10 Best Link Building Tools to Find Link Opportunities in 2024

What is the MOST important thing that impacts your search ranking?

If you said backlinks, you are absolutely right. 

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

So if you want to create quality links and search 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
• Pricing and free trials 
• How to Use These Tools to Build Backlinks and More

There are basically two main things involved in link building.

• The first is: Find link opportunities (using link research tools)
• Another solution is: Find prospects to reach out to (using outreach tools)

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

Table of contents ☰

10 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 high-quality backlinks to your website.

1.Semrush

If you are ONLY looking for a tool SEO for link building, Semrush is the perfect choice because it offers you more than 45 link building tools. SEO under the same roof.

Semrush is a toolkit for SEO popular 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 from your industry.

Did you know that SEMrush's link building tool helps you with everything, including:

• Prospect research to find link opportunities
• Lead Outreach (with the help of Email Outreach)
• Tracking Your Link Building

You can do them all in one place. That's why over 10 million people use Semrush.

Here's how you can use the SEMrush link building tool to run a link building campaign to create highly relevant links to your website.

1nd step : Access 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 for which you want to improve your search rankings. 

If you're stuck, you can simply enter your competitors' domains (up to 10). Make sure you only choose domains whose backlink profiles you think are worthy. So, accessing authority sites in your niche can help you.

Once it’s done, tap the “Start Link Building” button.

Step 3: SEMrush will now process the URLs or keywords you provided. Then you will be able to track the progress of your link building campaign, including overall leads, responses received, domains monitored, etc…

This is what a domain preview looks like (from Semrush's Link Building tool);

Now just start screening leads to find link building opportunities.

As you can see above, you'll receive a ton of information, including:

• All Leads
• Keywords
• Competitors
• Domain Score (This metric measures the importance of a domain on a 100-point scale from 0 to 100 and 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" indicating a highly trustworthy site. It is based on the number of backlinks from trusted sites pointing to the domain)

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

Step 4: This is where the SEMrush link building tool excels as it allows you to distribute links via email (In Progress tab).

This is what it looks like;

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

Quick note: Your prospects' email addresses are added automatically by SEMrush. If you find the email address field empty, try using tools like EmailHunter to find an email address before moving on to the next prospect.

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

This is what this tab looks like;

As you can see above, all your potential backlinks are marked as Active, Lost, Broken, Undefined or Rejected after you add the domains you want to monitor.

So this is it ! This is how you can use the SEMrush link building tool for everything, including finding link opportunities, finding leads, and tracking your link building efforts.

Advantages:

• Keyword research tool (it currently has the largest keyword database on the market)
• Organic search helps you analyze your competitors' websites
• Site audit helps you find and resolve technical issues on your site
• Brand monitoring helps you monitor your brand and website online
• Keyword position tracker helps you accurately track your keyword rankings
• Social media management tool helps you easily manage your social media accounts
• Provides access to PPC keyword research
• Paid advertising tools and many more

disadvantages:

• Semrush has increased its pricing plans from $108,33/month to $129,95/month, making it a bit expensive compared to its competitors. That being said, if you opt for their annual plans, you will still get their plans starting at $108,33/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 you $ 129,95 per month and you'll have access to almost every feature, from competitor analysis and keyword research to link building and site audits. It offers you 3 reports per day, creates up to 000 projects, tracks up to 5 keywords with daily updates, and crawls up to 500 pages.
2. Guru: This plan is suitable for growing businesses and small businesses and you will benefit from exclusive features like branded reports, extended limits, historical data, etc. This package costs you $249,95 per month. It offers you 3 reports per day, creates up to 000 projects, tracks up to 15 keywords with daily updates, and crawls up to 1 pages.
3. Business: it suits agencies and costs you 499,95 $ per month and gives you features like API access, white label reporting, extended limits, sharing options, and more. It offers you 3 reports per day, creates up to 000 projects, tracks up to 40 keywords with daily updates, and crawls up to 5 pages.

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2 Ahrefs

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

Ahrefs offers you a tool called “Site Explorer” which gives you a deep insight into the organic search traffic and backlink profile of any website or URL.

How do I 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.

As you can see, you will be able to find all the backlink sources 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 link opportunities.

Click Show Link Opportunities, this will show you all the leads.

As you can see above, the tool Ahrefs Link Intersect has generated over 83 domains (link building opportunities) that are not linked to our site.

Additionally, if you click on the down arrow of any of the domains, you will have access to detailed data about the particular domain along with its statistics.

