8 Best Link Building Tools to Find Link Opportunities in 2024

Do you want to find the best link building tools to find link opportunities? Then you've come to the right place.

What is the most important element that influences your search engine ranking?

If you answered backlinks, you are absolutely correct.

Search engines like Google consider backlinks as a ranking factor for a website. So if you REALLY want to increase your organic traffic, build backlinks.

If you want build quality links and you are looking for the BEST link building tools, this article is exclusively for you.

In this article, we will show you:

• Free and premium tools for building links
• The pros and cons of these tools
• Prices and free trials
• How to Use These Tools to Build Backlinks and More

Link building has two main aspects.

• The first is: Find link opportunities (using link research tools)
• The other is: Find prospects to approach (using approach tools)

So we will try to cover these two link research tools to find link building opportunities in 2024

8 Best Free and Paid Link Building Tools for 2024

8 Best Tools for Building Quality Links in 2024

Let's start with the best tools you can use to build quality links to your website.

Semrush

If you are looking for ONE SEO tool to build links, Semrush is the perfect choice as it offers you more than 45 SEO tools under one roof.

Semrush is a popular SEO toolkit which is used by over 10 million people worldwide. It offers an exclusive link building tool called “Link Building Tool”.

This amazing link building tool from Semrush gathers a list of link building opportunities for your website and helps you run an outreach campaign to acquire relevant backlinks in your industry.

Did you know that Semrush link building tool helps you in all areas including;

• Prospect research to find link opportunities
• The prospect approach (with the help of the approach email)
• Tracking your link building

You can do all of this in one place. This is why more than 10 million people use Semrush.

Here is how you can use Semrush's link building tool to start a link building campaign to build highly relevant links to your website.

Step 1: Go to the link building tool, start a new project or create a new campaign for an existing project.

Here is what it looks like:

Step 2: You can now enter up to 10 keywords where you want to improve your search engine ranking.

If you get stuck, you can simply enter your competitors' domains (up to 10). Make sure to only select domains with backlink profiles you think are worthwhile. It can therefore be useful to enter authority sites in your niche.

Once done, press the “Start link building” button.

Step 3: Semrush will now process URLs or keywords that you provided. Then you will be able to track the progress of your link building campaign, including overall outlook, responses received, domains monitored and so on.

This is what the overview of a domain looks like (from the Link Building tool in Semrush):

Now all you have to do is screen the leads to find link building opportunities.

As you can see above, you will receive a ton of information:

• All Leads
• the keywords
• the competitors
• Domain Score (This metric rates the importance of a domain on a 100-point scale from 0 to 100. It is based on the quality and volume of links pointing to that domain).
• Trust Score (This metric measures the trustworthiness of a particular domain. It is measured on a 100-point scale, with "0" indicating an untrustworthy site and "100" a highly trustworthy site. It is based on the number of links return from trusted sites pointing to the domain.)

The trick is to pick leads that are relevant to your website and move them to the “In Progress” tab using the “+” sign.

Step 4: This is where Semrush's link building tool excels as it provides you with a link building awareness email (“In Progress” tab).

Here is what it looks like:

As you can see above, it allows you to contact selected prospects and monitor the status of each of your links.

Quick note: The email addresses of your prospects are automatically added by Semrush. If the email address field is empty, try using tools like EmailHunter to find an email address before moving on to the next prospect.

Step 5: In the Tracking tab, you can monitor your link building efforts over time.

This is what this tab looks like:

As you can see above, all of your potential backlinks are marked as active, lost, broken, indefinite, or rejected after adding the domains you want to monitor.

And There you go ! That's how you can use the Semrush link building tool for everything including finding link opportunities, finding leads, and tracking your link building efforts.

Pros:

• Keyword research tool (it currently has the largest database of keywords on the market)
• Organic research helps you analyze your competitors' websites
• The site audit helps you find and fix technical issues with your site.
• Brand tracking helps you monitor your brand and website online.
• The Keyword Position Tracker helps you accurately track your keyword rankings.
• The social media management tool allows you to easily manage your social media accounts.
• Access to PPC Keyword Research
• Paid advertising tools and more

Against

• Semrush has increased its price plans from $99,95/month to $119,95/month, which makes it a bit more expensive tool compared to its competitors. That said, if you opt for their annual plans, you'll still get their plans starting at $99,95/month.

