What are the best tools for link building?
Run a Google search and you’ll come across 11.7 million results!
A lot of the posts list dozens of different tools. And, while the lists are comprehensive, the tools usually aren’t organized by category or use case.
The result? You often come away feeling overwhelmed and not knowing where to start.
To scale quality link building, you need to assemble a powerful stack of tools covering 5 core areas:
- Link analysis
- Link prospecting
- Finding contact information
- Outreach management
- Tracking & reporting
So, how do you wade through the countless tools out there and find the best option for each specific area of your link building campaign?
To help you find a quick answer, I reached out to 82 link builders and asked the following question:
What is your best link building tool in each of the following categories — (1) Analysis, (2) prospecting, (3) finding contact information, (4) outreach, and (5) tracking & reporting?
All these folks are in the trenches running small, medium, and large scale link building campaigns for clients across a wide range of industries. I wanted to see which tools would get the most votes in each category.
Whether you’re looking to build out a full tool set, or you’re just after the best tool for a specific part of your campaign, this post will give you a battle-tested shortlist of options to look at.
Before we dive into the results, you can click the download button below to get my free link building ebook. It includes 19 actionable strategies, templates and scripts I’ve used to land thousands of quality links for this blog, and my clients:
I have included some jump links so you can quickly navigate around the post to find the best tools for a specific area of your campaign.
#1: Top Competitive Link Analysis Tool
#3: Top Tool for Finding Contact Information
#4: Top Tool for Outreach Management
#5: Top Tool for Link Tracking
Ok, now for the results.
OVERALL WINNER: Ahrefs is the overall winner with 89 votes across the board. Almost three quarters of the experts I surveyed use Ahrefs for at least one area of link building.
*Disclosure: There are some affiliate links in this article. If you decide to purchase a tool through one of those affiliate links, I will receive a commission at no additional cost to you.
1. Best Tools for Backlink Analysis
#1: Ahrefs (54)
#2: SEMrush (14)
With over three times as many votes as SEMrush, Ahrefs is the clear winner for competitive link analysis.
Ahrefs’ massive link index gives it a competitive advantage when it comes to backlink analysis and competitor research; combine that with a clean UI and you’ve got a true analysis powerhouse.
Here are some of the ways SEO experts use Ahrefs for competitive link analysis:
- Build a list of viable link opportunities by using Link Intersect to see pages that link to your competitors but not to you
- Research competitor coverage in the news so you know which outlets and journalists to pitch
- Spy on the competition’s hottest content and most valuable pages (and uncover low quality links, too)
- Quickly find new and lost links
- Avoid wasting valuable time waiting for the crawler to return results; Ahrefs is instant and user-friendly
2. Best Tools for Link Prospecting
#1: Ahrefs (13)
#2: BuzzSumo (11)
Ahrefs narrowly steals first place, just two votes ahead of Buzzsumo.
Here are five important reasons the experts think Ahrefs is the best tool for link prospecting:
- Use the Best By Links report to identify the content topics and types that generate the most links for competitors
- Use advanced filters to quickly find relevant sites linking to your competitors
- Use the Link Intersect report to find all the sites linking to multiple competitors
- Use the Link Intersect report to identify all the sites linking to competitors on a recurring basis
- Use the SEO Toolbar to analyze link metrics and quality prospects directly in the SERPs
3. Best Tools for Finding Contact Information
#1: Hunter (25)
#2: Buzzstream (10)
Both of these tools take a domain and return an email address, but Hunter — found to be more reliable and easier to use — beats BuzzStream with more than twice as many votes.
Here’s why the experts love Hunter for finding contact information for outreach prospects:
- Hunt emails without switching tools or tabs — Hunter has a Chrome extension you can activate on the prospect’s website to quickly pull up their email address
- Validate VA-sourced email addresses in bulk before sending a huge outreach campaign to the wrong emails
- Get a prospect’s email address from their LinkedIn URL; a lot of marketers use LinkedIn for prospecting, so Hunter fits right into that workflow
- See the sources of any hunted email address so you know the information is reliable
- Bulk lookup with Hunter’s Google Sheets add-on. Fantastic for big campaigns
4. Best Tools for Outreach Management
#1: BuzzStream (29)
#2: Google Sheets (10)
BuzzStream is a dedicated tool for outreach management that includes automatic email finding, campaign tracking, and bulk emailing. It’s like a CRM for all of your marketing contacts.
Sorry, Google Sheets, the winner here is obvious — marketers want a made-to-measure tool that just works, not one that needs a ton of configuration.
Here’s why SEO experts chose BuzzStream by such a wide margin:
- Manage bulk emails without being spammy; it’s easy to monitor responses and add personalization
- Automatically scrape contact information and influence metrics from a list of domains so you know how to prioritize outreach
- Juggle thousands of prospects across multiple clients with a variety of outreach methods
- Track how effective your outreach campaign is, and optimize based on open rate, click-through, and reply percentage
- Add tags and notes to journalists so you can build a powerful and filterable library of up-to-date outreach contacts
5. Best Tools for Link Tracking and Reporting
#1: Ahrefs (22)
#2: Google Sheets (21)
It was a tough fight. Google Sheets almost pulled through, but Ahrefs edged into its second category win (and third victory over all!) for link tracking and reporting. And that’s for a good reason.
While nothing beats a spreadsheet for general purpose number-crunching, Ahrefs’ dashboard generates amazing reports, and its link tracking is second to none.
Here’s why the majority of SEO experts choose Ahrefs for link tracking and reporting:
- Get accurate, up-to-the-minute data on backlinks thanks to Ahrefs’ massive 12 trillion+ link index
- See your link building momentum with the referring domains graph
- The new links report is powerful in conjunction with Google Analytics; use the new links in a custom GA report to get data on referral traffic
- Log trends and historical data automatically — Ahrefs is “set it and forget it”, so you don’t have to keep coming back and plugging new data in
- Get email alerts for new backlinks, and send new backlinks to an RSS feed to always stay on top of new links wherever you are
82 Experts Reveal Their Favorite Link Building Tools for 2019
That was a quick look at the category winners for SEO link building tools, but there’s a lot more insight in the responses below.
Plus, there are some lesser-known tools that might just become a new secret weapon in your link building arsenal.
Let’s jump in:
Scott Taft
1) Ahrefs – I find it has the largest database of links and the simplest interface to use.
2) Ahrefs – With the Content Explorer I can quickly search for top shared or linked to content in a given time range and easily lift the sites linking to that content to get a crop of prospects.
3) Hunter.io – This tool seems like magic sometimes the way it is able to find email addresses on a site. There is a Chrome plugin that allows you to easily grab the email address of almost any LinkedIn profile.
