Hi I’m Praneeth Kumar.
In this blog you will learn 18 best FREE link building tools list.
All these tools mentioned in this list can help you directly or indirectly build more backlinks and help you in your link building campaign for your website for sure.
So without further ado let’s get started.
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18 best free link building tools you should use;
Here is a list of my top favourite free link building tools and services.
Some tools are free and others have free plans and freemium options.
So let’s dive right in.
This is a free tool of Ahrefs which will help you to check the top hundred backlinks of any website.
You can also check top 5 anchor text and top 5 pages of the website using this free tool.
Other than backlinks you can also see total referring domains and domain rating of the website which is a metric of Ahrefs to determine the backlink strength.
You can use this tool for many purposes like, you can do competitor analysis of your competitors to check where
they have built the backlinks from so that you can get backlinks from there as well or you can check the website authority before you try to get a guest post on their website.
This is a free tool which can help you check the broken links of any website.
All you have to do is to type the domain name of the website and click on get started and you will have a list of all the broken links on the particular website and
When you can find any one of the broken link which is related to your website and if you have a similar blog post published on your website then
you can reach out to the website owner and request them to replace the broken links with your blog post through
email outreach and this is how you can get backlinks from other website through broken link building.
You can also use this tool to check the broken links on your website as well and you can fix all the broken links because having a lot of Broken links can cause a bad User experience and it is the technical issue of your website which has to be fixed immediately.
Without a doubt Ahrefs is one of the largest and best SEO tools especially for building backlinks.
It is so big that 25.34 trillion links are found, 170 million domains found, and 6.39 billion pages crawled every day.
The backlinks data gets updated every 15 minutes.
This is a free tool of Ahrefs, using this tool you can check all the people who are linking to your website (backlinks profile) by getting your website verified with the tool.
Here is my link profile in this tool,
You can also check the domain rating and Anchor text used by other websites linking to your website.
This is another free tool of Ahrefs.
There are two main benefits of using this tool.
- You can check the keyword difficulty level.
Whenever you are writing a blog post, make sure that you enter the target keyword for the blog post in this tool to check how many backlinks and referring domains you need to be able to rank in Google and
also determine the keyword difficulty value and decide whether you can rank in Google top10 for that keyword.
- You can target keywords which attract links.
Many premium SEO tools have different keyword difficulty Metrics and when it comes to Ahrefs,
it will check the keyword difficulty and give you a score between 0-100 and an estimated number of backlinks you need to be able to rank in Google for the keyword by analysing backlinks of the top 10 ranking pages in Google.
For examples let’s consider a keyword,
Google ranking factors in this tool.
This keyword is extremely difficult to rank and it says that you need backlinks from more than 600 different websites to rank in Google top positions.
You cannot get 600 websites to link to your article just by doing manual link building so, it is a perfect example of a link magnet which naturally attracts links.
if you create amazing content around this keyword which is much better than other pages ranking for this keyword in Google,
you can attract many backlinks both naturally over a period of time and by build backlinks manually through guest posting, broken link building and other link building strategies.
Using this tool you can focus on creating content which targets both low competition keywords and also on keywords and
content which can get you backlinks naturally because they are link magnets and people are also linking to this type of content naturally.
The only drawback of using this tool is that you will have to manually search the keywords that you find through keyword tools to find keyword difficulty for free.
This is a freemium SEO tool by neilPatel.
Using this tool you can check the backlink profile of your competitors, whether the link is Dofollow or not, the anchor text,
total number of backlinks and referring domains of the site, the domain score of the website, link type and source, link originated date etc.
here is an example of the website,
You will have limited access to the backlinks profile of your competitors using the free plan.
You can use this data to steal the backlinks from your competitors and also check and maintain a healthy link profile of your website.
Apart from link building you can also check top performing content and keywords related to your industry based on the social shares and backlinks.
You can also use this tool to do keyword Research and run an SEO audit of your website.
This is a good free alternative to premium SEO tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush.
You will get three searches for free for one day and you will have to upgrade to the premium plan for unlimited searches or wait for the next day to get the other free searches.
This is a free tool of Google which you can use to build backlinks from brand mentions of your website or your product on the internet.
All you need to do is to use this tool to get notifications directly to your email address whenever a specific query, keyword that you entered related to your website gets mentioned on any website, blogs and press releases on the internet.
This way whenever people mention your brand and website name on the internet.
You can look at the post and contact the Webmaster behind the website and ask them to give a link to your website instead of a mention.
You can also find the competitors of your blog posts whenever they publish a blog post similar to your blog so that you can create a better resource from them and out rank them in search results for more traffic.