How much does Semrush cost?

Semrush offers you the following 3 pricing plans.

1. Pro : This plan is suitable for website owners with a limited budget. It costs $119,95 per month and gives you access to almost every feature, from competitor analysis and keyword research to link building and site auditing. It allows you to get 3000 reports per day, create up to 5 projects, track up to 500 keys.
2. Guru : This plan is suitable for growing businesses and small businesses. You'll get exclusive features like brand reports, extended limits, historical data, and more. This plan costs you $229,95 per month. It lets you get 3 reports per day, create up to 000 projects, track up to 15 keywords with daily updates, and crawl up to 1 pages.
3. Business : It is suitable for agencies and costs $449,95 per month. It offers features like API access, white label reports, extended limits, sharing options, and more. It lets you get 3 reports per day, create up to 000 projects, track up to 40 keywords with daily updates, and crawl up to 5 pages.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the best tools for SEO which gives you access to a set of tools SEO powerful. It offers everything from keyword research to site audits to backlink research tools.

Ahrefs offers a tool called “Site Explorer” that gives you an in-depth look at the organic search traffic and backlink profile of any website or URL.

How to use Ahrefs to find link building opportunities?

Enter a domain of your choice to find its backlinks once you are on Site Explorer.

If you want to find all the sources of these backlinks, click on Backlinks. You will be able to find all the sources of backlinks and you can also filter the results by “dofollow”.

You can also use the “Link Intersect” feature to find link opportunities. Enter your competitors' domains, and in the next section, enter your own domain to find linking opportunities.

Click on Show Link Opportunities, which will show you all leads.

In addition, if you click on the down arrow on any of the domains, you will have access to in-depth data on the domain in question as well as its statistics.

To :

• Ahrefs' Link Intersect tool easily helps you find domains or URLs that link to your competitors but don't yet link to you.
• The Site Explorer tool allows you to analyze the backlinks of your competitors.
• Content gap helps you find the keywords your competitors are ranking for but not you.
• Content explorer helps you find the best performing content in your niche
• Site audit tool for finding and fixing your site issues
• Keywords Explorer to find better keywords
• Rank Tracker tool to accurately track your keyword rankings
• Domain comparison tool to help you compare domains
• Broken Link Checker helps you find broken links.

Against

• It offers NO free trial and the cost of this tool is a bit high.

How much does Ahrefs cost?

Ahrefs offers the following 4 pricing plans.

1. Lite : This is the base plan which costs you 99 $ per month and you can add up to 5 projects. You will have access to 10 crawl credits per month and can track up to 000 keywords.
2. Standard : This plan is the most recommended and costs $ 179 per month, which is great for bloggers. You can add up to 10 projects and you can authorize up to 3 users to access your account at the same time. You will have access to 500 crawl credits per month and can track up to 000 keywords.
3. Advanced : If you run an agency SEO internally, this service can be an excellent choice and will cost you $399 per month. You can add up to 25 projects. You will have access to 1,25 million crawl credits per month and can track up to 5000 keywords.
4. Agency : This plan costs 999 $ per month and suitable for agencies. You can add up to 100 projects and allow up to 5 users to access your account at the same time. You'll get access to 2,5 million search credits per month and can track up to 10 keywords.

serpstat

Serpstat is another popular SEO toolkit used by over 570 people worldwide. It offers a wide range of tools, including keyword research, backlink analysis, competitor research, site auditing, and more.

It gives you access to a link building tool called “Backlink Analysis Tool” which helps you analyze the results of your link building campaign.

How to use Serpstat to find link building opportunities?

Here's how to use Serpstat's backlink analysis tool to find link opportunities.

Once you are on the Serpstat tool, go to the backlink analysis tool and enter any domain.

As you can see, once you enter a domain, you'll see a list of all important backlink data, including;

• Serpstat domain rank
• Reference domains
• Backlinks (including follow and nofollow links).

To find backlink opportunities, just click on Backlinks and you will see the backlink sources of the specified domain.

Take a look :

As you can see, you can easily find all backlinks with their domain source.

You can also find new backlinks and lost backlinks from any domain, as well as backlink anchor texts.

Data on new and lost backlinks is extremely useful if you are running a link building campaign, as it lets you know who is linking to a particular domain and who is removing them (so you can use both methods to get connections).