4) Buzzstream – This tool has come a long way in contact management and the actual emailing functionality makes organic outreach and personalization much easier.
5) Ahrefs (I use this tool a lot) – The “New Links” report tends to catch a lot of links we get. I throw those into a custom report in Google Analytics to report on any referral traffic from those links.
Gareth Daine
1. Ahrefs
One of the best tools out there for competitor link research is Link Research Tools from Christoph C. Cemper, but it can be a little pricey for some people.
A great alternative is Ahrefs.
Ahrefs offer a comprehensive backlink analysis tool, not only for your own site but to research your competitors.
2. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is an excellent tool for prospecting when looking for link targets, influencers, journalists, micro-influencers, and bloggers.
Their Influencers search tool enables you to search Twitter profiles and filter based on various criteria, including follower count, profile type, status etc.
You can also use BuzzSumo’s Content Research tool and search based on topic or keyword, find quality content and then see who has shared or interacted with that content on Twitter.
3. Sellhack, Hunter.io, Voila Norbert & Google
There are a plethora of techniques and tools you can use to find the email addresses of your prospects.
Four tools I use to find email addresses are Sellhack, Hunter.io, Voila Norbert and good ol’ Google.
I particularly like the Chrome extensions for Sellhack and Hunter.io.
Additionally, BuzzStream has automated tools for dining email addresses, too.
In reality, you’re going to need to use a combination of tools and techniques, as well as possibly employ a VA to take on some of the workload, depending on how much you need to scale.
You’ll also probably want to validate the emails using a tool such as Kickbox.io before you go ahead and start your outreach campaigns.
4. Mailshake & BuzzStream
When it comes to email outreach management and automation there are a variety of options to choose from, such as Ninja Outreach, Reply.io and others, but two of my favourites are Mailshake, by Sujan Patel, and BuzzStream.
I love Mailshake’s simplicity and interface. It’s so easy to use.
While BuzzStream has a cornucopia of features and tools for automation, including prospecting.
One thing to note, though. While automation and templates are useful, to be successful at outreach you need to add that genuine, personal touch to your emails.
Building relationships are key and one of the most important aspects of SEO.
5. Ahrefs, BuzzStream & Google Sheets
Ahrefs, again, have great link tracking tools, while BuzzStream has a particular backlink tracking per outreach campaign tool, specifically designed to track links to a specific URL.
Then there are good old Google Sheets, which can be partly automated.
As a bonus, BuzzSumo can also track links to specific content, though they usually only show the best links to a particular piece of content.
Tyler Thursby
2. Twitter — Can follow influencers and build relationships
3. LinkedIn — Find people’s company info and can message them directly
4. Google Sheets — Maintain my own spreadsheet in the cloud
5. Agency Analytics — Automates link reporting, illustrates things like link velocity
Aaron Agius
Aleyda Solis
2. Prospecting for outreach – Kerboo
3. Finding contact information – Kerboo
4. Outreach management – Pitchbox
5. Link tracking & reporting – Pitchbox
Eric Siu
1. Competitor link research: SEMrush
2. Prospecting for outreach: LinkedIn (for collecting emails), Mixmax (for scheduling emails)
3. Finding contact information: Hunter.io
4. Outreach management: Google Sheets
5. Link tracking & reporting: Google Sheets
Alexandra Tachalova
I mostly use Ahrefs, but sometimes I want to see as much data as I can, which is why I use Majestic and SEMrush.
With the help of Buzzsumo, I can find the list of sites that have linked to content that is similar to pieces I work with. Also, in BuzzSumo you can pull together a list of bloggers and journalists that are associated with a particular industry.
We’ve recently started to use Pitchbox to keep all our email outreach campaigns in one place. It has helped us become much more productive by focusing our energy on acquiring links and spending less time reporting to our clients.
John Doherty
Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz
Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz
Hunter.io
I don’t really do any outreach management.
Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz
Jason Acidre
2. Google advanced search, and Ahrefs.
3. Buzzstream and Hunter.io
4. Buzzstream, Gmail for business, and Boomerang for Gmail.
5. Buzzstream, Google Sheet, and Ahrefs
Mike King
Adam Chronister
1). Competitor link research,
As of late one of my favorite link building strategies involves using SEMrush to gain insights into my competitors’ top performing content. To start, I look for content publishers that are putting out content in my (or my clients’) target niche. Once I have identified a few, I plug those competitors’ domain names into SEMrush, then drill down into SEMrush’s Organic Page Report. I then run these pages through Open Site Explorer to get the sites domain and page authority. This leaves me with a list of content pages that not only get a lot of traffic but also have an acceptable domain and page authority.
2). Prospecting for outreach,
Once I have some linkable content, I then use Open Site Explorer to identify the pages linking to my competitors’ content.
3). Finding contact information,
Often we use a simple whois search to find out who administers the site. If we can find, that we will then do a little further research via LinkedIn to find out who the best point of contact within the organization is.
4). Outreach management,
Most of our outreach consists of directing users towards content that we have created. When reaching out to them, we introduce the content as a useful reference or supplement to content they already have on their site.
To manage this outreach, we use the Contactually CRM. It’s a great CRM that lets you segment and campaign users in a fun and intuitive way.
5). Link tracking & reporting
For tracking and reporting of backlinks, we use the SEMrush backlinks checker tool.
Sean Patrick Si
2. NinjaOutreach, Prospect.io
3. Prospect.io, NinjaOutreach
4. Prospect.io, NinjaOutreach
5. Ahrefs, Google Search Console Link report
Andy Crestodina
Moz
Buzzsumo
Ninja Outreach
Ahrefs
Adam Connell
2. Prospecting for outreach – Dibz.me. It’s a tool I picked up on an AppSumo deal. It simplifies the prospecting process a lot but requires credits to run.
3. Finding contact information – Dibz.me. During the prospecting process, I can choose to pull in email addresses. Either by a free scrape, or via Hunter.io.
4. Outreach management – BuzzStream. It has every feature I need. Email sending, CRM, prospecting, link management, etc.
5. Link tracking & reporting – BuzzStream. Since I use Buzzstream for managing outreach, it’s a huge time saver having this functionality within the same tool.
Suganthan Mohanadasan
1. Competitor link research – Ahrefs & Mangools LinkMiner
Ahref arguably has the best index after Google so its a no brainer. LinkMiner is a useful tool for getting instant target site previews and provides CT and TF.
2. Prospecting for outreach – NinjaOutreach
NinjaOutreach has an excellent database.
3. Finding contact information – Google (Websites, Social media channels) & Hunter
Google is the best way to find contact information. Most targets have some sort of web presence and if you look around you can find contact info quickly. I also use Hunter as its a popular choice and works great.
