Gaining backlinks doesn’t have to take a ton of time and energy.
There are plenty of tools to help you gain more backlinks to your website.
But before we continue, if you’re looking for a top-notch blog dedicated to content marketing, we highly recommend ContentMarketing.
ContentMarketing is one of the best resource sites dedicated to content marketing and related topics, including digital marketing, blogging, SEO, email marketing, website building and affiliate marketing
We offer easy to follow step by step guides, tutorials and software advice to help you jump-start and grow your online business, learn how to make money online, and be a successful entrepreneur. We are 100% supported by our readers (YOU).
Disclosure: Please note that some of the links on our blog are affiliate links (e.g. Bluehost). If you click on those affiliate links and purchase the products, we may earn a commission. It comes at no extra cost to you, but it supports us in running this blog and creating even more useful content free of charge to you.
Let’s get started.
Here is our list of the best link building tools & software for small business for this year.
Semrush
Semrush is the best tool for all things SEO.
It is highly rated and mostly used by content marketing professionals.
What makes Semrush unique is the quality of its backlinks data.
Semrush SEO features include:
- Backlink Analysis
- Keyword research tool
- Content optimization tool
- On-page SEO checker
- Rank tracking
Its interface is clean and easy to navigate through all their SEO tools.
Semrush Pricing: $119.95-$449.95 per month
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a link building tool designed to help you improve your search engine rankings.
Much like Semrush, it also has a lot of SEO features like:
- Backlink Analysis
- Content Explorer
- Technical SEO website audit
- Keyword research tool
- Position tracking
Ahrefs Pricing: $99-$999 per month
Moz Link Explorer
Moz Link Explorer is the third-best backlink analysis software on the market.
Moz Link Explorer is the flagship feature of Moz Pro.
Moz Pricing: $99-$599 per month
Help A Reporter Out (HARO)
HARO isn’t a traditional link building tool.
It’s a platform that connects journalists with sources who can share their expertise on a particular topic or niche.
You can connect with journalists and bloggers who need sources while getting high-authority backlinks and exposure for yourself.
Both big and small media outlets use this platform.
Some of the most popular ones are Fox News, Mashable and The New York Times.
Sources receive three HARO emails every day, Monday to Friday.
And each HARO email contains a list of requests from journalists looking for sources (writers) who can share insights for an article.
All you need to do to respond to a source request is send a reply to the provided email address.
If a journalist decides to use your response, they’ll include it in their article as a quote.
And they’ll typically include a backlink to your website.
HARO Pricing
It offers their Basic plan for free. Paid plans include:
- Standard: $19 per month
- Advanced: $49 per month
- Premium: $149 per month
Respona
Respona is the best link building outreach platform for agencies and in-house teams.
There are LOTS of pre-built outreach campaigns to pick from.
They include:
- Skyscraper Technique – you input your competitor blog posts, they give you a list of URLs linking to them.
- Product Review – you input competitor domain names, they give you a list of blogs that recently reviewed them.
- Resource pages – you input keywords, they give you top resource listicles on those topics.
- Podcast Outreach – you input a person in your industry, they give you all the podcasts they’ve been featured on.
- Guest Post – you input topics, they give you a list of sites accepting guest blog posts.
Once you pick a template, it walks you through the entire process – from finding high-quality opportunities and getting contact information to sending personalized emails.
Respona Pricing
It offers a free 14-day trial you can use to test out their backlinks software.
Paid plans include:
- Starter: $99 per month
- Unlimited: $399 per month
Pitchbox
Pitchbox is all-in-one backlink platform for both agencies and in-house SEOs.
It offers 20 ways to find prospects and grab contact info.
Built-in templates for popular link building tactics such as broken link building and resource page outreach help you launch campaigns quickly.
Pitchbox stores details about your link building prospects.
Including emails, tasks, and more.
You can use it to set up email outreach sequences for link building and automate follow-ups.
The software also offers an inbox for you to review and respond to all the replies you get.
Finally, you can take advantage of Pitchbox’s detailed reports.
To get insights into campaign performance and identify which link building tactics perform better than others.
Pitchbox Pricing
It offers two paid plans:
- Professional: $550 per month
- Enterprise: $1,500 per month
BuzzStream
BuzzStream is an outreach CRM that helps you stay organized with link building.
You can use BuzzStream to identify link building prospects.