Pros:

• One of the main advantages of Serpstat is its price. It is cheaper than other competitors in the SEO industry including Semrush, Moz tools, and so on.
• The Keyword Research Tool helps you find the top performing keywords.
• Rank tracker helps you track keyword rankings
• On-page audit tool helps you create better content
• Easily spy on your competitors
• Analysis of the backlinks of your site and those of your competitors
• Keyword clustering tool to group keywords by site pages
• You can monitor the quality of your site's backlinks and find new sites to place backlinks by analyzing a competitor's link mass.
• You can perform site audits
• Custom reports
• SERP Search

Against

• Competitor and backlink analysis data is not as extensive as other tools like Semrush or Ahrefs (you get what you pay for!)

How much does Serpstat cost?

Serpstat offers you the following 4 price plans.

1. Lite : This plan costs you 55 $ per month and allows you to perform 4000 keyword queries per day with 10 results per query, and track 000 keywords for your site.
2. Standard : This plan costs 119 $ per month and allows you to perform 5000 keyword queries per day with 30 results per query, and track 000 keywords for your site.
3. Advanced : This plan costs 239 $ per month and allows you to perform 8 keyword queries per day with 000 results per query and track 50 keywords for your site.
4. Enterprise : This plan costs 399 $ per month and allows you to perform 12 keyword queries per day with 000 results per query and track 75 keywords for your site.

Moz Pro

The Moz SEO tool has been around for many years and is widely used by marketing agencies and SEO experts around the world.

Moz Pro offers a powerful tool called Link Explorer which is the best backlink checker in the world with over 40 trillion links. It helps you get comprehensive link metrics for any website, including page authority and domain authority.

How do I use Moz Pro to find link building opportunities?

Here's how to use Moz Pro's Link Explorer tool to find backlink opportunities.

Once you are on the Moz tool, go to Link Explorer and enter any website you need to do a better search on link building. Then click on the Analyze button and the backlinks of the domain will show up instantly.

Here is what it looks like:

As you can see above, the tool shows you a ton of useful backlink data for the specific domain, including;

• Newly discovered and lost links
• Domain authority (it predicts the ranking potential of a root domain)
• Binding domains
• Inbound links with their sources and anchor texts
• Main pages
• Easily find dofollow links

You can also check the spam score (a metric developed by the folks at Link Explorer) which indicates the type of links pointing to a site.

Note: The spam score represents the percentage of sites with similar characteristics that have been penalized or banned by Google.

To find the pages that have acquired the most backlinks, just go to the Top Pages section of the same tool and it will instantly show you the pages that have the most links.

Once you have a list of all the pages with more links, you can find ways to acquire those links by creating better content, contacting sites that have linked to the specified domain, etc.

To :

• Easily discover the backlinks of any site
• Research your competitors' links to find all their sources of backlinks
• Easily find broken links on your website
• Identify the backlink spam score of any website
• Monitor new links and lost links from any site
• Offer one month free trial
• Gives you access to exclusive SEO metrics such as Domain Authority (DA), Page Authority (PA), Spam Score, etc.

Against

• Data (whether competitor data or backlink data) is not updated as frequently as we would like.

How much does Moz cost?

Moz offers the following 4 pricing plans.

1. The standard plan costs 99 $ per month and lets you add up to 3 websites, track up to 300 keyword rankings, and perform up to 5 backlink searches per month.
2. The Medium plan costs 149 $ per month and allows you to add up to 10 websites, track up to 800 keyword rankings, and perform up to 20 backlink requests per month.
3. The Large plan costs 249 $ per month and lets you add up to 25 websites, track up to 1900 keyword rankings, and perform up to 70 backlink requests per month.
4. The Premium plan costs 599 $ per month and lets you add up to 50 websites, track up to 4 keyword rankings, and perform up to 500 backlink requests per month.

So what are you waiting for? Use the following link to get a free trial.

Spyfu

Most SEO tools are expensive because they give you access to a ton of tools. If you are looking for an affordable SEO tool on a budget, SpyFu is for you as their pricing plans start at $33 per month.

SpyFu offers an amazing tool called “Competitor Backlinks” which helps you target your competitors backlinks on specific keywords.

How to use SpyFu to find link building opportunities?

Here's how you can use the SpyFu Backlinks tool to find relevant link building opportunities in your niche.