4. Outreach management – NinjaOutreach and Buzzstream
Both tools have their pros and cons, and I use them in combination depending on the type of outreach/niche.
5. Link tracking & reporting – Google Sheets.
Nothing beats Google spreadsheet. It’s easy to share with the team and manage.
Kevin Indig
1) Ahrefs. I feel like they have the best data base of links for that price. That being said, I don’t think it matters much which tool you use because you should double verify anyway.
2) Buzzsumo. I think it’s important to look at two metrics for link prospecting: how strong the domain is in terms of links and how good the social presence of the brand is. Content that’s shared often gets links and traffic (in the future).
3) Hunter.io
4) Google sheets. I find G sheets to be the most versatile, flexible, and collaborative way to manage outreach. It integrates with most other tools, provides quick filtering, and can be quickly shared with anyone.
5) Ahrefs in combination with Google Sheets.
Chris Castillo
1. Competitor Link Research: The one-and-only Ahrefs. No better tool in my books.
2. Propsecting for Outreach: I use Ahrefs to analyze competitors and other niche-relevant websites. I manually review them in order to determine where we want placements and to make sure they are a good fit. I like to look at the domain metrics in Ahrefs to determine high-value targets and low hanging fruit opportunities.
3. Finding Contact Info: For finding out contact info, I like VoilaNorbert. The data we get back from VoilaNorbert is then run through BlazeVerify. I’ve found that BlazeVerify is the best tool for sanitizing and verifying our email lists.
4. Outreach Management: I’ve used Lemlist for this because of its awesome personalization features. We enter any opportunities into an AirTable base for tracking and management.
5. Link Tracking & Reporting: I use Ahrefs to track won/lost backlinks since Ahrefs will send automatic email notifications when a link is lost or acquired. Google Data Studio is what we use for all SEO performance reporting since it ties into Google Analytics and Search Console. The reports in Google Data Studio can be highly customized to present the most important information in better context.
Emma White
1. ahrefs – This tool has everything we want in one place and allows us to analyse competitors potential strategies, giving us ideas of how we can improve our own strategy for our clients.
2. A virtual assistant who uses various search operators to find targeted prospects.
3. N/A
4. BuzzStream – Allows easy division of contacts between projects, email tracking, general conversation tracking and notes on relationships. Also gives the ability to customize the information you deem important.
5. Google Sheets – Allows easy sharing of data and project status between team members, and can be completely customized to suit our own personal workflow.
Connor Wrenn
Sam Hurley
Eli Schwartz
2) Ahrefs
3) DomainTools – I am a dinosaur, but I can’t help it!
4) Google Docs & Boomerang
5) Google Docs
Chris Dreyer
1. Competitor link research
Ahrefs is my go-to for any kind of link research, tracking, and analysis. For competitor research, you can use the link intersect tool to see what sites are linking to your competition but that are not linking to you (which is really helpful for building a list of link opportunities). In my opinion it’s one of the most robust tools for link research on the market.
2. Prospecting for outreach
There are some really good enterprise level influencer tracking platforms out there. Clearvoice, Traacker, and Little Bird come to mind. For our purposes though, Buzzsumo has been a good tool for finding what content is popular so that we can prioritize any outreach. It’s inexpensive and does the trick.
3. Finding contact information
Using a combination of search, social, and whois database information is a great way to find contact information on sites that you want to interact with. The Whois database can sometimes yield results but you have to be careful. Sometimes information is masked or it’s just a generic email stored there.
Using LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are other good resources for finding contact information of site owners. Sometimes just going to the about our contact pages of sites can get you what you need.
4. Outreach management
We manage our outreach contacts out of Infusionsoft (which would be overkill if we weren’t integrating it into other parts of our business). For someone without those resources, I would say using something like Mailchimp or even a Gmail plugin like Nudge (Nudge.ai) which helps you manage follow-up intervals with your contacts so you don’t forget to email them.
It’s super helpful if you’re prone to forgetting to email people back if they haven’t responded to you or if there is a long process of communication for getting things done.
5. Link tracking & reporting
Here again I have to say Ahrefs. You can get historical data over time, view trends, and generate reports pretty easily. Ahrefs displays pretty much everything you would ever want to know related to your links and your competitor’s links. In terms of reporting, you can set websites up in the software to track data over time so you don’t have to keep coming back and plugging information in. This is also one of the most accurate tools I’ve seen out there.
Linda Kyzar
I use Moz’s Open Site Explorer for backlink research for our clients and their competitors. Open Site Explorer provides all the data needed to discover new backlink opportunities including link equity, spam score, domain and page authority and more. It’s also great for finding any bad links that need to be disavowed.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is awesome for targeting, tracking and engaging with prospects and industry connections. HubSpot Sales Tools steps in to track which prospects have engaged with website content, and Inbox Profiles (also from HubSpot) is great for outreach insights right inside of Gmail.
Google, LinkedIn, Twitter. I’ve been successful with direct connections and communications through social.
I use Buzzsumo for influencer research. After finding the most popular content I go straight to social to form real relationships, share content, and look for opportunities for reciprocation from my best targets. Sincerity goes a long way to succeed with influencers and obtain high quality backlinks. LinkedIn Sales Navigator pairs up well to manage outreach and relationships on that channel.
Hands down Databox. With Databox we can report out to our clients in real-time from several platforms like SEMrush, Google Analytics, HubSpot and many more – all on one dashboard. Link building is top of mind so monitoring is an essential part of the process!
Alan Silvestri
1). Competitor link research
Ahrefs is by far my only weapon of choice to dive into what others are doing. My Favorite Ahrefs reports are the main backlinks report (it has useful filters to sort lists), the “best by links” report (great to find competitors pages that get the most links) and the “New backlinks” report (great to see what’s been working well for competitors in the past few days, weeks or months).
2). Prospecting for outreach
We use a variety of different tools for prospecting, which in my opinion is the most important part of the link building process.
In order of how we use them:
1. Google + semantic.io + Google sheets formulas to find search queries
2. Scrapebox to find prospect URLs and weed out the junk
3. URL profiler to weed out the bad sites using SEO metrics
3). Finding contact information
– URL profiler to find the author’s name
– Hunter.io to find emails
– Neverbounce to verify emails
4). Outreach management
We’ve started off using Mailshake but transitioned to Buzzstream because we like the added CRM functionality.
5). Link tracking & reporting
We do everything in Google sheets with a modified version of Ryan Stewart’s system for project management. The clients have their own workbook where they see everything we’re working on, the live links in real time and much more. Everything is automated and pulls from our main central file.
Michael Salvo
2) Prospecting for outreach – Google – Specifically using Google search operators, there’s nothing that gives you better results. Occasionally Ahrefs content explorer.
