31 SEO Experts Reveal 3 Favorite Link Building Tools

Are you thinking to use link building tools for your blogs and websites but confused which you should choose?

There are hundreds of link building tools are available in the market which claims itself No#1, but you can’t try all. That’s why I asked around 50 industry experts about their link building campaigns. Which all tools they use and how these tools helped them to reach the top.

I asked a one-liner question to each expert-

If you could use only 3 SEO tools for your link building campaigns which 3 tools would you choose

I only wanted to know the tools that helped them to reach the top so that a newbie like me and many can take help of those tools. I received a good number of responses. And so here are the responses of 31 Industry experts. I was really surprised to see the response of industry giants replying to a mail of newbie. I thank each one of you for your precocious time. Based on the vote, I categorized the top 5 most used link building tools and here those are-

Favourite Link Building Tools, based upon the votes-

1. Ahrefs – 13 Votes

2. Google Products (Includes Webmaster, Search and Keyword Planner)- 12 Votes

3. BuzzStream- 10 Votes

4. Majestic Seo- 8 Votes

5. BuzzSumo and MOZ tied with -4 Votes

Apart from these top 5 link building tools, good responses have been received for the below also-

GSA Search Engine Ranker, URL Profiler, Link Prospector, Tiny Ranker and Screaming Frog also.

So read on the experts’ 3 favorite link building tools-

Note: Responses listed in the order they were received in

Neil Patel - Neil Patel

Ahrefs: I would use Ahrefs to see who links to my competition and which links I should be going after.

BuzzSumo: I would use Buzzsumo to help me determine what content to create that generates the most social traffic. As some of those visitors will end up linking back to your site.

Adobe Illustrator: And I would use Adobe Illustrator to create infographics. Infographics generate more backlinks than blog posts, or at least that is what we have seen at KISSmetrics.

Erik Emanuelli - Erik Emanuelli

Similar Web: Great tool to gather specific insights about any website, as search engines rankings, traffic, audience data, and social stats.

NetPeak Checker: Fantastic software to check different SEO details. Great to get an analysis of the leading SEO parameters of specific pages or websites, plus competition analysis and comparison.

SerpBook Rank Tracker: A powerful rank tracker. Good to check different data for your website campaign, as for example keyword rankings.

Mike Wallagher - Start Blogging Online

Ahrefs: My number one "tool" for doing SEO is obviously Ahrefs. It helps me to dig into competitor backlinks and probably gather some low hanging fruits (links) for my project. This also helps me to determine the level of competition going on for a particular keyword/niche.

Gmail with YesWare: the Second tool in my list is Gmail with a combination of YesWare. This helps me to track my outgoing/received emails for link prospects. This can easily be replaced with a buzzstream, but I'm a bit old-school SEO, so I prefer to Gmail.

Broken Link Finder: And the third tool would be brokenlinkbuilding.com. This is software that scrapes together a list (for a keyword) of pages that are either down or go to 404 error page. This helps me to find tons of broken link building prospects.

Kulwant Nagi - BloggingCage

I use following 3 link building tools-

SEO Powersuite

SEMRush

GSA Search Engine Ranker

Sue Anne Dunlevie- Successful Blogging

Inbound Writer: I use Inbound Writer to come up with my keywords and the URL slug for my blog posts. They use predictive analytics, and their service helps me create content that gets 2x-3x the amount of traffic I used to get.

Majestic SEO: It helps me see the backlinks and rankings of both my site and my competitors.

Alexa: I also use Alexa to keep track of my audience demographics and geography as well as my rankings.

Atish Ranjan - Atish Ranjan

I love to perform link building manually but to get help in the campaign I mostly use Majestic SEO, Ahrefs, and Google Webmasters primarily.

These tools help me understand which all sites are linking to me and also how they are linked and this helps me figure out which links are good and which ones are bad. By this, I can disavow the bad links to stay safe. I can also get to know how many dofollow links my site is having and how many nofollow. It helps me decide how much more quality backlinks either dofollow or nofollow are required to rank well.