And find their contact details.
It can even build a list of prospects for you.
All you need to do is input a list of search queries.
BuzzStream will then find relevant websites and identify the right people to contact at each site.
Once you have a list of prospects you’d like to contact about backlink opportunities, you can use the email outreach feature to send personalized emails to each prospect.
Plus, an option to set up automated follow-up emails to increase the chances of getting a response.
It also offers detailed reporting to help you review team performance, understand which emails and subject lines are performing the best, and see campaign progress at a glance.
BuzzStream Pricing
It offers a free 14-day trial you can use to see if the software is the right fit for your needs.
Pricing plans include:
- Starter: $24 per month
- Growth: $124 per month
- Professional: $299 per month
- Custom: $999 per month
BuzzSumo
Even though BuzzSumo is designed for content marketing, many SEO experts use it too.
It is a brand monitoring and content discovery tool that includes a number of handy features for link builders.
First, you can use BuzzSumo to uncover and track domain names in your blogging niche that link to your competitor’s content.
It lets you export these domain names to a spreadsheet to use in your own link building outreach campaigns.
Finally, you can use BuzzSumo to track your own backlinks and get alerted when you get a new backlink.
BuzzSumo Pricing
It has a number of paid plans:
- Basic: $119 per month
- Content Creation: $249 per month
- PR & Comms: $249 per month
- Suite: $499 per month
- Enterprise: $999 per month
All paid plans come with a free 30-day trial.
Hunter
Hunter is an all-in-one email outreach platform you can use to set up and manage your link building outreach campaigns.
Its core products include:
- Email Verifier: Prevents email bounces by checking whether the email addresses on your list are valid.
- Email Finder: Helps you find the email address of any prospect. All you need to do is enter their name and website domain name.
- Campaigns: Handles cold email outreach with automated follow-ups, personalization, custom sending schedules, and more.
- Domain Search: Reveals the email addresses associated with any website. This can be helpful if you’re not exactly sure who you should be contacting at a target site.
Hunter also offers a Chrome extension you can use to find email addresses behind the websites you’re browsing.
And there’s a Google Sheets add-on that can be quite handy if you typically build prospect lists in Google Sheets.
Hunter Pricing
It offers a limited free plan. And the following paid plans:
- Starter: $49 per month
- Growth: $149 per month
- Business: $499 per month
BacklinkGap
It is a backlink monitoring tool that helps you track new and lost backlinks.
You can also use BacklinkGap to analyze your backlink profile.
To learn which websites link to you, what kind of anchor text they’re using, and more.
With BacklinkGap, you can quickly identify broken links.
It can also help you uncover potentially toxic backlinks.
And you have the option to add tags and notes to backlink opportunities to associate them with specific campaigns.
BacklinkGap also lets you generate and share reports through a link.
BacklinkGap Pricing
The software offers a limited free plan. Paid plans include:
- Starter: $19 per month
- Pro: $39 per month
- Business: $199 per month
Bonus: Google
Google search operators are the easiest way to find link building opportunities.
Here are the most useful operators for link building:
- “inurl:” – only returns results with specific words or phrases in the URL.
- “intext:” – specifies keywords or phrases mentioned in the content.
- “intitle:” – same as intext, but only applies to the results’ titles.
Google Pricing: Free
How do you choose the best link building tool for you?
Any Tools That We Missed?
Those are our best 10 link building tools.
The question is:
How do you choose the best one for you?
Here’s a quick checklist to help you decide:
- “How important is reporting?” – Are you reporting to clients? If so, detailed and nice-looking reporting features can be massively helpful.
- “What budget do I have to work with?” – If you’re so shoestring that you can’t afford shoestrings, Google searches are always free. That said, outreach tools usually make the process faster and more efficient.
- “How many backlinks can I see?” – Backlink analysis tools like Moz, Semrush, and Ahrefs give you the most competitor backlink data. Others might be cheaper… but you get what you pay for.
- “How many people need to use the tool?” – If you’re the only one who builds backlinks, then you don’t need to worry about user accounts and features designed for teams. But if you do outreach with a team, tools like Semrush or Respona are a must.
Now we’d like to turn it over to you:
Which tool on this list is your personal favorite?
Or maybe there’s a tool you love that we didn’t mention here.
Either way, let us know by leaving a comment below right now.