3) Finding contact information – Hunter.io and manual checks on social profiles
4) Outreach management – Pitchbox – Tried using MailShake, Buzzstream. Nothing work as well and scales like Pitchbox
5) Link tracking & reporting – Pitchbox, Ahrefs
Adam Rowles
2. Prospecting for outreach: Ahrefs – their content explorer can identify content that has already attracted links.
3. Find contact information: Hunter.io – will search for email addresses on the web for that domain
4. Outreach management: Gmail + Yesware – helps with automatic follow-up
5. Link tracking & reporting: Ahrefs – their project section can track backlinks & site explorer will track backlink profile over time
Corey Northcutt
There are so many tools that are relevant for different situations, but these are the big ones:
1) Ahrefs
2) Google Search Operators (all the SaaS tools seem to use, anyway)
3) Hunter.io
4) BuzzStream
5) Proprietary scripts based on the Google Drive API
Pete Reis-Campbell
Ahrefs and Buzzsumo have a function that allows you to keep track of your achieved coverage. These tools also allow users to use the backlinks feature to research competitors coverage and content.
Buzzsumo is a great tool that, by using a keyword-based search, highlights articles published in various publications, allowing an outreacher to see how journalists are featuring similar articles, as well as who may be interested in a particular niche.
Vuelio has a vast database for finding journalist’s contact information as well as listing a bio and their preferred method of contact.
Buzzstream allow you to build your own library of contacts, making your outreach process effortless by adding tags and a notes section to keep up to date with journalists and your coverage.
Tom Demers
2) Citation Labs – I really like Citation Labs for bulk prospecting (and frequently just use Google SERPs for quicker tasks as well)
3) Hunter – Hunter (https://hunter.io/) is an awesome plugin for quickly getting contact info.
4) Google Sheets – Personally I still use spreadsheets here, but BuzzStream is also a great outreach CRM
5) Ahrefs – We typically report more on global KPIs (traffic and leads / sales / revenue) but for my own link tracking efforts I use Ahrefs here.
Dawn Boyette
Venchito Tampon
Joe Howard
1) SEMrush – This allows me to do all sorts of link research on my competition and see from where and how they’re winning links so I can repeat the process. Very helpful so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel!
2) Hunter (Chrome extension ) – If I want to find an email address to reach the people behind a website, I almost never use a contact form. Just use this chrome extension and it will find you email addresses for webmasters, website admin and more. Very useful!
3) Hunter – Email is the easiest way to reach out to link prospects, and in many cases it’s how they want to be contacted. This Chrome extension lets me easily find email addresses by just visiting the website and it does the rest.
4) Boomerang for Gmail (https://www.boomeranggmail.com/) – Whenever I reach out to ask for a link, I always schedule multiple follow ups. Boomerang reminds me when I need to do this so I don’t have to keep it in my head or anywhere outside of my inbox.
5) Google Search Console – I want to know what Google thinks of my website, so I do all my link tracking via Google Search Console. Google controls the SERPs, so knowing the links they’re seeing is what’s most valuable.
Jordan Kasteler
Justin McKinney
Sankar Ponnusamy
Ahrefs
Pitchbox
Pitchbox
Excel and pitchbox.com
Excel
Maggie Cerciello
Miles Anthony Smith
Ilan Shabad
2) Pitchbox
3) hunter.io 4)
MailShake or Lemlist
5) Google Sheets with Data Studio
Ann Smarty
1). Competitor link research
Serpstat
2). Prospecting for outreach
Buzzsumo
3). Finding contact information
Email Extractor Chrome extension
4). Outreach management
Outreach.io
5). Link tracking & reporting
Majestic alerts
Brand Mentions
Jean-Christophe Chouinard
SEMrush and Ahrefs are link research tools powerful enough to do 99% of any backlink research tasks. SEMrush is a fantastic tool for competitive analysis that provides great insights into competitor link and PPC strategies. Ahrefs provide a lot more link opportunities than any other tool. I believe that both are essential.
Buzzstream is my go-to tool for anything regarding outreach: Prospecting for outreach, finding contact information, outreach management. It is so easy to use and so efficient. I like it so much that I never needed to try any other tool.
LinkedIn is the first place I look to find contact information. I find it way easier to outreach via LinkedIn than email.
Link tracking & reporting: Buzzstream has a good management system to track you acquired link. However, for the overall link health websites, I prefer using Ahrefs.
Ryan Scollon
2. Prospecting for outreach – dibz.me
3. Finding contact information – buzzstream.com
4. Outreach management – buzzstream.com
5. Link tracking & reporting – buzzstream.com
Hamish Elley-Brown
2. BuzzStream
3. BuzzStream, Scrapebox
4. BuzzStream, Gmail, Google Sheets
5. Majestic, Google Sheets, BuzzStream
Lauren Bridges
2) I use GuestPostTracker, SEO Profiler, HARO, and a list we have been keeping internally
3) LinkResearchTools has a contact finder; however I typically do some manual legwork to find contact details
4) We use old-school email and spreadsheets – so I look forward to the other answers to this one!
5) SEO Profiler allows us to track links we’ve built, and has a discovery tool which emails newly found links on a daily basis.
Shane Barker
1. Competitor link research – Open Site Explorer as it gives you a comprehensive list of metrics such as page authority and domain authority of referring domains. It also shows you anchor text used and spam score of the link.
2. Prospecting for outreach – Buzzstream is useful for speeding up the research process of outreach prospects. It can automatically collect relevant website data and social metrics.
3. Finding contact information – Clearbit Connect is a very useful tool that lets you find email addresses easily. You can search for contact information for both companies and people.
4. Outreach management – Buzzstream again as you can send out personalized outreach emails and manage your link building projects on a single platform. You can easily keep track of campaign progress to see exactly where you stand.
5. Link tracking & reporting – Buzzstream also allows you to track the links coming to your website and delivers regular link performance reports. The report gives you graphs to better understand the distribution of your backlinks based on domain authority, link type, etc.
Justin Herring
2) Mailshake – Great for sending outreach emails
3) Google Sheets – Nothing fancy but gets the job done
4) Google Sheets – We have found basic spreadsheet tracking and reporting the easiest to digest for our clients.
Robbie Richards
2) Ahrefs
3) Hunter
4) Mailshake (smaller campaigns), Buzzstream (larger campaigns)
5) Google Sheets and Google Data Studio
Shari Thurow
Majestic has been my favorite link research tool for many years, including both client and competitor websites. I can use this tool for multiple types of projects…not only a competitive analysis. The UI on this site is outstanding.
I am also a HUGE fan of Citation Labs‘ tools, especially their Link Prospector and Broken Link tools. I use them both for link prospecting.