Or,
You can also search for your competitors keywords especially their website names that are getting mentioned on the internet and
understand why they are getting more mentions over yours so that you can implement that strategy on your website as well which is called spying on competitors.
This tool alone can save you a lot of time finding articles of your competitors by manually searching them on Google and on social media.
This is a free Chrome Extension from the moz which you can install and download on your desktop and whenever you search anything in Google by activating this extension on your browser
you can check the domain authority and page authority metrics of those pages ranking in Google top positions.
You can also check other important metrics like total number of backlinks and referring domains of those pages and website both in the Google search results page itself so that you can decide whether
you want to target this pages for backlinks or not and decide the keyword difficulty by looking at the da/pa metrics of those pages ranking in top 10 positions of Google.
By looking at the individual pages and their backlinks and referring domains you can also build backlinks from those pages who are linking to your competitors so that you can outrank your competition in Google search results.
This is a free tool through which you can check the domain authority and page authority of any website.
You can also check other important metrics of any domain name like spam score and trust flow using this tool.
When you are building backlinks to your website you don’t want to get backlinks from lower authority websites which don’t have a high and strong backlinks profile because you will not be getting any benefit from that as link juice and authority.
Using this free tool you can check the domain authority and other important metrics developed by moz and
other premium SEO tools like spam score and trust flow of any domain name before starting a link building campaign for that.
This tool alone can save you a lot of time finding the right websites with a strong backlink profile so that
you can build backlinks from those websites through guest posting or broken link building and get quality backlinks to your website from authoritative websites only.
If you have a local business and want to get more traffic from Google my business listing and local search engine marketing then
you should definitely consider using this tool because this is a freemium tool which can help you get more citations and track your citations.
The fact is that, As many as 46% of all Google searches are local & Over 50% of ‘near me’ searches result in a physical store visit.
Using this tool you can find new web directories where you can submit your website and local business to and get a citation from.
In order to use this tool you need to login to this tool and get an account of your local business with all important details filled and you can use this free tool for three searches every day with Limited access.
Just like how backlinks are important to be able to rank higher on Google, citations are equally important and are like backlinks to get more traffic from local search engine marketing on Google but for local businesses.
Canva is a freemium graphic design tool that you can use to create amazing graphic design posts like infographics and other types of posts like social media posts through simple drag and drop feature.
You can use canva to create infographic and other beautiful graphics and custom images for your website and you can use those images and visuals to get backlinks from other authority websites through Guestographic method.
There is also a premium version of this tool which costs around 10$/month and you can read my ultimate review of the Canva here.
This is one of the easiest ways to get backlinks from other authority websites in the long-term because creating,
adding high quality custom images on your website is a great way to get links when others find your visuals interesting, they can use you images and cite a link to your site as a source to avoid copyright infringement.
It is quite time consuming but definitely worth it.
11. Disavow.
Disavowing the backlinks is a common practice that all bloggers and webmasters use to protect the website from getting a manual action penalty from Google.
Using this tool you can create a file of all the links that you want to disavow and disown from your website so that you can either remove the manual action penalty or protect your website from letting anything like that happen in future.
After you create this file you can upload it in Google search console and let Google know that you don’t want these links to be taken into consideration for your website.
Important Note:
Disavowing backlinks is one of the tough tasks for many bloggers because there is always a risk of losing quality backlinks in the process but
it should not always be your go to solution if you found lots of spammy backlinks pointing to your website.
John Muller who is the senior web analyst of Google recently said that Google will ignore a lot of backlinks pointing instead of
penalising sites so he does not advise people to disavow backlinks which are appearing spammy to the Webmaster.
Google’s algorithms have become more smarter and better at understanding the links.
So I would not recommend you to disavow spammy backlinks from your link profile.
It doesn’t make a huge difference in your rankings and traffic overall and in most cases you will not get a panda penalty from Google as well.
So don’t worry and stress about spammy backlinks on your link profile, it is completely normal and natural.
HARO is an acronym for help a reporter out. We all know that building backlinks from highly authoritative media websites is one of the best ways to Boost Your rankings and get more traffic from Google.
Media Websites like Forbes,entrepreneur, mashable, Business Insider, New York Times, etc.
But it is quite hard to get backlinks from those websites.
Thankfully we have this freemium tool/service called HARO.
By registering yourself as a source with a free account.
You will get an email to your inbox 3 times a day from Monday to Friday.
emails of haro will look like this,
Whenever journalists on these media sites like entrepreneur, mashable, WEBmd want to cover a report they register themselves with HARO and
will be looking for sources and people who can give them information while writinng the report for those journalists.
Here is how emails look like,
When you get those emails to your inbox, if you have the right information and share it within the deadline time to the email,
you can get high quality backlinks from highly authoritative media websites like Business Insider and mashable, etc.
