11 Best Link Building Tools to Find Link Opportunities In 2023

What’s the MOST important thing that impacts your search rankings?

If you said backlinks, you’re absolutely right. 

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

So if you want to build quality links and looking for the BEST link building tools, this post is exclusively for you.

In this post, we’ll show you:

• Free and premium tools to build links
• The pros and cons of these tools
• Pricing and free trials 
• How to use these tools to create backlinks and much more

There are basically two major things involved in link building.

• One is: Finding link opportunities (with the help of link research tools)
• Another is: Finding prospects to outreach (with the help of outreach tools)

So we’ll try to cover both these link tools to find link building opportunities in 2023.

11 Best Free And Paid Link Building Tools for 2023

8 Best Tools to Build Quality Links in 2023

Let’s first get started with the top tools you can use to build high-quality backlinks to your website.

1. Semrush

If you’re looking for ONLY one SEO tool for link building, Semrush is the perfect choice as it offers you over 45 SEO tools under one roof.

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

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

Use the link below to grab their free trial. 

Grab Semrush Pro 14 days free trial (worth $129.95)

Did you know that link building tool from Semrush helps you with everything including;

You can do all of them in one place. That’s why over 10 million people are using Semrush.

Here’s how you can make use of Semrush 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’s how it looks like;

Step 2: Now, you can enter up to 10 keywords that you want to improve your search rankings for. 

If you’re stuck, you can simply enter your competitor domains (up to 10). Make sure to pick only those domains whose backlink profiles you think are worthy. So entering authority sites in your niche can help.

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

Step 3: Now Semrush will process the URLs or keywords you provided. Then, you’ll be able to track the progress of your link building campaign including overall prospects, received replies, monitored domains and so on.

Here’s how the overview of a domain looks like (from Link Building tool in Semrush);

Now, simply start picking the prospects to find link building opportunities.

As you can see above, you’ll be provided with a ton of information including;

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

Step 4: This is where Semrush link building tool excels as it provides you link building email outreach (In Progress tab).

Here’s how it looks like;

As you can see above, it lets you reach out to the selected prospects and monitor the status of each of your links.

Quick note: The email addresses of your prospects are added by Semrush automatically. In case you find the email address field empty, try using tools like Email Hunter 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.

Here’s how this tab looks like;

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

So there you go! That’s how you can use Semrush link building tool for everything including finding link opportunities to finding prospects and monitoring your link building efforts.

Pros:

Cons:

Read: Semrush Free Trial: Try Pro or Guru Account Free for 14 Days Worth Over $300

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 where you’ll get access to almost all the features from competitor analysis to keyword research to link building to site audits. It gives you 3000 reports per day, create up to 5 projects, track up to 500 keywords with daily updates, and crawl up to 100,000 pages
2. Guru: This plan is suitable for growing businesses and small businesses and you’ll get exclusive features like branded reports, extended limits, historical data, etc. This plan costs you $249.95 per month. It gives you 3000 reports per day, create up to 15 projects, track up to 1500 keywords with daily updates, and crawl up to 300,000 pages
3. Business: This is suitable for agencies and it costs you $499.95 per month and gives you features like API access, white label reports, extended limits, sharing options, and so on. It gives you 3000 reports per day, create up to 40 projects, track up to 5000 keywords with daily updates, and crawl up to 10,00,000 pages

Browse More:

• Semrush Coupon Code 2023 + FREE eBook!
• Best Semrush Alternatives for 2023

2. Ahrefs

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

Ahrefs provides you a tool called “Site Explorer” which 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’re on the Site Explorer.

If you want to find all the sources of those backlinks, click on the Backlinks.

Have a look;

As you can see, you’ll 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 on the Show Link Opportunities, it will show you all prospects.

As you can see above, Ahrefs Link Intersect tool has generated over 83,000 domains (link building opportunities) that are not linking to our site BloggersPassion.

Not just that, if you click on the down arrow any of the domains, you’ll get access to in-depth data of the particular domain along with its statistics.

Pros:

Cons:

How much does Ahrefs cost?