There are a number of Chrome plugins I use as well. Honestly? I could not do my job as an SEO without Majestic’s and Citation Labs’ tools. They are invaluable.
Link building tools are great. But the tool is only as good as the carpenter. Become a good carpenter. Know how & when to use the right tools at the right time.
James Norquay
BuzzStream or Google Docs
Monitor backlinks and Ahrefs.
Andy Drinkwater
1) My go-to tool here is Ahrefs. I love that it is comprehensive and accurate but have noticed that SEMrush is coming along in leaps and bounds in terms of their ability to discover backlinks.
2 & 3) 95% of my outreach is manual and I will contact companies directly to get contact information. I much prefer to take the route that most others won’t and build up a relationship and actually talk to people. This does involve picking up the phone, but it is worth it. I always end up finding the right person and get their contact details.
4) I have a custom built CRM system that I use for this, but for tools that do a pretty good job out of the box, I have made use of BuzzStream in the past.
5) Because I perform lots of manual outreach, I use my own CRM for this, but prior to this I was using Excel.
Harsha Jadhav
Prospeting for outreach – Buzzstream & Buzzsumo
Finding contact information – Client! Industry contacts and communities
Outreach management – Google sheets, Buzzstream & Buzzsumo
Link tracking & Reporting – Google sheets, Google Analytics
Dave Schneider
2). Prospecting for outreach – Ninja Outreach
3). Finding contact information – Ninja Outreach
4). Outreach management – Ninja Outreach (Of course. We created this tool precisely for these outreach and prospecting purposes, after all).
5). Link tracking & reporting – Ahrefs
Joshua Hardwick
2) CitationLabs Link Prospector;
3) About page or contact form, ideally (although I’ll sometimes use Hunter.io or check whois info if I can’t find it);
4) Buzzstream;
5) Buzzstream + Google Sheets
Benjamin Beck
Ahrefs – I use this tool to find the top pages and content of my competitors.
OnlineJobs.ph – I usually use a VA to help me with the prospecting.
Hunter.io – I usually use a VA to help me with finding the best email address and if they are having problems they use Hunter.io to find and test the email address.
Buzzstream – Is what I use to manage my outreach across my clients.
Buzzstream – Makes it easy to keep track of links obtained. Google Data Studio – Easy to create custom reports with Google Analytics data to show clients.
Brodie Clark
2. Depends on what the opportunity is. Guest blogging can be an easy prospect to identify if the publication has some form of familiarity with the client you’re working for. Brand mentions and reverse image search are favourites of mine because it’s easy to identify the prospect and communicate your message and still remain scripted without much need for personalisation.
3. Most businesses tend to have a Facebook page (whether active or not), and funnily enough within the ‘About’ tab under the ‘Additional Contact Details’ section you’ll be able to locate their email address 90% of the time – even if it has been purposefully hidden on their website.
4. Again, depends on the goal – although it’s always advantageous to have canned responses which you know convert well.
5. I find that sometimes when doing outreach, you won’t get a response from the prospect, although they will go ahead and add your link anyway… If you’re working for a client, it’s extremely important that this is picked up – otherwise where’s your congratulations? If you look within the ‘Referring Domains’ section ordered by ‘New’ within Ahrefs, this will tend to be fairly effective at picking up new links.
Otherwise, it’s always good to filter back through your list and check manually.
For reporting, Ahrefs provides a nice Referring Domains graph for when you started using the tool – which is a nice indication of progress. This doesn’t necessarily correlate with more business, so it’s always good to jump into Google Analytics and compared some pre/post link organic sessions in Google Analytics.
Ibro Palic
1) SEMRush
2) Buzz Stream
3) Hunter
4) Buzz Stream
5) Excel with Supermetrics
Adam White
2. Prospecting for Oureach – GuestPostTracker.com has the most up to date list of blogs that accept guest posts (over 1300). Makes prospecting super easy.
3. Finding contact information – Guest Post Tracker has this information.
4. Outreach management – Guest Post Tracker lets you track all of your guest post submissions.
5. Link tracking and reporting – SEOJet is just link tracking but its an actual plan to build out a #1 ranked backlink profile.
Ben Childs
1) Competitor link research – Ahrefs is great because its UI is solid and you don’t have to waste valuable time waiting for its crawler to return results. You can dig right into the results and quickly get to the much more important outreach steps.
2) Prospecting for outreach – Google search coupled with MozBar. It’s more labor intensive than some methods, but much less buggy and can help weed out the less-valuable, spammy targets.
3) Finding contact information – Buzzstream is an efficient way to find contact information for high-quantity outreach campaigns. For high-value link targets, though, where the return is worth a little extra time Twitter search has been invaluable in finding the contact info that converts these high-value links.
4) Outreach management – Buzzstream is a great tool for the entire link building pipeline, but especially outreach management. Managing multiple outreach methods, dozens of clients, and thousands of prospects would be incredibly challenging without Buzzstream.
5) Link tracking & reporting – Buzzstream
Stacy Caprio
Jack Saville
Moz OSE
Moz OSE
I have yet to find a useful tool for this!
Hubspot
Moz OSEAs you may have guessed, I am a big fan of Moz. Moz provides me with pretty much every tool that I need to carry out my job as an SEO Specialist.
Jason Mun
(1) All the link analysis have different indexes. I tend to use a few tools to get a better spread of links for analysis. Combination of both Ahrefs and Majestic.
(2) Google Advanced Search Parameters (eg; {keyword} “write for us”). Rinsing and repeating this with a combination of “Scrape Similar” Chrome plugin
(3) Once I get a list of prospects, I pop the list of prospects in to URL Profiler. It brings back several contact points such as email, contact form and social profiles. Check out the feature here: http://urlprofiler.com/features-social-contact-data/
(4) Good ol Google Sheets, some processes and tailored email templates
(5) Google Sheets
Jitendra Vaswani
For competitor link research one of my favorite tools without a doubt is Ahrefs, I use it extensively for finding low competition keywords and building my niche websites.
I use every feature of this tool, and love the Keyword Explorer which gives you lot of ideas to find low competition keywords.
I also use SEMrush for researching competitors, and is great for finding low competition PPC keywords.
For the outreach process, I do expert roundups on my blog and use Buzzsumo to find influencers and topic experts.
I use Twitter & LinkedIn for contacting experts for interviews, podcasts, expert roundups & guest posts.
I use Snov.io tool to find email ids from Linkedin.
For outreach management I have a team of 4 people who handle all work with Buzzsumo , maintaining the list of experts to do outreach and taking follow-ups.
I use Monitor Backlinks to track backlinks created for my clients and websites. I must say Monitor Backlinks is great web-based app that gives us a simple way to monitor that our links are not down, nofollow, etc. Because you need to see that backlinks value because some of the web publishers are turning dofollow backlinks into nofollow without notifying you.