Once you are in the Backlinks section of SpyFu, enter a domain or keyword to begin the search.

As you can see above, once you enter a domain, the app starts showing all the backlinks the domain currently has.

It also shows you all the important metrics such as:

• Monthly organic domain clicks
• Monthly Organic Page Clicks
• Overall domain strength
• Ranked Keywords
• Outgoing links and others

You can also refine backlinks in different ways: blogs, forums, directory links, etc.

Take a look ;

To :

• Offers an SEO competitor analysis tool that allows you to easily spy on your competitors' websites.
• You can target common links your competitors are getting.
• Access to a keyword research tool
• The price is lower than that of most SEO tools.
• Domain comparison
• Rank tracker helps you find your keywords ranking
• PPC research tool helps you find better PPC ad copy and keywords
• SEO reports
• SERP Checker helps you analyze all organic search results.

Against

It does not offer huge backlink data compared to Semrush or Ahrefs.

How much does SpyFu cost?

• Basic : This is SpyFu's cheapest plan that only costs you $ 33 per month where you will get unlimited search results, unlimited data exports, unlimited domain preview PDFs, 250 sales leads and domain contacts, 5k weekly tracked keyword rankings, 10k top list results.
• Professional : This plan only costs you 58 $ per month and gets you unlimited search results, unlimited data exports, unlimited domain preview PDFs, 500 domain sales leads and contacts, 50k weekly tracked keyword rankings, 15k search listing results head.
• Team : This plan only costs 199 $ per month and gives you unlimited search results, unlimited data exports, unlimited domain preview PDFs, 2000 sales leads and domain contacts, 40k weekly tracked keyword rankings, 75k search listing results header, 5 user logins.

Majestic SEO

If you are looking for an exclusive link building tool to discover the backlinks of any website, Majestic SEO is for you.

Their Fresh Index contains the up-to-date list of everything they've found in the last 120 days. Moreover, it provides you with huge historical data which you can use to trace back the last five years.

How to use Majestic SEO to find link building opportunities?

Here's how to use the Majestic SEO tool to find link building opportunities.

Once you are on the tool, enter any domain or website to begin the search.

As you can see above, once you enter a domain, a list of link building metrics like trust flow, citation flow, etc. is instantly presented to you, which helps you identify the authority of the domain.

To find backlink opportunities for that particular domain, just click on the “Backlinks” section.

You will be able to find the backlink sources of that particular domain as well as the backlink metrics such as Trust Flow, Citation Flow, URL Destination Source, and more.

Pros:

• Bulk Backlink Checker helps you analyze a large number of backlinks at once
• Keyword Checker helps you discover better keywords
• Access to the historical index
• Access to raw data export
• The ability to create custom reports for your clients
• Compare sites to find mutual backlinks

Cons:

• Backlink Explorer doesn't cover all links (but it does its job in most niches!)

How much does Majestic SEO cost?

Majestic offers the following 3 pricing plans.

• The Lite plan costs 49,99 $ per month and 1 user can access an account and you will get 1 million analytic units per month.
• The Pro plan costs 99,99 $ per month and 1 user can access an account and you will get 20 million analytic units per month.
• The API plan costs 399,99 $ per month, 5 users can access an account and you get 100 million analysis units per month.

Raven Tools

If you want to conduct in-depth SEO competitor research to find backlink opportunities for any website, Raven Tools is a great choice for you.

What's special about Raven Tools is that it gives you access to two tools for finding link opportunities, including a Backlink Exploration Tool and a Link Spy Tool.

You can use the Backlink Explorer tool to find link building opportunities with your competitors. You can use the Link Spy tool to find higher quality links based on websites that are already ranking for your target keywords.

How do I use Raven tools to find link building opportunities?

Here's how to use Raven tools to find great links in any niche.

Once you are on Backlink Explorer, submit any URL or domain in the “Explore” feature to generate an in-depth backlinks report.

Once done, you instantly get all backlinks and source URLs.

Take a look :

Pros:

• Generate a report with up to 50 link ideas
• Analysis of link source, citation flow, anchor text, etc.
• Spy on your competitors to see which domains link to their website
• Easily export your backlinks report in CSV format.
• Track all of your link building efforts in one place using the link manager.

Against

It does not offer as much backlink data as Semrush or Ahrefs.