I just shared the 3 tools above, but I use much more such as WebMeUp, Open Site Explorer.

If it comes to automation of link building which can be done for event blogging, then I would Suggest GSA Search Engine Ranking.

Miguel Salcido - Organic SEO Consultant

Open Site Explorer: I would use Open Site Explorer to review competitor links and assess my site's link profile.

Excel or Google docs: I would use Excel or Google Docs to manage and record new links.

Gmail: And I would use Gmail for my outreach.

It’s pretty simple. :-) But this is still the most efficient way to build links.

Anil Agarwal - Blogger Passion

If I had to use only 3 SEO and link building tools, then here you go:

Moz: I personally use Moz tools as the tools used in Moz are not only made my SEO professionals, but they are easy to use even for SEO beginners. They also give access to Open Site Explorer where you can actually figure out your competitor keywords and the number of backlinks so that you can outperform your competitors in search results.

Google Keyword Planner: No matter how many keyword research tools are available, according to me, nothing beats Keyword Planner by Google. You can quickly figure out the best keyword ideas for your blog posts, and you can also estimate the number of average monthly searches for your desired keywords. It's also free! Here are some of the best alternatives to Google AdWords for PPC.

SEO By Yoast: This is a must have a plugin for every WordPress user. This plugin helps you optimize your blog posts properly for search engines. It will also help you find the right keyword density to increase your search results for any keyword. It's a free plugin btw!
Sebastian Cowie- SC Digital

The 3 main SEO tools I use for my link building campaigns are as follows:

Scrapebox –for data collection, scraping, rank tracking

Ahrefs- for backlink data and competitor research

Buzzstream- for prospecting links

Jessica Knapp - Blogging Basics 101

Ahrefs- This is mostly for digging into competitors’ backlinks to get some low hanging links with direct email outreach. Here's what I usually do:

1) Type in my main keyword in Google.com

2) Scrape together top 10 results and add them to ahrefs backlink search.

3) See where they have got those links from.

4) Email to those webmasters saying that I've put together something similar and it would be nice if they could mention it on their page.

Buzzstream- This is mainly to keep my email outreach targeted and organized. In that way, I can follow-up if someone hasn't answered to my initial email. I can also keep those contacts for future projects so I can email them later again and build a relationship of some sort.

Broken Link Building: This is for finding broken link building opportunities. It'll cost you some money, but you can easily type in your main keyword - for example, "blogging" and broken link building tool will give you some results for pages that are related to blogging but are no longer available (404 error, page down, etc.). Once I've found something, I'll get in touch with people who have linked to the site previously and tell them that the site is down and they could replace it with my OWN site.

Bill Sebald - Greenlane Search Marketing LLC

My 3 link building tools are as follows:

Buzzstream- for prospecting links

URLProfiler

and all the link data providers (in aggregate).

Then it’s good old Excel and Google.com usually for the rest.

Vladimir Gendelman - Company Folders

My 3 link building tools are as follows:

Adobe Creative Suite- Essential tool for creating awesome infographics.

SEMRush- Great tool for keyword research that will also help you think of ideas for content.

Majestic- Helpful for analyzing and auditing backlinks.

Jason Acidre - Xight Interactive

I'd definitely pick these 3 link building tools:

Ahrefs- for backlink data and competitor research

Buzzstream

SEOQuake/Mozbar- To Analyze competitors and their links pretty easily

George Stevens - NEB Stone

MajesticSEO – gives a good picture of your backlink profile as well as giving information on anchor text and quality of the backlinks (trust flow, citation flow)

MOZ – similar to MajesticSEO however with some differences - useful to compare metrics and also offers the ability to compare your site with other competitor sites in detail.

Google Webmaster Tools – the inbound links section can give some really good detail into who links to you and from what pages (it’s free as well).

Simon Penson - Zazzle Media

Everything we do is led by content and so while we still use the obvious tools we like to focus on ways to find great content that works. Often we will start with an audit of competitor activity and to do that we would often use the following tools. These help us understand what content gains traction and will earn shares and links:

Buzzsumo, SEMRush and Ahrefs Top Content.