I also use Brand24 for brand mention across the web, if you are getting mentions but no backlinks, you can reach out to publisher and request an attribution link.
Brian Lang
2. Prospecting for outreach – Asides from backlinks, Talkwalker alerts can be a good way to get more recent shares and links to competitor content
3. Finding contact information – Hunter.io, Hubspot Sales Chrome extension, Rapportive (I think this works best if you have a lot of LinkedIn connections)
4. Outreach management – I just use Excel since I don’t do a ton of outreach at the moment
5. Link tracking & reporting – Google’s tools
Anthony Kane
Dom Wells
2.) I’ve used Ninja Outreach and a few others and no one tool is better than others imo.
3.) I have to do a combination of things and usually get a VA to do it.
4.) Google sheets works just as well as anything else, but most tools like Ninja Outreach have built in features too
5.) Same as above, Google sheets has always worked for me.
Michelle Panzironi
2. LinkedIn, company websites & social media
3. LinkedIn, company websites & social media
4. Hubspot
5. UTMs, Hubspot, Google Analytics
Scott Polk
1. Competitor link research – I used to use Link Research Tools, but I have moved to Ahrefs as my main source of data for competitor research. I also supplement with SEMrush and Majestic.
2. Prospecting for outreach – We use a number of tools here, but the best one is Google. Finding sites that are relevant, high quality and have traffic value are easy to surface within Google Search. We also love Buzzsumo for prospecting through social media.
3. Finding contact information – We use BuzzStream and fill in the gaps with manual research.
4. Outreach management – BuzzStream cover this one for us as well. Great tool.
5. Link tracking & reporting – Ahrefs, Screaming Frog and URL Profiler.
Chris Makara
Sam Hollingsworth
1) ahrefs & SEMrush: my go-to tools for competitive backlink analysis, but I also use Majestic and Google Search Console to get the most info possible. Standard features and 10 campaigns costs less than $200 for ahrefs and SEMrush, too.
2) ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz Pro’s Fresh Web Explorer & Link Prospector: these tools are useful and each offers slightly different data and tools for building out link-building prospects. I use them to form a multi-sourced list for prospecting and haven’t found a better way yet.
3) Pitch Box: For finding contact info, I’ve had much success with Pitch Box. Of course, some of the contact info becomes obsolete, and you need to use the good old Google machine and find some webmasters/editors manually.
4) Google Sheets: After relying on Pitch Box for a while between 2012 and 2015, I’ve found it easier to manually build out shareable lists within Google Docs to help manage workflow in the link-building process, including for tracking outreach and outreach management.
5) SEMrush & ahrefs.com: Again, both of these platforms are powerhouses, and if I am ever faced with an issue one of them can’t help me execute, the other usually does it. And together, their data is much more reliable than just any one platform.
Dario Zadro
1) SEMrush – The competitive position mapping makes it visually appealing, and the amount of data available for exporting is fantastic.
2) Email – My most successful prospecting for high authority placements have primarily been done through solid-crafted personal emails.
3) Google – Modified searches are powerful! Social media accounts can also have contact information. If you’re looking for a tool, Hunter.io is an excellent option.
4) Google Docs – Yep, this is my best tool. Throwing up a Google spreadsheet doc gives everyone access, the ability to customize and make notes, and keep everyone in the loop. We’re testing an in-house CRM to handle this for us. I’ve also heard good things about NinjaOutreach.
5) Agency Analytics – Their backlink manager is a pretty good tool. Not to mention, this is our overall tool for most client reporting. It’s not as dominant on reporting as I would like, but it gets the job done.
Steve Barringer
1 – Ahrefs
2 – CisionPoint, MuckRack, HARO
3 – CisionPoint, MuckRack
4 – CisionPoint, MuckRack
5 – Ahrefs
Dicky Phillips
1. Competitor link research – For this I highly value both Ahrefs.com and MajesticSEO.com. Both have their strengths and weaknesses, but they both allow me to dig a bit deeper into what linking our clients’ competitors may be doing intentionally, or even unintentionally. It also provides us with great oversight of what potential clients need backlink audits to help clean up unnatural or spammy profiles.
2. Prospecting for outreach – Scrapebox does a lot of great things, and one of those is scraping the internet for possible linking opportunities based on keywords, or related topics, even branded terms.
3. Finding contact information – Again Scrapebox can really speed up this process, as it allows me to scrape any number of blogs/sites for emails, in which I can then use to connect with for future opportunities to contribute to their site.
4. Outreach management- I am a bit old school, I guess in this regard, as I keep track of all my efforts with Excel spreadsheets, and organize my email for outbound/inbound messages based on those efforts.
5. Link tracking & reporting- It really depends on if we have access to Search Console or not, if we do not, then I opt for ahrefs.com or majesticSEO.com again – but the ultimate tool for tracking incoming links is Search Console.
Tyler Tafelsky
Ahrefs and Majestic, but mostly the former.
Google Search, using advanced parameters like inurl:
Domain Whois and social media platforms, like LinkedIn
Google Drive, spreadsheets, old school stuff.
Ahrefs all the way
Miles Taylor
2. BuzzSumo
3. LinkedIn ProFinder
4. BuzzSUmo
5. SEMRush or Ahrefs – Both are solid.
Dan Taylor
1) Ahrefs, Serpstat – Both are great tools, and Serpstat benefits from having Majestic’s backlink database to draw from.
2 & 4) BuzzStream – For me it ticks all the boxes as an outreach management tool in terms of managing contacts, scheduling follow-ups and reporting.
3) Good old fashioned hard work and going through publications to find journalists and scraping HARO and JournoRequest on Twitter for email addresses/opportunities.
5) Ahrefs, Serpstat, Mention – Again using the backlink databases of Ahrefs and Serpstat to monitor, as well as Mention to actively track publications and Twitter noise (when a publication shares it). Mention is also useful for unlinked citations.
Andrea Lehr
Casey Meraz
2) Recently I have liked using Ninja Outreach for outreach
3) Ninja Outreach
4) Same
5) Ahrefs
Jacob Whitmore
Nick Garner
Ryon Flack
Competitor link research
1. Majestic SEO
2. Ahrefs
3. SEMRush
4. SpyFu
5. Open Site Explorer (Moz)
6. Advanced Search Functions like “link:example.com” or “link:example.com –site:example.com”
Prospecting for outreach
1. Majestic SEO
2. SEMRush
3. SpyFu
Finding contact information
1. Whois.com
2. GoDaddy Whois
3. Domain Tools
4. DomainIQ
5. Whois.net (sometimes)
6. Social Media (sometimes)
Outreach management
1. MailChimp
2. Outlook
Link tracking & reporting
1. Gooble Search Console
2. Bing Webmaster Tools
3. Majestic SEO
4. Ahrefs
5. SEMRush
6. SpyFu
7. Open Site Explorer (Moz)
Jeff Millett
1). Ahrefs.com: Ahrefs has done a stellar job over the years of creating the highest quality and most reliable link research tool. Whether your analyzing competitors, potential clients or your own business Ahrefs is my go-to for link research.