Advantages:

• Ahrefs' Link Intersect tool easily helps you find domains or URLs that point to your competitors but don't yet point to you.
• Site Explorer tool to analyze your competitors' backlinks
• The Content Gap helps you find keywords that your competitors are ranking for, but they aren't.
• Content Explorer helps you with high-performing content in your niche
• Site audit tool to find and fix issues on your site
• Keyword Explorer tool to find better keywords
• Rank Tracker tool to accurately track your keyword rankings
• Domain Comparison Tool helps you compare domains
• Broken Link Checker helps you find broken links

disadvantages:

• It does NOT offer ANY 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 basic package 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 track up to 000 keywords.
2. Standard: This plan is the most recommended plan and it costs you 179 $ per month , which is ideal for bloggers. You can add up to 10 projects and allow up to 3 users to access your account at the same time. You will have access to 500 crawl credits per month and track up to 000 keywords.
3. Advanced: If you run an in-house SEO agency, this can be a great choice that costs you $ 399 per month . You can add up to 25 projects. You will have access to 1,25 million crawl credits per month and track up to 5 keywords.
4. Agency: This plan costs you 999 $ per month and is suitable for agencies where you can add up to 100 projects and allow up to 5 users to access your account at the same time. You will have access to 2,5 million crawl credits per month and track up to 10 keywords.

Lire: Best Ahrefs Alternatives to Use

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3 Serpstat

Serpstat is another popular SEO toolkit used by over 570 people across the world. It offers a wide range of tools, including keyword research, backlink analysis, competitor research, site audits, 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, it will show you a list of all important backlink data, including:

• Serpstat domain ranking
• Referring domains
• Backlinks (including follow and nofollow links)

To find backlink opportunities, simply click on the backlinks and the backlink sources for the specified domain will be displayed.

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

You can also find new and lost backlinks of any domain along with the anchor texts of the backlinks.

Data on new and lost backlinks is extremely useful if you are running a link building campaign, as you will have an idea of ​​who is linking to a particular domain and who is removing it (so you can use both methods to get links).

Advantages:

• One of the biggest advantages of using Serpstat is its price. It is cheaper than other competitors in the SEO industry including Semrush, Moz tools, etc. Their pricing plans start at $55 per month.
• Keyword Research Tool helps you find high-performing keywords
• Rank tracker helps you track keyword rankings
• The on-page audit tool helps you create better content
• Easily spy on your competitors
• Analyze your own site’s backlinks with those of your competitors
• Keyword grouping tool to group keywords by site pages
• You can control the quality of your site's backlinks and find new sites to place backlinks by analyzing a competitor's link mass
• You can carry out site audits
• Custom reports
• SERP crawling

The inconvenients:

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

How much does Serpstat cost?

Serpstat offers you the following 4 pricing plans.

1. Lite: this plan costs you $ 55 per month . You can perform 4 keyword queries per day with 000 results per query and track 10 keywords for your site.
2. Standard : this plan costs $ 119 per month . You can perform 5 keyword queries per day with 000 results per query and track 30 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. Business: 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.

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4. MozPro

The Moz SEO tool has been in the industry 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 world's best backlink checker 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 navigate to any website you need to do better link building research. Then, click on the Analyze button and the domain backlinks will be displayed instantly.

This is what it looks like;

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

• Newly discovered and lost links
• Domain Authority (it predicts the ranking potential of a root domain)
• Link domains
• Inbound links with their sources and anchor texts
• First pages
• Find dofollow links easily

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

Note : The Spam Score represents the percentage of sites with similar functionality that we believe are penalized or banned by Google .

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

As you can see above, once you have a list of all pages with more links, you can find ways to acquire those links by creating better content, contacting sites related to the specified domain, etc.

Advantages:

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

disadvantages:

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

How much does Moz cost?

Moz offers you the following 4 pricing plans.

1. The standard plan costs you $99 per month. You can add up to 3 websites, track up to 300 keyword rankings, and perform up to 5 backlink queries per month.
2. The Medium plan costs you 149 $ per month and allows you to add up to 10 websites, track up to 800 keyword rankings, and perform up to 20 backlink queries per month.
3. The Large plan costs you $249 per month. You can add up to 25 websites, track up to 1 keyword rankings, and perform up to 900 backlink queries per month.
4. The Premium plan costs you 599 $ per month and allows you to add up to 50 websites, track up to 4 keyword rankings, and perform up to 500 backlink queries per month.

So what are you waiting for? Use the following link to take advantage of their free trial.

Lire: Best Moz Alternatives to Try to Improve Your SEO

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5.SpyFu

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

SpyFu offers an amazing tool called “Competitor Backlinks” that 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 on SpyFu, enter a domain or keyword to begin searching.