Ahrefs offers the following 4 pricing plans.

1. Lite: This is the basic plan which costs you $99 per month and you can add up to 5 projects. You’ll get access to 10,000 crawl credits per month and track up to 500 keywords.
2. Standard: This plan is the most recommended plan and it costs you $179 per month which is great for bloggers. You can add up to 10 projects and you can allow up to 3 users to access your account at the same time. You’ll get access to 500,000 crawl credits per month and track up to 1500 keywords.
3. Advanced: If you’re running an in-house SEO agency, this can be a great choice which costs you $399 per month. You can add up to 25 projects. You’ll get access to 1.25 million crawl credits per month and track up to 5000 keywords.
4. Agency: This plan costs you $999 per month and it 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’ll get access to 2.5 million crawl credits per month and track up to 10,000 keywords.

Quick note: You can read our in-depth Semrush vs Ahrefs post if you want to find all the features along with their tutorials.

Read: Best Ahrefs Alternatives to Use in 2023

3. Serpstat

Serpstat is another popular SEO toolkit that is used by over 570,000 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 you can use the Backlink Analysis Tool from Serpstat to find link opportunities. 

Once you’re 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 the important backlink data including;

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

To find backlink opportunities, simply click on the Backlinks and it will show the specified domain’s backlink sources.

Have a look;

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

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

New & Lost backlinks data is extremely useful if you’re running a link building campaign as you’ll get an idea of who is linking to a particular domain and who’s removing (so you can use both ways to get links).

Pros:

Cons:

How much does Serpstat cost?

Serpstat offers you the following 4 pricing plans.

1. Lite: This plan costs you $55 per month where you can make 4000 keyword queries per day with 10,000 results per query, and track 15,000 keywords for your site.
2. Standard: This plan costs $119 per month where you can make 5000 keyword queries per day with 30,000 results per query, and track 60,000 keywords for your site.
3. Advanced: This plan costs $239 per month where you can make 8000 keyword queries per day with 50,000 results per query and track 150,000 keywords for your site.
4. Enterprise: This plan costs $399 per month where you can make 12,000 keyword queries per day with 75,000 results per query and track 300,000 keywords for your site.

Quick note: Enter the promo code “bloggerspassion” (without quotes, in small letters) to activate your Serpstat free trial.

Read: Serpstat Review with 7 Days Free Trial
Read: Serpstat Coupon Code + 7 Days Free Trial

4. Moz Pro

Moz SEO tool has been around in the business for a lot of years and it 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 complete link metrics for any website, including Page Authority and Domain Authority.

How to use Moz Pro to find link building opportunities?

Here’s how you can use the Link Explorer tool from Moz Pro to find backlink opportunities.

Once you’re on the Moz tool, go to Link Explorer and enter any website that you need to do better link building research. Then, click on the Analyze button and it will instantly show the domain’s backlinks.

Here’s how it looks like;

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

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

Note: Spam score represents the percentage of sites with similar features we’ve found to be penalized or banned by Google.

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

As you can see above, once you’ve a list of all the pages with more links, you can find ways to acquire those links by creating better content, reaching out to the sites that have linked to the specified domain, etc.

Pros:

Cons:

How much does Moz cost?

Moz offers you the following 4 pricing plans.

1. Standard plan costs you $99 per month where you can add up to 3 websites, track up to 300 keyword rankings, and perform up to 5000 backlink queries per month
2. Medium plan costs you $149 per month where you can add up to 10 websites, track up to 800 keyword rankings, and perform up to 20,000 backlink queries per month
3. Large plan costs you $249 per month where you can add up to 25 websites, track up to 1900 keyword rankings, and perform up to 70,000 backlink queries per month
4. Premium plan costs you $599 per month where you can add up to 50 websites, track up to 4500 keyword rankings, and perform up to 100,000 backlink queries per month

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

Read: Moz vs Semrush: Which is Better SEO Tool?
Read: Best Moz Alternatives to Try to Improve Your SEO

5. SpyFu

Most SEO tools are expensive as they give you access to a ton of tools. So if you’re looking for an affordable SEO toolkit within a limited budget, SpyFu is exclusively for you as their pricing plans start only 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 for finding relevant link building opportunities in your niche.

