Link Building Tool Box – Productivity on Steroids

Only after compiling this mega list did I realize how many tools I use on a daily/weekly basis just for link building.  I have mainly listed those tools which I use often and which are free to use. I keep adding/removing tools as I find better alternatives.

If you think a tool is worth listing then please suggest it. Please note: I do not accept paid inclusions.

Use CTRL F + search term to find what you are looking for.

  1. Niche-specific searches for link prospecting
  2. Data scraping tools for link prospecting
  3. Utility linking tools
  4. Twitter tools for link prospecting
  5. Facebook tools for link prospecting
  6. LinkedIn tools for link prospecting
  7. Other social media analytics tools which help in link prospecting
  8. Brand monitoring tools for link prospecting
  9. RSS tools for link prospecting
  10. Q & A sites for building authority and link prospecting
  11. Other link prospecting tools
  12. Tools for link building outreach
  13. Backlinks analysis tools

Niche-specific searches for link prospecting

  1. Alltop
  2. Best of the web blog directory
  3. Blogarama
  4. Blog Catalog
  5. Blog Dash – free tool to find bloggers in your niche. (paid version is also there)
  6. Blog Digger
  7. Blog Her
  8. Blog Hints
  9. Blog Listing
  10. Blogio
  11. Bloggapedia
  12. Blogging Fusion
  13. Blog Search Engine
  14. Bloggeries
  15. Blogrolls – find other similar authoritative bloggers in a niche.
  16. Board Reader – search particular topics that are being discussed on message boards and forums.
  17. CrunchBase – search companies and employees’ profiles and contact details.
  18. EatonWeb Blog directory
  19. Globe of blogs
  20. Google Blog Search
  21. Google News Search
  22. Google News Archive Search
  23. WordPress Tag Search – great tool to find niche-specific WordPress blogs. https://en.wordpress.com/tag/[insert-your-keyword-here]/
  24. Yahoo News Search

Data scraping tools for link prospecting

  1. SERPs Redux bookmarklet – Scrape the organic search results from Google.com
  2. AutoPager – automatically loads next pages when you reach the end of a SERP esp. useful if you have a data separated over multiple pages that you want to scrape. Firefox extension.
  3. Excel Plugin by Niels Bosma – Through this plugin, you can fetch several on-page elements from a URL or list of URLs like: Title tag, Meta description tag, Meta keywords tag, Meta robots tag, H1 tag, H2 tag, HTTP Header, Backlinks, Facebook likes, etc.
  4. X-Path tutorial
  5. X-Pather – It is a Firebug extension used to quickly generate path expressions while browsing HTML and XML documents.  Since X-Pather is a firebug extension, it means you first need to install firebug in order to use it.
  6. Scrapy – It is an open-source web scraping framework and is used to extract structured data from web pages & APIs. You need to know Python (a programming language) in order to use scrapy.
  7. Open Site Explorer – Scrape backlinks of an entire website.
  8. Scraper – This chrome extension can scrape data from web pages and export it to Google docs.

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Utility linking tools

  1. Backlink Builder
  2. Solo SEO

Twitter tools for link prospecting

  1. Advanced Twitter Search
  2. AnalyzeWords– Enter your Twitter name or the handle of a person to learn about his emotions, social styles, and the ways he thinks.
  3. Backtweets– a tool to analyze any Twitter profile.
  4. Followerwonk– search twitter bios and find people who share the same interest. For e.g. you can determine the twitter profiles of event planners, SEOs, chiropractors, etc.
  5. Manage Fitter– find people you follow but are not following you. Lots of filter options.
  6. MentionMap – find people connected to influencers on twitter
  7. MuckRack – What are journalist talking about
  8. Snap Bird – search the tweet history of any twitter profile.
  9. TwitterCounter – Through this tool you can graph the growth of any twitter profile over time. A good tool to find emerging influencers.
  10. Twitter Grader – check the online influence of a twitter profile compared to millions of other users that have been graded. Another tool to find emerging influencers.
  11. Twitter Reach – search for a URL, twitter name, phrase, or hashtag to visualize the true reach of a tweet.
  12. Wefollow– a tool to find people on twitter who are influential.