Nirmala Santhakumar - My Magic Fundas

Below are my 3 preferred SEO Tools for Link Building!

LongTailPro - I love this tool. I've integrated with my Moz free account to analyze the competitors and their links effortlessly. Not only to look the links, we can see their PD, DA, PR, Moz rank, juice passing external links, etc. with this awesome tool.

Google Webmaster Tools - Regular use of this valuable tool helps me to understand better about my links and keywords to focus.

Open Site Explorer - I use this vibrant tool to get insights about the links that points to a particular page.

Chris Gilchrist- Hit Reach

If I’ll have only three tools for link building, I would prefer to use the below three-

URL Profiler – For backlink audit

Ahrefs- To keep track of my link profile and make sure things look organic and healthy.

Buzzstream- for contact management, task management, and finding contact information

Kostas Chiotis - Iris Signals

MozBar: One of the tools I use on a regular basis is the convenient extension MozBar, which is both free and quite intuitive to use. Checking the Domain Authority of sites is a must for anyone who is working in the SEO industry so it's something I cannot work without.

SEOquake: SEOquake is another neat (and completely free) extension for Chrome and Firefox, which I use to view any site’s statistics while browsing. You can modify the different metrics to be displayed, such as Google and Bing indexed pages, external and internal links, keyword density, social media stats, and Alexa rank, etc. It saves me a ton of time for checking each of these individually.

Open Link Profiler: Perhaps the one I find the easiest and most straightforward to use is Open Link Profiler. For a free tool, it’s amazing how much you can get out of it. I use it mostly to scout specific backlinks leading to a site as it has some very handy filters and a number of options for tracking backlinks in real time (it’s updated daily) and the results go back for the past six months. I’ve used quite a few backlink profile checkers, but this one seems to work best for me.

Jane Sheeba- Best Hosting & Design

As to Link building and SEO tools, I use

SEMrush

Market Samurai and

Google Webmaster.

Larry Frank- FlowingTechBlog

Buzzstream: BuzzStream is one of those tools I use for link building campaigns; it is hands down the best enterprise-class outreach management tool out there for me. It gives you an easy top down view and trusts me, it is incredibly intuitive.

Majestic SEO: It's one of those tools I used in the early days of blogging; I was introduced to this tool by a friend. Majestic SEO is a software package, which is focused on providing information for link building, reputation management, competitive link analysis and website traffic analysis. In all this, competitive link analysis and for A standard link audit has been what I use this tool for. Believe me to the tool is a very nice one regarding backlink exploration and building a reputable link building strategy.

Link Prospector: This is yet another tool I've given a try, but not frequent with it, the little time I had with this tool is enough to testify. Link Prospector is a link building research tool that is designed to find and return lists of potential partner sites. Built for speed, the tool can return a huge amount of data link builders can sift through to find link building opportunities. One reason why I like this tool is the fact that it has a clean and simple interface and has the ability to export what it finds.

Nisha Pandey - SeoTechyWorld

I am using lots of SEO tools but, the following 3 are very important and needy for me. I can't miss these 3 tools for my SEO and link building campaigns-

Google AdWords Keyword Planner

SEOBin

Google Analytics

Ikechi- Awaziwikechi

I would use the below three link building tools-

Alexa

Google free Keyword Planner and

Buzzstream

Mi Muba- BeAMoneyBlogger

If I will have to use only three link building tool, then I will use the below link building tools- Buzzstream

Ahrefs

Majestic SEO

Sujoy Dhar – WideInfo

I will be using the below three link building tools-

GSA Search Engine Ranking

Scrapebox

Hire an SEO worker for maintenance and manual kinds of stuff:)

Debra Mastaler- Alliance Link

I use the below link building tools-

Talkwalker- For social media analytics.

Buzzstream- I use BuzzStream for contact management, task management, and finding contact information

Screaming Frog – For Site audits, detailed backlink analysis, and redirect mapping

Apart from above three, I also use Majestic SEO.