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Google search operators.
We all try creating content, doing SEO and link building only to rank high on Google for more traffic at the end of the day, isn’t it?
So if it is all about Google, why not use Google itself to rank higher in Google.
Yes, you read that right.
Google search engine is also a great tool to find and build amazing high quality backlink opportunities for your website.
For example if you have a website related to Digital marketing like I do and if you want to get backlinks to that website, you can find link building opportunities from various ways like,
- Guest posts.
- Resource pages.
- Link roundups.
For example in my case I have a digital marketing blog and if I want to write a guest post on other websites related to my industry.
I search something like this in Google to find relevant websites that accept guest posts on their website related to the Digital marketing niche.
Digital marketing”write for us”.
Digital marketing”contribute”.
Digital marketing”submit a post”.
Now Google will only show all the results which are related to the digital marketing industry and have a page on the website that accepts guest posts like write for us, or contribute sections.
I can select any one among those depending upon the domain authority and their backlinks profile and send a guest pitch and subsequently submit a guest post.
If I want to find resource pages then I would use these search operators,
Digital marketing”resources”
Digital marketing intitle:”resources”
Lastly,
If I want to find link roundups then I would search,
Digital marketing”link roundups”.
Using these search operators of Google you can find amazing link building opportunities for your website for absolutely free of cost.
These search operators are largely effective to find guest posting opportunities.
This is a freemium tool and also a Chrome extension that you can download on your desktop.
Using this tool you can find and collect email addresses and contact information of any website within a single click as long as you know the name of the website owner and
You can use this to find email addresses and contact information to contact the website owner for either a guest post request or for any other link building strategy like a broken link building.
You should only be using this tool unless and until you don’t find a contact form of a website because it is a freemium tool.
You can use this tool to find 50 verifications for free and you will have to upgrade to a premium plan for more searches.
This is a free Chrome extension that you can download on your desktop and using this tool you can check the broken links on any webpage on the Internet highlighted.
Using this tool you can check the broken links on any website and using those broken links you can build backlinks to your website through broken link building
by approaching the website owner and letting them know that they have broken links on the website and replace the broken links with any relevant blog post of yours by sending emails to the owner or contacting them from the contact form.
buzzSumo is a popular freemium social media engagement tool.
Most people use this tool only for content marketing and social media marketing purposes but you can also use this tool for link building strategy as well.
Let me explain how.
Using this tool you can check the top performing content related to industry depending upon the total number of social shares and number of backlinks it has.
When you get this kind of data you can work on creating content which works well and gets more traffic and more engagement from users on your website as well.
Apart from that, you can also find all the top influencers of your industry who have shared your competitors posts in the past on their social media handles.
By having this data you can reach out to those influencers to either share your website and articles on their social media profiles and to link out your website on their website or blog through link building strategies and outreach campaigns.
In the free plan you can get 10 searches per month with limited access to data and if you sign up for a premium plan or free trial you can search upto 100 searches or a 30 days to use this tool.
For unlimited data and access to this tool you will have to obviously upgrade to the premium plan which starts from $99 a month.
Unlike other tools mentioned in this list, Google sheets is a tool that doesn’t directly help you build backlinks.
But
This can help you organise and manage your link building campaign like for example if you started a link building campaign for your website then you can create a spreadsheet on this tool,
You can enter the websites, the URL of your guest post, anchor text, domain authority and page authority, etc metrics in different columns.
This tool can help you manage and organise your link building campaign effectively and make your work easy.
This is a free backlink checker tool.
Just like Ahrefs backlinks checker, you can also check the backlinks of any website with this tool but with Ahrefs you can only check top 100 backlinks but with this tool you can check top 300 backlinks.
You can also check other important things and backlink profiles of your website like total number of backlinks, total number of unique referring domains and, Your website’s overall Trust Flow and Citation Flow scores with this tool.
You can also see the anchor text and whether the backlink is do follow or not with this free tool.
I would also highly recommend you to use this tool to check backlinks of your competitors websites for free of cost if you want to build backlinks from your competitors best websites and
check what type of content is attracting many links so that you can create the same content on your website as well,
obviously you can also check your own link profile and link out to websites who are linking to you with the nofollow attribute, removed your links etc.
For more resources about link building you can read:
- Pros and cons of building backlinks.
- Backlinks quality versus quantity: which is great?
- Why not buy backlinks?
- How to build backlinks from edu sites?
- How to rank quickly on Google?
With that said let’s conclude the blog post.
Ending remarks;
There you go, these are all the best free link building tools.
Do comment down which tool you want to use for your link building campaign.
Share this blog post with your family and friends if you have found it helpful.
Sharing is caring.
I will catch you next time till then keep learning and keep growing.
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