Wondering which link-building tools will drive traffic to your website? There are endless link-building tools available for you that can help you gain maximum visibility online and establish your business. Backlinks are the most significant sources to outrank your competitive sites and establish authority that can be earned from other authoritative websites.
Google confirmed that links and quality content are the two most essential ranking factors for SEO. Search engines see links as the most credible sign to the site. Along with that if the content of your site quickly answers the user’s questions in the most comprehensive way, your site’s credibility will increase.
If you wish to know about various link building resources that can make your work easier, here is a link-building article that explains the importance of links and link building and gives a list of tools you can use to build links and gain online visibility.
What are links?
Links are the relation between two pages that connect one web page to another. A reader can hop from one page to another very easily. Links could be in text, images, or videos.
There are different types of links and each functions differently.
Internal link- Internal links are the links on the webpage that takes you to another webpage of the same domain.
External link- External links also known as outbound links take you to another domain.
Backlink- Backlinks, also known as inbound links, are links created by another website to your site.
Why is link building important?
Link building is building one-way hyperlinks to a website to gain search engine visibility. It is important for SEO because it is a major factor in how Google ranks web pages. The most common link-building strategies are; content marketing, email outreach, and public relations.
Link building is important to meet the requirements of the Google algorithm. Earlier, Yahoo and Alta Vista ranked the search results 100% based on the webpage content.
Now the PageRank algorithm analyzes the content of the page along with how many people have linked to your page. To date, links are the best way to determine the quality of a webpage and remain a significant factor for Google’s ranking.
Link building is quite easy with the right link-building resources. Various tools help in building different types of links. They are as follows
Link building tools
Keywords- There are plenty of keyword research tools that show popular and relevant terms people are searching for online. The popular and the most searched ones should be shortlisted and later infused into your content.
Use targeted anchor text-The next step is to inter-link the keywords you have shortlisted.
Anchored text- The anchored text tells Google about the topic of your page. Search engines consider the text of your content which is important for understanding the context of the links.
Linking page quality- Search engines favour high-quality trusted pages which result in higher rankings and are more effective than questionable pages or sites.
These are some of the essential components for link building. The tools that can make your work easier and effective are as follows:-
Majestic SEO
Majestic SEO is used for monitoring backlinks. This tool offers two indexes; the Fresh index and the historic index.
Fresh index- The fresh index contains pages and links of the past 120 days which also includes links that might have disappeared during that period. This helps you understand how link-building campaigns can affect your rankings.
Historic index- The historic index is a database that consists of several URLs and lets you measure your site’s SEO performance.
To utilize the services of this tool, you can either use it for free or buy a paid plan you think will benefit you in the long run.
Google search operators
This tool consists of a list of search operators and is considered to be one of the best tools for link building.
Search operators are an effective way to find quickly what people are looking for and answer their queries in the most comprehensive way possible.
The potential tools for link builders are; resource pages, guest posts, press releases, link round-ups, and many more.
Google Alerts
These tools monitor the mentions of any word or phrase which are useful for link prospecting.
Monitor your brand name mention- Stay alert if anyone mentions you online. You can turn them into linked references later.
Monitor the mention of your competitor- Keep an eye on where your competitors are getting mentioned and analyze the reason to find a strategy for yourself. Mentions come with links. Just like them, you can get mentioned too.
Monitor relevant keywords
Monitor the targeted keywords online and reach out to the person who posted them. This might help you get in touch and form a good relationship with the person.
Mozbar for Analyzing keywords
Mozbar is a chrome extension. It allows you to research backlinks and view metrics right from search results.
Mozbar is an SEO tool that helps you analyze the competitiveness of the keyword and other metrics like domain and page authority.
The Link explorer feature available in the Moz bar tool helps you conduct link research and view other SEO metrics to monitor how the sites on the first page of Google are performing.
Hunter.io
This tool helps in finding email addresses.
Outreaching is an important aspect of link building which means reaching out to webmasters and requesting an inbound link back to your site.
The challenge here is finding the right information and contact details of the webmaster. False information about the receiver can make your email go unread and create further problems.
With Hunter.io you can quickly find email addresses associated with the website simply by typing the company’s URL.
Hunter.io also contains a feature that alerts you whether the email is active or not.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a broken link checker that helps you build quality links for your site and provides you all the benefits for free.
Ahrefs’ broken backlink checker quickly analyzes broken inbound and outbound links of your site and fixes them quickly so that your visitors don’t lend to the ‘Error 404’ page.
This tool is very easy to use. Just paste your URL and the tool will show the broken links of your site.
Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest facilitates a free backlink checker that reveals who links to you and your competitors.
Link analysis of sites ranking on the first page is essential before the link-building process. It gives you an idea of how well you can compete or outrank these pages.
The backlink checker helps you in finding where they are getting their links from.
Snov.io
This is an outreach platform that enables you to find email addresses and create drip campaigns. Doing it on a larger scale could be a hassle.
With outreach, you can build high-quality links from authoritative sites in your industry.
This tool helps you track your emails and ease your outreach efforts. It comes with an automated feature that allows you to stay in touch with potential link prospects.
These are some of the tools you can use for your link-building campaign and make your work easier. Before you start experiencing the benefits of these tools here are some link-building strategies worth implementing.
Strategies for link building
There are plenty of link-building strategies that will help you up your ranking on Google. Some of the easiest ones which you can start applying for today are as follows:-
Guest posting
Guest posting is creating content for any other blog or website with the purpose of exchanging backlinks to your site. The site provides free content to the target audience through which other sites gain quality links. This has been an age-old tactic that favours both the site owners.
Many guest posting sites reject the poor quality articles because Google has issued warnings concerning guest posts which can overall lead to the improvement of content quality.
Due to this many website owners are focussing more on creating high-quality guest posts.
To date, guest posting is considered to be the best tactic for generating quality backlinks and enhancing the overall SEO strategy.
Public relations
Public relations help in link building by using different types of processes to attain backlinks.
Some of the potential sources to generate backlinks are online content, news articles, or press releases.
You need to specify your areas of expertise to journalists or web-bloggers and they will give you an idea of whether they are interested in working with you or not.
Journalists and web bloggers are passionate and always on a hunt for new data, just make sure it is easier for them to reach out to you.
Relevant content quality
SEO tactics without high-quality content are useless. The audience today seeks information that is thoroughly researched, thought-provoking and has a unique perspective. The more interesting and comprehensive your content is, the higher are the chances of attaining quality links.
Poor quality content can increase the bounce rate on your website and drastically drop your online visibility. So, it is essential to research thoroughly, analyze the facts and come up with something you didn’t find on other blogs or sites.
Give your best in creating quality content for your site and increase the chances of attaining more backlinks.
Accurate keyword research
To pick the right keywords for your content, identify the services and products you want to be recognized and ranked for. This will make it easier for you to research for both short-tail and long-tail keywords.
Organic keywords are the best hack to find customers quickly through search engines. Once you persuade your readers through your blog posts, they can share about your company providing a link.
You can also use more location-centric keywords to rank better in a particular location.
Apart from these, there are some link building practices you need to avoid to protect yourself from Google’s penalty. They are as follows
Unethical link building practices to avoid
Many people use unethical tactics to gain traffic to their site. These include buying links or exchanging links which seems easy but puts you at risk. Google penalizes such sites with spammy link profiles.
Google intends that you earn links rather than building them. So, it is essential to earn organic links and avoid building unnatural links.
Buying links
Search engines can detect whether the links are paid or earned due to the patterns that indicate false play. The websites caught buying or selling links can be charged with higher penalties and also experience a drop in rankings.
Low-quality links
Do not link to a site that is into some false business or doesn’t have a good reputation i.e porn, illegal gambling, auto-blogging.
Avoid getting links from these sites as search engines don’t support them or those who link with them.
Getting high link velocity
Google penalizes websites with high link velocity. High link velocity means excessively manipulating the sources linking back to your website. The links could be legit but you will get penalized for gaining links too fast or unnaturally. Make sure to maintain a rational link-building strategy.
Getting quality links from irrelevant niche sites
Focus more on getting links related to your industry over getting high-quality backlinks. A niche-relevant site can do wonders in rankings than a site with higher-quality backlinks.
These are all the important things you need to know about link building. There are endless link-building tools available online that can ease your work and help you rank better in the Search Engine Result Page (SERP).
Link-building tools can help you compete strongly against your competitors and increase your work efficiency which can help you rank better in search engines.
Picking the best tools could be a challenge, but if you pre-decide what you want and take steps accordingly it can get easier.
Like every area of digital marketing, link building has its own pros and cons. You can determine how useful link-building strategies are to your business. If you think they will be highly advantageous, you can invest in paid versions of the tools, use them to the optimum, and achieve desired results. But if your budget is limited, you can still enjoy the free advantages of the tools and achieve your goals at a slower pace.
About the Author
Evelyn Grace is an individual blogger and a content marketing professional. She likes to write pieces of high-quality content on digital marketing niches. Also, she’s on a mission to spread out her knowledge to the right audience, who’s eager to learn.