How much do Raven tools cost?

Raven Tools offers the following pricing plans.

• The plan Small biz costs 39 $ per month and lets you add 2 domains, manage up to 2 users, perform 1500 position checks and monitor up to 25 backlinks.
• The plan Home costs 79 $ per month and allows adding 20 domains, managing up to 4 users, performing 15 position checks and monitoring up to 000 backlinks.
• The plan Grow costs 139 $ per month and lets you add 80 domains, manage up to 8 users, perform 20 position checks, and monitor up to 000 backlinks.
• The plan Thrive costs 249 $ per month and lets you add 160 domains, manage up to 20 users, perform 25 position checks, and monitor up to 000 backlinks.
• The plan Lead costs 399 $ per month and lets you add 320 domains, manage up to 40 users, perform 30 position checks, and monitor up to 000 backlinks.

SEOquake

SERP analysis is essential for finding better link opportunities. This is where you can use a free toolkit like SEOquake, which has been downloaded over 3 million times and is widely used by SEO experts around the world.

It gives you quick access to tons of valuable data on all the websites you visit, like a page's social signals, keyword difficulty for a query, and a comprehensive internal linking report and external to a site.

The best part is that every time you search Google, the extension installs itself in the browser and gives you a detailed SERP analysis.

As you can see above, you'll get an in-depth SERP analysis that includes a ton of useful data, including:

• Page Overview (where you'll get key page metrics like Google Rank, Domain Age, Number of Backlinks, etc.)
• Keyword difficulty score (which gives you an estimate of how competitive a keyword is, with 100% being the highest).

You can also export all SERP data in CSV format for further analysis.

Pros:

• Get in-depth SERP analysis and export the results in CSV format.
• You can easily estimate the difficulty of a keyword for each term instantly.
• You can perform a full SEO audit of any webpage
• You can check your statistics social for Facebook, Pinterest and LinkedIn
• You can get a full report on internal and external links.
• Easily determine keyword density
• You can also compare URLs or domains for further competitor analysis.
• It's a handy set-it-and-forget-it browser extension.

Against :

You need to login to a Semrush account (even a free account works great) to be able to get the backlinks data.
The browser extension is sometimes annoying because it appears on every page load.

Pricing:

The use is totally free. It is a free browser extension which is available for Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Opera.

FAQ

What is link building?

Link building is one of the most important aspects of off-page SEO. It's just about getting links to your website from other relevant websites. These links are also called “backlinks”.

What are the benefits of link building?

Building links or backlinks is one of the most important ranking factors. If you do it the right way, you can see an increase in your site authority, organic rankings, and website traffic.

How to create backlinks?

To build backlinks, you can use blog comments, web directories, social bookmarks, discussion forums, guest posting, PBN and web 2.0, blogger outreach, etc

What are the best tools for finding link opportunities?

Semrush, Ahrefs, Serpstat, Moz Link Explorer, SpyFu, SEOquake, Majestic SEO, Raven SEO tools, are some of the best tools for finding link opportunities.

What are the best link building software tools for prospecting?

BuzzStream, BuzzSumo, Email Hunter, are some of the best link building software for prospecting.

Other Resources:

• 8 Black Hat SEO Techniques to Avoid Like the Plague
• 4 Fiverr SEO contracts to avoid to stay safe from Google penalties
• 5 Best SEO Reporting Tools Used by 99% of SEO Experts
• SEO Friendly Titles: 8 Best Practices with Examples
• YouTube SEO: 11 tips to get your videos noticed

Final reflections

When considering a serious link building process, we prefer a tool that gives me full access rather than just giving me backlink data. Link building is not only about getting data on backlinks, but also knowing the detailed strategy of your competitors so that you can work better than them.

Knowing their top-performing content, top-linking pages, top keywords they rank for, and even knowing your competitors' competition are all essential parts of the same link building campaign.

While Moz and Majestic tools give you comprehensive and quality backlink data from any website, we prefer tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to bolster my link building process.

If you want an all-in-one tool that lets you extract the gold keywords your competitor is ranking for, get backlink data, see their competitors and their strategies, we recommend Semrush.

So what's your favorite link building tool? If you use any of the tools mentioned above, we would like to know which features do you use the most? And, if we missed a tool you're using, leave the details in the comments so we can try them out!