2). Ninja Outreach’s outreach management tool delivers the highest quality prospects from legitimate websites, period (mic drop).
3). Ninja Outreach: Not only does outreach ninja provide the best quality outreach opportunities I’ve ever seen but one of the requirements they look for is valid contact info, plus they have a sweet process for emailing these contacts and tracking your follow-up.
4). Ninja Outreach: An all-in-one outreach management tool making it an ultimate source for prospect management in it’s entirety.
5). SEOjet.net: SEOjet might not be the first tool you think of first when it comes to “link tracking” but it seriously should be! I’m serious, go check it out. SEOjet helps to build natural link building campaigns that I believe are completely untraceable by deadly Google updates and practically guarantee a boost in rankings, naturally.
Gabriella Sannino
Oh, for the ultimate tool that does it all to the fullest, right? Even when you break industry work down to a single activity, such as link building, it takes a whole toolbox.
My favorite are a mix of Majestic SEO, MOZ (and their Open Site Explorer), BuzzStream and, of course, the ever handy Excel.
Here’s my breakdown:
1. Competitor link research: Majestic SEO
2. Prospecting for outreach: MOZ, Open Site Explorer
3. Finding contact information: BuzzStream
4. Outreach management: BuzzStream
5. Link tracking & reporting: MOZ
Debra Mastaler
- For competitor research: Ahrefs, Majestic and SEMrush.
- For prospecting and outreach: Dibz and SEOJet.
- For finding contact information: VoilaNorbet and LinkedIn.
- For outreach management: Buzzstream and Excel.
- For link tracking and reporting: Excel and Linkody.
Joe Williams
Link analysis – Ahrefs – it has the right balance of ease of use, and in-depth index and reliable metrics.
Link prospecting – I find mindmapping software and Ahrefs works best. For mind maps, I use iThoughts and a bit of brainpower, to connect topical industries together. I do this by starting of with an industry topic, then thinking of parent, child and sibling relationships. From there, I’ll research the topics and link prospects more deeply in Ahrefs.
Finding contact information – Clearbit Connect Chrome extension works from within Gmail, so make the process very quick and easy.
Outreach management – GMass: hat tip to Robbie for introducing it to me in a previous expert round up post. It’s low cost, integrates into Gmail and quite flexible.
Tracking & reporting – Google Sheets or any spreadsheet for that matter.
Which Link Building Tools Will You Be Using in 2019?
There you have it – 82 SEO experts revealed the link building tools they’ll be using in 2019.
Which tools will you be using? Find any new ones?
Let me know in the comments below.
Banners Expo says
I use SEMrush for competitor backlink analysis, LinkedIn to find emails & Mailchimp for Email Marketing.
This is an awesome collections and I found new tools from this list and gonna use that for my marketing…
Thanks for doing this Robbie!!!
Robbie says
Do you use any tools to pull contact info from LinkedIn? I’ve used SellHack in the past.
Banners Expo says
Yes… I use Email Hunter for LinkedIn…
Gareth Daine says
Excellent post, as always, Robbie.
Love seeing what everyone uses for specific elements of SEO.
Even a few new ones I had not heard of like SEOjet and DomainIQ.
Thanks for putting this together, man. 🙂
Robbie says
Cheers Gareth! Appreciate the contribution 🙂
Philip Verghese Ariel says
Hi Robbie,
What an amazing list!
This is indeed a great collection of tools list many experts are using. I could find some of my fav writers and bloggers in the list. -)
Thanks for compiling it for your readers. I am bookmarking it for my further reference.
I use Google analytics, Mozbar, LinkedIn but at the same time, I use the strategy of “Blog Comments on other fellow bloggers blogs” I don’t know, it may not be counted as a tool! But I am sure I am using this strategy as an amazing tool! 🙂
Thanks for sharing.
#pvariel
Robbie says
Thanks Philip!
fawad says
Hi Robbie
thanks !
amazing list that was great help i currently use Seo profiler
Robbie says
Thanks Fawad!
Bill says
Majestic changed their name years ago, it’s no longer “Majestic SEO”.
Robbie says
Thanks Bill! I’ll make the updates.
Waleed Najam says
Indeed a great read brother, worth reading and sharing. Keep up the good work
I too have almost these tools on my list
-Ahref
-Semrush
-Keywords Revealer
-Moz
-Majestic
-Buzzsumo
-Google Alerts
and so on 🙂
Robbie says
Thanks Waleed!
john says
Any free tools we can start with?
Arhef is expensive to new blogger
Christian Sculthorp says
Great list! I’m surprised nobody mentioned MixMax for outreach though. It’s a pretty impressive tool.
Robbie says
I’ll have to check it out. Thanks Christian!
Ralf Seybold says
Hey Robbie, great list but I wonder why the people chose semrush or ahrefs over Linkresearchtools. To me lrt gives the widest range on information one could possibly get. And I don’t wanna base tactics on less data.
Cheers, Ralf
Robbie says
Thanks Ralf! Definitely heard good things lately about LRT.
Saurabh says
Hi Robbie,
Such a great list!
I’m using Ahrefs from last 2 years. It’s been my favorite tool for link building. I find it has the largest database of links and the simplest interface to use with compare to other tools.
Thanks for sharing this amazing list of tools.
Cheers,
Robbie says
Thanks Saurabh!
Tejas Chauhan says
I use ahrefs and Moz for competitors analysis and link building
Buzzsumo for content marketing
Raven Tool and Web CEO for reporting.
Thanks,
Tejas Chauhan
Stefan Alexander says
Hi, Robbie! I think this roundup speaks volumes on how Ahrefs and SEMRush are vital to any SEO. These two tools are indeed great for they were supposed to do, and there is probably nothing better, except LRT. I’m surprised only one expert mentioned LinkResearchTools on their list. LRT has shown that its backlinks index is larger than all tools combined, so it’s really worth checking out.
Robbie says
Thanks Stefan! I plan to look at LRT in the near future. Been hearing good things.
Rituraj Sengar says
Bookmarked.
I see Ahrefs as a clear winner there. But its always nice to try out few other tools as well. You can’t depend or at the same time afford all the best ones for SEO.
Thanks for this amazing list.