As you can see above, once you enter a domain, it will start showing all the backlinks that 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
• Outbound links and more

You can also refine backlinks in various ways such as blogs, forums, directory links, etc.

Advantages:

• Offers you a competitor SEO analysis tool that helps you easily spy on your competitors' websites
• You can target common links that your competitors get
• Access to the keyword research tool
• Price is cheaper than most SEO tools
• Domain comparison
• Rank tracker helps you find your keyword rankings
• PPC Search Tool helps you find better PPC ad copy and keywords
• SEO Reports
• SERP Checker helps you analyze all organic search results

disadvantages:

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

How much does SpyFu cost?

1. Basic: This is SpyFu's cheapest plan which only costs you 33 $ per month . You will get unlimited search results, unlimited data exports, unlimited domain overview PDFs, 250 domain leads and contacts, 5 weekly tracking keyword rankings, 000 listing results.
2. Professional: this plan only costs you 58 $ per month and you will get unlimited search results, unlimited data exports, unlimited domain overview PDFs, 500 domain leads and contacts, 50 weekly tracking keyword rankings, 000 listing results.
3. Team: this plan only costs you 199 $ per month and you will get unlimited search results, unlimited data exports, unlimited domain overview PDFs, 2 domain leads and contacts, 000 weekly tracking keyword rankings, 40 listing results, 000 user logins.

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6. 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 an up-to-date list of everything they've found over the past 120 days. Additionally, it provides you with huge historical index data that you can use to look back over the past 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 start the search.

As you can see above, once you enter a domain, it instantly shows you a list of link building metrics like trust flow, citation flow, etc. which help you identify domain authority.

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

Look at this? You will be able to find the backlink sources of that particular domain along with backlink metrics such as trust flow, citation flow, URL source to destination, etc.

Benefits of Majestic SEO:

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

Disadvantages of Majestic SEO:

• Backlink Explorer does not cover all links

How much does Majestic SEO cost?

Majestic offers the following 3 pricing plans.

1. The Lite plan costs you 49,99 $ per month and 1 user can access one account and you will get 1 million scan units per month
2. The Pro plan costs you 99,99 $ per month and 1 user can access one account and you will get 20 million scan units per month
3. The API plan costs you 399,99 $ per month and 5 users can access one account and you will get 100 million scan units per month

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7. Raven Tools

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

What's special about Raven tools is that they give you access to two tools for finding link opportunities, including a Backlink Explorer Tool and a Link Spy Tool. 

You can use Backlink Explorer to find link building opportunities from your competitors. You can use the Link Spy tool to find high-quality links based on websites already ranking for your targeted keywords.

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

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

Once you are on Backlink Explorer, submit any URL or domain into the “Explore” feature to generate a detailed backlink report.

Once it's done, it instantly gives you all the backlinks along with the source URLs.

Look at;

Benefits of Raven SEO tools:

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

Disadvantages of tools Raven SEO :

• It doesn't offer as huge backlink data as Semrush or Ahrefs

How much do Raven tools cost?

Raven Tools offers the following pricing plans.

1. The Small Biz plan costs you $39 per month. You can add 2 domains, manage up to 2 users, perform 1 position checks, and monitor up to 500 backlinks.
2. The Start plan costs you 79 $ per month and lets you add 20 domains, manage up to 4 users, perform 15 position checks, and monitor up to 000 backlinks.
3. The Grow plan costs you 139 $ per month and lets you add 80 domains, manage up to 8 users, perform 20 position checks, and monitor up to 000 backlinks.
4. The Thrive plan costs you 249 $ per month and lets you add 160 domains, manage up to 20 users, perform 25 position checks, and monitor up to 000 backlinks.
5. The Lead plan costs you 399 $ per month and lets you add 320 domains, manage up to 40 users, perform 30 position checks, and monitor up to 000 backlinks.

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8. SEOquake

SERP analysis is essential for finding better link opportunities. Here's where you can use a free toolkit like SEOquake which has over 3 million downloads and is widely used by SEO experts around the world.

It gives you quick access to tons of valuable data about every website you visit, like a page's social signals, the difficulty of a query's keywords and a comprehensive report on a site's internal and external links.