Facebook tools for link prospecting

  1. Facebook Insight – a tool to find your influencers on Facebook.
  2. Free Facebook Fan Page Analytics in Excel
  3. Free Facebook Competitive Analysis in Excel
  4. Facebook Search

LinkedIn tools for link prospecting

  1. LinkedIn Advanced Search
  2. LinkedIn Advanced Answers Search
  3. LinkedIn analytics for Businesses – a tool to find your influencers on LinkedIn.
  4. LinkedIn analytics for Individuals – a tool to find your influencers on LinkedIn.
  5. LinkedIn Search

Note: In order to fully utilise all the built-in analytics feature of Linkedin, you need to upgrade to Premium account of LinkedIn

Other social media analytics tools which help in link prospecting

  1. Klout– Klout Score measures online influence of a person on a scale of 1 to 100.
  2. PeerIndex – provides detailed analytics of your social stream.
  3. Sharedcount– track Facebook (likes, shares, comments), tweets, Google +1s, Diggs, LinkedIn shares, Google buzz and stumble upon of any page whether or not the page has sharing buttons installed.
  4. SiteTrail Analytics – get a quick snapshot of organic and social media presence of any website.

Brand monitoring tools for link prospecting

  1. Google Alerts– track brand mentions. It can also be used for link building.
  2. Twilert – works the same way as Google alerts does, but only on Twitter

RSS tools for link prospecting

Q & A sites for building authority and link prospecting

  1. Linkedin Answers
  2. Quora
  3. Wiki Answers
  4. Yahoo Answers
  5. List of niche-specific Q & A websites

Other link prospecting tools

  1. 10000 Search Engine Queries for your Link Building Campaign
  2. Bing Social Search
  3. Blogger LinkUp – a tool to find bloggers, guest post opportunities.
  4. BuzzStream Email Research Tool – a tool to find email addresses
  5. Double Click Ad Planner
  6. Google Search by Image
  7. Help a Reporter out
  8. ifttt– awesome tool to automate ‘if this then that’ type of task. For e.g. you can send yourself an email if you are mentioned by a particular influencer in your niche.
  9. Link Building Toolbar – Keep track of existing links & links you are prospecting directly from within your browser.
  10. Link Prospector – it helps in finding tons of link building opportunities. Pricing option: ‘pay as you go’.
  11. MyBlogGuest – Tool to find guest post opportunities.
  12. Open Site Explorer
  13. Peep Mail – a tool to find email addresses
  14. SEO Takeaways BackLinks Analysis Tool – a great tool to reverse engineer your competition and find linking opportunities.
  15. SEOmoz Competitive Link Finder – get a list of common backlinks acquired by your competitors.
  16. SEOmoz web directory list
  17. Tiny Eye – Reverse image search tool.
  18. Whitespark – a tool to find location citation sources for you.
  19. Zemanta – help bloggers to find your work. add your RSS feed to Zemanta.

Tools for link building outreach

  1. Ad Remover and Better UI for Gmail – Chrome extension which removes all the ads in Gmail, enhances its interface. compatible with the new Gmail.
  2. Boomerang for Gmail – is a Firefox / Chrome plugin that lets you take control of when you send and receive email messages. You can schedule an email to be sent later.
  3. Gmail Canned Responses – a Gmail lab tool. You need to go to Settings icon > Labs to enable it.  It allows you to save email templates.
  4. Gmail Send and Archive – a Gmail lab tool that adds a button to the compose form that lets you send a reply message and archive the email conversation in a single action. You need to go to Settings icon > Labs to enable it.
  5. Highrise
  6. ifttt– awesome tool to automate ‘if this then that’ type of task.
  7. Rapportive – It is a Gmail plugin that shows you everything about your contacts right inside your inbox.
  8. Taskforce– It lists emails as tasks and is a great tool to manage emails. It is like you installed a mini version of basecamp in your Gmail account.
  9. Texter – a great tool for text substitution.

Backlinks analysis tools

  1. Ahrefs
  2. Advanced Report of the Majestic SEO Tool – visualize the Geographic Profile of a site’s backlinks
  3. Bleeko – Free backlinks analysis tool
  4. Dr. Pete Worksheet – visualize the Quality of Back Links of a website
  5. Link Detective – free backlinks analysis tool. Determine link types.
  6. Majestic SEO Backlink History Tool – Visualize the Link growth/ Velocity of your website and that of your competitors.
  7. Majestic Site Explorer – analyze backlinks of a website
  8. Open Site Explorer– analyze backlinks of a website, compares ranking potential of two and more sites.
  9. SEO Takeaways Backlinks Analysis tool – determine the backlink profile of your top SEO Competitor(s)
  10. Tagxedo – tool to create a word cloud and visualizes the anchor text distribution analysis of a website.
  11. Linkstant – Real-time (almost) monitoring of backlinks.

Other tools

  1. BackLinks Removal Tool

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About the Author

Himanshu Sharma

  • Founder, OptimizeSmart.com
  • Over 15 years of experience in digital analytics and marketing
  • Author of four best-selling books on digital analytics and conversion optimization
  • Nominated for Digital Analytics Association Awards for Excellence
  • Runs one of the most popular blogs in the world on digital analytics
  • Consultant to countless small and big businesses over the decade