particular URL or domain. Here’s how it look like; As you can see above, you’ll be able to see a list of all the domains (with the specific pages) that have linked to the specified website. You can also filter the results by various filers like;

Facebook engagement  Twitter shares Pinterest shares Reddit engagement  Number of links Evergreen score Total engagement etc

The best part about using BuzzSumo is that you can also create alerts so whenever someone mentions your blog’s name (or any name that you want to monitor), it notifies you through email. Here’s how it looks like; Pros: Cons: How much does BuzzSumo cost? BuzzSumo offers a free plan where you can perform 10 searches per month but if you want to get more limits, you should go with their premium plans which are listed below.

3. Hunter.io

If you want to easily find verified email addresses of anyone, Hunter is the perfect tool for you. It is currently used by over 2,000,000 professionals to build connections and grow their online business. How to use Hunter.io? Here’s how to use Hunter for outreach. Once you’re on their website, enter any website or company name to perform the search. Here’s how it looks like; As you can see above, once we enter our site bloggerspassion in the search box, it instantly shows us 3 results. Once you click on it, it gives you access to all the available email addresses. Quick note: You must be signed into the Hunter’s account. You can sign up for free and you’ll get access to 25 searches per month with their free account. Pros: Cons: How much does Hunter cost? The best part about using Hunter is it offers a free version and you can perform 25 searches per month using it. But if you want to get more limits, you should go with their premium plans which are listed below. More Link Building Resources for 2023:

Top ways to build high quality backlinks for your blog Link building strategies for niche sites [Ultimate Guide] Top link building mistakes to avoid in 2023 Everything you need to know about buying links in 2023

Final Thoughts

When you are considering serious link building process, we prefer a tool that gives me all round access rather than only the backlink data. Link building isn’t only about getting the backlink data, it is knowing your competitors’ detailed strategy so that you can work better than them.

Use These 10 FREE Tools To Find Traffic Of ANY Website In The World Best Semrush Alternatives: Free & Paid Tools Included How to Check If a Website Is Penalized by Google? How to Get Google to Index Your New Website Quickly? Moz vs Semrush: An Honest Comparison Top Ahrefs Alternatives: Free & Paid Tools Best Backlink Checker Tools to Check Backlinks for a Website People Also Search For: How to Rank for These Queries? Best YouTube Keyword Tools to Get More Views in 2023

Having their top performing content, most linked pages, top keywords that they rank for and even knowing the competitors of your competitors all are essential part of the same link building campaign. While Moz and Majestic like tools give you complete and best backlink data of any website, we prefer tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to power my link building process. If you want an all-in-one tool that mines you the golden keywords your competitor is ranking for, get backlink data, see their competitors and their strategies we would recommend Semrush. Click here to try Semrush FREE for 30 days worth $119.95 So, What’s your favorite link building tool? If you use any of the tools mentioned above, we’d love to hear what features you use the most? And, if we missed any tool you use, leave the details in the comments so that we give them a try!