Robbie says
Thanks Rituraj! Can’t go past Ahrefs when it comes to link building. IMHO 🙂
Vijay Khandekar says
Great posts Robbie…
Some new tools for sure. Here is what I use:
#1: Top Competitive Link Analysis Tool ==> Site Explorer from SERPed.net and Moz
#2: Top Link Prospecting Tool ==> Backlink Explorer from SERPed.net and Majestic
#3: Top Tool for Finding Contact Information ==> SellHack, Prophet
#4: Top Tool for Outreach Management ==> Platform.ly
#5: Top Tool for Link Tracking ==> Backlink Manager from SERPed.net
Robbie says
Thanks Vijay! I still need to jump in and give SERPed a try 🙂
Rupesh says
You have created such a great article, Robbie.
The best thing about this article is that here I know what all the SEO experts are using link building tools.
SEMrush, Majestic SEO and Buzzsumo is one of my favrite tool.
Thanks for sharing this valuable content with us.
Robbie says
Thanks Rupesh! My go-to tool for link analysis is Ahrefs 🙂
Laki says
Howdy,
Quite a long list. How did you select people for the interview? Were these people you follow and read, or have you found some rankings online?
Cheers
Robbie says
Hey Laki,
I found them on Linkedin 🙂
Sujatah says
cheer’s i use ahref’s for my link building
Emenike Emmanuel says
Hello Robb,
This is an interesting collection. Glad to see that Ahref is winning. This is a great way to point a newbie in the best direction.
But something not-so-funny is happening here. I can’t believe I’ve been in this industry for years now but I couldn’t recognize none of these experts. I’m just seeing all of them for the first time. Hmm…
I will connect with some of them.
Thanks for sharing.
Emenike
Robbie says
Hey Emenike, I’m surprised you haven’t heard of any?! But, I do try to go a little of the radar at times with my roundups, and find the practitioners, or folks who are in the trench using the tools every day.
Akash chandra says
Glad i get to know about the different link building tools used by various SEO Experts. Ahrefs is dominating and even i would vote for it. Thanks Robbie for letting us know about the link building tools.
Robbie says
Thanks Akash! Ahrefs wins in my books too 🙂
Blake Smith says
This is one of the best post I’ve read on the subject. Great job Rob and thanks for sharing.
Robbie says
Cheers Blake!
websof solution says
Good job Rob, i am using only Google analytic and Semrush tools….i will try to use Ahref tool.
Thanks for sharing kind of information.
Robbie says
Thanks Amar!
Simond Store says
Great job Robbie, it is indeed helpful guide to get insight knowledge of SEO tools..thank you robbie
Jordan says
Awesome list!
Also I use Snovio for finding contacts on linkedin, socials and websites.
Grace says
This article goes to my bookmarks, thanks.
I’m using Ahrefs (what a surprise!) for link building too. Regarding business contact search, I have a whole “toolbox” to use: social media, google search, Linkedin, company page or tools like OxyLeads.
Alex Roger says
Hi Robbie,
You have done such a great job and the best part of this article is that here I getting to know which tools are using these industries experts. This information is very helpful for all of us and especially for newbies.
I am also planning to buy a SEO tool but confused between Ahref and Semrush.
Thank you so much for sharing this great info with us.
Robbie says
Thanks Alex!
Both tools are great. What type of campaigns are you running mostly?
jobber says
Great job, Thanks for sharing!
Panel Surya says
Hi Robbie,
You have done such a great job, This information is very helpful for me.
Thank you so much for sharing this great info with us.
2basian says
SEO tools are good, but it’s paid
Can you tell any free tools for backlink finder and also on page SEO tool?
Robbie says
You can use Search Console to pull a list of backlinks. You won’t get the data points though around DR etc.
Bea says
Thanks for the awesome list!
We’re using Ahrefs for link building too. As for business contact search, we use name2email tool, works great for us.
Robbie says
Thanks Bea!
Karan says
Hi Robbie,
You have shared an amazing list!
It is a perfect collection of tools for all the bloggers and digital marketers.
First of all, I would like to recommend these tools that you have shown in the list to my readers and for quick info, I use below link building tools to increase my off-page seo strategy.
I use Google analytics, Mozbar, Ahrefs but at the same time, these days I am trying to use SEMrush as well and it has shown some unique hidden data too.
Thanks for sharing.
Karan
Robbie says
Thanks Karan!
Kyle says
Looks like the number #1 choice is Ahrefs. I am currently using SemRush but leaning towards trying out Ahrefs. Moreso after reading your article.
Great article by the way!
Robbie says
Thanks Kyle! I use both tools. Really like SEMrush for my PPC research, and using it as an additional resource for keyword analysis. Love Ahrefs for link analysis, and it is becoming a really strong keyword research/ rank tracker as well.
pushpraj patel says
I use ahrefs and Moz for competitors analysis and link building.
You have done such a great job
Thankx
ericroy says
Hi Robbie,
Wonderful list by the experts
Well, I am not an expert but here is my list.
1) Google
you should know what to ask the Big G
2) Email Outreach
if you know how to ask for the guest post/ backlink, this is the best free tool after Google.
3) Ahref
No explanation needed
4) Twitter / Linkedin
follow target blog/website/author and share article
5) SEMrus
Again No explanation needed
How is it?
Robbie says
Thanks for sharing, Eric!
Alisha Khan says
I recommend to use Ahref as it is one of the best tool for link building
Robbie says
Thanks Alisha.
Zgred says
Wow – f**ing awesome article. I have to test some SEO tools I didn’t know.
Robbie says
Thanks mate!
Ryan Cameron says
After using most of these, I def think ahrefs is the best.
Robbie says
Thanks Ryan!
Tomasz says
Great list! I’m surprised nobody mentioned MixMax for outreach though. It’s a pretty impressive tool.
Robbie says
Thanks Tomasz! I’ll have to check it out.
youngnfab says
I have always admired your site. Thanks for the great tips and work .
Robbie says
Thanks 🙂
Scyla says
I used different programs but I think ahrefs is the best
freya says
I suggest Ahref!
Rick Johnson says
Hi Robbie,
First of all, I just want to say that you have done such a great job by doing this great research.
As a beginner, I am trying to learn the best techniques for link building and also finding tools but here I have got a better idea about the tool. So going through from all the experts I have decided to go with Ahrefs.
Thank you so much for this informative article.
Robbie says
Awesome – thanks Rick!
Titus Hauer says
Wow! Epic post! Great job and I love all the different perspectives and ideas provided. Thanks for pulling all this together
Justin says
You’re articles are really great. It’s nice to see all of the experts sharing their opinions on which tools they personally use. Keep up the great content!
Robbie says
Thanks Justin!