Once you’re on 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 displaying all the backlinks the domain currently has.

It also shows you all the important metrics like;

• Domain monthly organic clicks
• Page monthly organic clicks
• Overall strength of the domain
• Ranked keywords
• Outbound links and more

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

Have a look;

Pros:

Cons:

How much does SpyFu cost?

1. Basic: This is the cheapest plan from SpyFu which costs you just $33 per month where you will get unlimited search results, unlimited data exports, unlimited domain overview PDFs, 250 sales leads and domain contacts, 5k weekly tracked keyword rankings, 10k top lists results
2. Professional: This plan costs you just $58 per month where you’ll get unlimited search results, unlimited data exports, unlimited domain overview PDFs, 500 sales leads and domain contacts, 50k weekly tracked keyword rankings, 15k top lists results
3. Team: This plan costs you just $199 per month where you’ll get unlimited search results, unlimited data exports, unlimited domain overview PDFs, 2000 sales leads and domain contacts, 40k weekly tracked keyword rankings, 75k top lists results, 5 user logins.

Browse More:

• SpyFu Review: Is It the #1 Competitor Analysis Tool?
• SpyFu vs Semrush: Which is Better for Competitor Research?
• SpyFu Competitors: Best SpyFu Alternative Tools for 2023

6. Majestic SEO

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

Their Fresh Index contains the up-to-date list of everything they’ve found in the past 120 days. Also, it gives you huge historic index data that you can use to go back over 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’re on the tool, enter any domain or website to begin the search.

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

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

See that? You’ll be able to find that particular domain’s backlink sources along with the backlink metrics such as trust flow, citation flow, destination source of the URLs, and more.

Pros of Majestic SEO:

Cons of Majestic SEO:

How much does Majestic SEO cost?

Majestic offers the following 3 pricing plans.

1. Lite plan costs you $49.99 per month and 1 user can access an account and you’ll get 1 million analysis units per month
2. Pro plan costs you $99.99 per month and 1 user can access an account and you’ll get 20 million analysis units per month
3. API plan costs you $399.99 per month and 5 users can access an account and you’ll get 100 million analysis units per month

7. Raven Tools

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

The unique thing about Raven tools is that it gives you access to two tools for finding link opportunities including a backlink explorer tool and Link Spy tool. 

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

How to use the Raven tools to find link building opportunities?

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

Once you’re on the Backlink Explorer, submit any URL or domain into the “Explore” function to generate an in-depth backlink report.

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

Have a look;

Pros of Raven SEO tools:

Cons of Raven SEO tools:

How much does Raven tools cost?

Raven Tools offers the following pricing plans.

1. Small Biz plan costs you $39 per month where you can add 2 domains, manage up to 2 users, perform 1500 position checks and monitor up to 25,000 backlinks
2. Start plan costs you $79 per month where you can add 20 domains, manage up to 4users, perform 15,000 position checks and monitor up to 50,000 backlinks
3. Grow plan costs you $139 per month where you can add 80 domains, manage up to 8 users, perform 20,000 position checks and monitor up to 75,000 backlinks
4. Thrive plan costs you $249 per month where you can add 160 domains, manage up to 20 users, perform 25,000 position checks and monitor up to 100,000 backlinks
5. Lead plan costs you $399 per month where you can add 320 domains, manage up to 40 users, perform 30,000 position checks and monitor up to 150,000 backlinks

Click here to try Raven tools today!

8: SEOquake

SERP analysis is essential to find better link opportunities. Here’s where you can use a free toolbox like SEOquake which has over 3 million downloads and widely used by SEO experts worldwide.

It gives you quick access to tons of valuable data of all websites you visit like social signals of a page, keyword difficulty of a query and full report on internal links and external links of a site.

The best thing is whenever you search 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 a thorough analysis of SERPs which includes a ton of useful data including;

You can also export all the SERP data into CSV for further analysis.