The best thing is that whenever you search for a topic on Google, the extension sits on 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 will get key page metrics like Google ranking, domain age, number of backlinks, etc.)
• Keyword Difficulty Score (which gives you an estimate of how competitive a keyword is; 100% is the highest)

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

Advantages:

• Get an in-depth SERP analysis and export results to CSV format
• You can easily estimate keyword difficulty instantly for each keyword term
• You can run a complete SEO audit of any web page
• You can check your statistics social for Facebook, Pinterest and LinkedIn
• You can get a complete report for internal and external links
• Easily determine keyword density
• You can also compare URLs or domains for deeper competitor analysis.
• This is a handy browser extension that is simply set and forgotten

disadvantages:

• You need to log in with a Semrush account (even a free account works well) to be able to get the backlinks data
• Browser extension is sometimes annoying because it appears on every page load

Rate :

Its use is completely free. It is a free browser extension available for Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Opera.

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2 Best Link Building Software Tools for Outreach

Now let's talk about the best backlink tools you can use for outreach.

1. BuzzStream

If you are looking for link building and PR tools to build connections and contact influencers, you should definitely try BuzzStream.

It gives you the world's best CRM (Customer Relationship Management) outreach tools to help you grow your link building results.

How to use BuzzStream?

Here's how to use BuzzStream for link streaming.

Once you are BuzzStream, enter any keyword you want to launch a link building campaign with. It instantly shows you a list of influencers along with their profiles, leads, domain authority, etc.

Once you've collected the leads, you can start sending email pitches to build your campaign. 

The great thing about BuzzStream is that it also helps you with free email templates that you can use for outreach purposes.

This is what their models look like;

Advantages:

• Discovery of coordinates
• Tracking of opens, clicks and responses
• Access to ready-made email templates
• Scheduling emails and reminders
• Automated follow-ups
• Publisher and influencer metrics
• Twitter Conversation Tracking
• Email performance reports
• Link monitoring (1000 links)

disadvantages:

• It's sometimes difficult to find verified email addresses using their email finder tool

How much does BuzzStream cost?

BuzzStream offers the following three pricing plans.

1. The Starter plan costs you 24 $ per month and gives access to 1 user as well as 1 contacts. You can also monitor up to 000 links per month.
2. The group package costs you 99 $ per month and gives access to 3 users as well as 25 contacts. You can also monitor up to 000 links per month.
3. The professional plan costs you 299 $ per month and gives access to 6 users as well as 100 contacts. You can also monitor up to 000 links per month.

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2. BuzzSumo

If you are looking for a powerful influencer outreach tool to reach out to experts in your niche to build connections, BuzzSumo is a great tool for you.

It is not only useful for blogger outreach but also provides a content marketing tool which helps you find out what content is popular by topic or on any website.

How to use BuzzSumo?

Here's how to use BuzzSumo like a pro.

Once you're on BuzzSumo, go to the Backlinks section and enter a domain to find pages that link to that particular URL or domain.

This is what it looks like;

As you can see above, you will be able to see a list of all domains (with the specific pages) linked to the specified website. You can also filter the results according to different filters such as:

• Engagement on Facebook 
• Twitter shares
• Pinterest shares
• Engagement on Reddit 
• Number of links
• Evergreen score
• Total commitment, etc.

The great thing about BuzzSumo is that you can also create alerts. So every time someone mentions the name of your blog (or any other name you want to monitor), it will notify you by email.

This is what it looks like;

Advantages:

• Come up with great content ideas in any niche
• Create effective content
• Monitor the performance of your content
• Identify influencers in almost any niche
• Its interface is extremely simple to use

disadvantages:

• The subscription price is a bit high as their starter plan costs you $99 per month

How much does BuzzSumo cost?

BuzzSumo offers a free plan where you can do 10 searches per month, but if you want to get more limits, you should go for their premium plans listed below.

1. The Pro plan costs you 99 $ per month , you can do unlimited monthly searches and 5 users can access your account. 
2. The Plus plan costs you 179 $ per month , you can do unlimited monthly searches and 10 users can access your account.
3. A large package costs you 299 $ per month , you can do unlimited monthly searches and 15 users can access your account.

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FAQ

Browse more SEO guides:

• Link Building Awareness: A Simple Beginner’s Guide to 2024
• Link recovery: What is it? How to Recover Lost Backlinks in 2024
• Buying Backlinks: Everything You Need to Know About Paid Links in 2024
• 8 Best Link Building Tools to Find Link Opportunities in 2024
• Things to Balance When Doing SEO: 5 Important Things
• 10 Highest Paid SEO Tools That Are Worth Every Penny
• Future of SEO: 5 Trends That Will Impact Your Website Ranking
• What is timeless content? Beginner's guide with practical tips

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Latest Thoughts

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

Having their best performing content, the most linked pages, the best keywords they rank for, and even knowing your competitors' competitors are all essential parts of the same link building campaign.

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

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

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