Jitendra Vaswani - BloggersIdeas

The best three link building tool that I would recommend are-

GSA Search Engine Ranker

SEO Spyglass

Ahrefs

Bill Hunt - Back Azimuth

I will use the following three link building tools-

Majestic SEO: I am using Majestic SEO for backlink checking.

Link Research Tools: I use Link Research Tools for link building.

Link Detox: I use Link Detox for Link Audit and Link Risk Management.

Harris Schachter- OptimizePri

My three favorite link building tools are:

Ahrefs for link data and competitive analysis,

Buzzsumo for content ideas and research and

finally a good email platform like MailChimp for building contact lists and doing outreach.

Ann Smarty- ViralContentBuzz

Here are my link building tools I use all the time -

Majestic SEO - for competitor backlink research (for inspiration)

Myblogu- to get featured in niche blogs (free!)

SeoChat- to catch potentially dangerous tools (free!)

Bob Jones - Visible

My current three tools for our link building campaigns are-

Majestic SEO

RavenTools

Google Keyword

Sophie Lizard - Be A Freelance Blogger

Sophie’s ideas of link building are quite different from others, and she uses the natural methods for link building. According to her, if I could have only 3 things to help with link building I'd want:

1) Great content

2) Email

3) Friends

You write the great content, send an email to your friends, and they share your link with their audience -- or they invite you to guest post on their blog or feature in their next expert round-up, whatever. It's all link building. :)

Jimmy Rodriguez - 3dcart

My 3 favorite link building tools are as follows-

1. Ahrefs: This is my main tool for links and keyword tracking. The ability to check the top content on ecommerce websites is really valuable to select the right articles when requesting backlinks.

2. Keywords Everywhere: I use their Chrome extension to quickly find keyword ideas based on volume for blog posts, one of the best keyword research tools that is available for free.

3. NinjaOutreach: My favorite tool for researching link opportunities, finding the right influencers and articles matching keywords I'm targeting. It helps keep the email outreach organized, scheduling follow-ups and managing contacts.

Christopher Jan Benitez - Splashpress Media

If I get only three tools for link building, I will definitely use the below three-

Ahrefs or Open Site Explorer - These tools help me in prospecting for links to my websites. Both are also great tools for backlink analysis and poaching links from your competitors.

Buzzstream- Using BuzzStream I do SEO by connecting to influencers and experts within the industry. I then leverage my relationship with them by collaborating on a blog post and getting a backlink on their site.

Buzzsumo - This helps me find the most viral content for my target keyword and lets me create a better content out of the results using Brian Dean's Skyscraper Technique.

John Marquez - Nighwatch - Community Manager

Nightwatch: You’ll get a thorough overview of your SEO efforts with Nightwatch since you can discover, analyze, and monitor your backlinks closely. The tool makes it easy to find details about your backlinks such as their domain, quality, and follow or no-follow type.

Buzzstream: This is a great tool for organizing your outreach emails. With it, you can automate a lot of the outreach process: researching prospects, finding email addresses, sending follow-up emails, and tracking reply rates.

Ahrefs: It’s useful for prospecting links from your competitor’s backlink profile. This helps you uncover valuable link building opportunities that you can add to your own site.

Over to You

Huge Thanks to all of you for your time and being so kind for the response.

Please share this, if you found this useful.

Here are the top results once again, just for the review-

1. Ahrefs – 13 Votes

2. Google Products (Includes Webmaster, Search and Keyword Planner)- 12 Votes

3. BuzzStream- 10 Votes

4. Majestic Seo- 8 Votes

5. BuzzSumo and MOZ tied with -4 Votes

Keep visiting us, for such kind of case study and Experts Round Ups. I will love to know your response too on this in the comment. If you are looking for more such tools, you are recommended to check this article.

If you could use only 3 SEO tools for your link building campaigns which 3 tools would you choose?

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Link Building Roundup SEO

Ashutosh Jha

Ashutosh Jha is a professional blogger, Blog and IT Consultant. He writes about Blogging, SEO, Making Money, Internet Marketing and Web Design.
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