Pros:

Cons:

Pricing:

It’s completely free to use. It’s a free browser extension which is available for Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Opera.

3 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’re looking for link building and PR tools to build links and reach out to influencers, you should definitely try BuzzStream.

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

How to use BuzzStream?

Here’s how to use BuzzStream for link outreach.

Once you’re the BuzzStream, enter any keyword that you want to start a link building campaign. It instantly shows you a list of influencers along with their profiles, prospects, domain authority, etc.

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

The best part about using BuzzStream is that it also helps you with free email templates that you can use for outreach.

Here’s how their templates look like;

Pros:

Cons:

How much does BuzzStream cost?

BuzzStream offers the following three pricing plans.

1. Starter plan costs you $24 per month and gives access to 1 user along with 1000 contacts. You can also monitor up to 1000 links per month.
2. Group plan costs you $99 per month and gives access to 3 users along with 25,000 contacts. You can also monitor up to 25,000 links per month.
3. Professional plan costs you $299 per month and gives access to 6 users along with 100,000 contacts. You can also monitor up to 100,000 links per month.

2. BuzzSumo

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

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

How to use BuzzSumo?

Here’s how you can use BuzzSumo like a pro.

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

Here’s how it look like;

As you can see above, you’ll be able to see a list of all the domains (with the specific pages) that have linked to the specified website. You can also filter the results by various filers like;

• Facebook engagement 
• Twitter shares
• Pinterest shares
• Reddit engagement 
• Number of links
• Evergreen score
• Total engagement etc

The best part about using BuzzSumo is that you can also create alerts so whenever someone mentions your blog’s name (or any name that you want to monitor), it notifies you through email.

Here’s how it looks like;

Pros:

Cons:

How much does BuzzSumo cost?

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

1. Pro plan costs you $99 per month where you can perform unlimited monthly searches and 5 users that can access your account. 
2. Plus plan costs you $179 per month where you can perform unlimited monthly searches and 10 users that can access your account
3. Large plan costs you $299 per month where you can perform unlimited monthly searches and 15 users that can access your account

3. Hunter.io

If you want to easily find verified email addresses of anyone, Hunter is the perfect tool for you. It is currently used by over 2,000,000 professionals to build connections and grow their online business.

How to use Hunter.io?

Here’s how to use Hunter for outreach.

Once you’re on their website, enter any website or company name to perform the search.

Here’s how it looks like;

As you can see above, once we enter our site bloggerspassion in the search box, it instantly shows us 3 results.

Once you click on it, it gives you access to all the available email addresses.

Quick note: You must be signed into the Hunter’s account. You can sign up for free and you’ll get access to 25 searches per month with their free account.

Pros:

Cons:

How much does Hunter cost?

The best part about using Hunter is it offers a free version and you can perform 25 searches per month using it.

But if you want to get more limits, you should go with their premium plans which are listed below.

1. Starter plan costs you $49 per month where you can perform 500 searches per month and 1000 verifications per month
2. Growth plan costs you $99 per month where you can perform 2500 searches per month and 5000 verifications per month
3. Pro plan costs you $199 per month where you can perform 10,000 searches per month and 20,000 verifications per month
4. Enterprise plan costs you $399 per month where you can perform 30,000 searches per month and 60,000 verifications per month

More Link Building Resources for 2023:

• Top ways to build high quality backlinks for your blog
• Link building strategies for niche sites [Ultimate Guide]
• Top link building mistakes to avoid in 2023
• Everything you need to know about buying links in 2023

FAQs

Final Thoughts

When you are considering serious link building process, we prefer a tool that gives me all round access rather than only the backlink data. Link building isn’t only about getting the backlink data, it is knowing your competitors’ detailed strategy so that you can work better than them.

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

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

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

Click here to try Semrush FREE for 14 days worth $129.95

So, What’s your favorite link building tool? If you use any of the tools mentioned above, we’d love to hear what features you use the most? And, if we missed any tool you use, leave the details in the comments so that we give them a try!