Whether you have just created your own website for the first time or you’ve had one for quite a while, link building is absolutely essential. It is a great way to help improve search engine optimization, but it can be hard to keep up with due to link building continuously changing. 

You likely have enough on your plate without trying to keep up with building links too. It’s also important to keep in mind that running a website can already be expensive. 

While there are plenty of expensive SEO tools available for you to use, why not save a bit of money and stay within budget? Today, we’re going to talk a little bit about why link building is important, how it can benefit your website, and we’ll go over the top 10 free link building tools available today. 

Why Is Link Building Important?

A link is made up of four parts: the start of a link tag, a link referral location, anchor text, and closure of the link tag. It’s important to know these different parts to understand why link building is so important for the success of your website. 

Search engines will use links when crawling for new webpages. Showing up during a crawl will increase the number of people who see your website as an option on the results page. Continuing, links are also used when it comes to how your website will rank on a search engine results page. 

The higher your site ranks, the more traffic you get, which can make you more money. Link building is essentially important to help more and more people become aware of your website.

How Link Building Benefits Your Website

There are several amazing benefits that link building will bring to your website. Above, you read that using proper link building techniques can help your website rank higher in search engine results and show up during a website crawl. You will also receive traffic from when other websites use your website as an external link on one of their blogs. 

If these websites are high-quality or high-ranking, this will likely improve your ranking. When you build links correctly, your website will likely get indexed much quicker as well. It makes all of these things much easier to do than if you didn’t use links.

Top 10 Free Link Building Tools

After searching and testing out several different link building tools, I have landed on the top 10 results listed below. Let’s see what made the cut.

1. SEMrush

What Is It:

SEMrush is easily one of the most popular tools used for building links. It is considered an all-in-one marketing tool kit for professionals.

What It Does And Notable Features:

This tool allows you to utilize its link building analysis features. It is easy to use and backed by several popular companies including Quora, Disney, and eBay. They offer a seven-day free trial to allow you to give the tool a test drive. 

There are several notable features when it comes to SEMrush memberships. You will have access to tools such as social media insights, analysis of your competition, technical SEO audits, and help with keywords and how you manage them by using their Keyword Magic tool. You will also be able to easily monitor any online mentions of your company or brand. 

Another great feature they offer for paying members is an analytic report. This can help you learn the demographics of your website and see if you’re reaching your target audience. You can easily choose the type of project you’re working on to learn more about how SEMrush can help you with that specific project. 

Cost: 

Free Trial; Memberships range from $99.95 to $399.95

2. Majestic SEO

What Is It:

Many people use Majestic SEO as their go-to link building tool. You can easily access a historic index or a fresh index. Right from the home screen, you can simply type in a domain or URL to see your results.

What It Does And Notable Features:

This tool will allow you to easily analyze both internal and external links on every web page of your website. You can also see which URLs people are clicking on, which can help you change the ones that aren’t bringing in enough clicks. The tools that Majestic SEO offers do vary depending on which plan you’re paying for. 

They offer instant web-based link investigation to bring you all of the information you’re looking for in a matter of seconds. With Majestic SEO, you can find out what anchor text other websites are using when they are linking to your content. Lastly, you can find out which domains are bringing up your website when people search for keywords associated with your site. 

Cost: 

Free; Plan options ranging from $49.99 to $399.99 per month

3. BuzzStream

What Is It:

Coming in third is BuzzStream. As you can tell by the name, this is a great free link building tool that you can use and it was founded over a decade ago. This shows that it is a trusted and popular option when it comes to free link building tools. It is also used to help creators network with publishers and create outreach campaigns.

What It Does And Notable Features:

Their homepage offers a free website tour to give you an idea of what they have to offer. There are different plans available that you can pay for monthly. Each plan allows a specific number of people who can use the account and a specific amount of contacts. Each tier will give you all of the benefits of the previous tier(s) and more. 

With BuzzStream, you are able to easily look up and find out information about influencers you’re interested in working with. Once you reach out to them, you’ll be able to easily track your message with the “Open, Click, and Reply” tracking tool. Link monitoring is limited to a certain number per month based on which plan you have. 

On the low end, you’re able to monitor 1,000 links per month whereas on the high end, you can monitor 100,000 links per month. You can add different team members to your online campaigns and, lastly, create relationships with high authority websites to help with link building.

Cost: 

Free; Plans to start at $24 and go up to $999 per month

4. MozBar

What Is It:

MozBar is a Google Chrome extension that is free to use. It is incredibly easy to install right on your Google Chrome browser and is often used to help entrepreneurs learn more about competitors’ websites from just about anywhere.

What It Does And Notable Features:

Other than easily being able to build links, MozBar allows you to find and highlight keywords. You will be able to easily view keyword difficulty to help you score any search term. MozBar offers in-depth blog posts about each of the features they have and how you can benefit from using them (or check out this MozBar guide).

You can also separate backlinks by type including followed, external, no-followed, and internal. MozBar offers users a free 30-day trial to help them see what features may benefit their brand. 

Some of the well-known MozBar customers that you may be familiar with are Zillow, OtterBox, Aaron’s, and Alaska Airlines. Like many other free link building tools, MozBar allows you to check different page authorities without spending a penny. 

Cost: 

Free; $179 per month after the free 30-day trial

5. Link Explorer

What Is It:

Link Explorer, an upgrade to Open Site Explorer and a tool that offers more features, is another great option when it comes to free link building tools. It is from the same creator as Mozbar. It is designed to help content marketer’s create strategies to improve business, beat competitors, and boost sales. 

What It Does And Notable Features:

With this tool, you’ll be able to check domain authorities, establish lost and newly discovered links, look at the websites of your competitors, and apply new link building techniques. Link Explorer also makes it easier to connect with influencers in your specific field 

Moz took all of the issues people were facing with Open Site Explorer and created Link Explorer to help improve users experiences with the tool. You’ll be able to easily use the link comparison tool in Link Explorer to see the metrics via backlink profiles. Lastly, Link Explorer allows you to see an organized graph of both domain authority and page authority data. 

Cost: 

Moz Pro plans start at $79 per month

6. JustReachOut

What Is It:

Just Reach Out is a tool that is used by popular businesses such as Airbnb, HubSpot, and even Nickelodeon. It is designed for people looking to network with bloggers and writers. If you’re looking to get more people talking about your company, the product you sell, or the service you offer, Just Reach Out is a great option

What It Does And Notable Features:

On top of being able to help you find journalists, editors, and publishers, it will also help you with building links. When you network with high authority websites, you’ll be able to get high authority and powerful links for your website. All you have to do to use Just Reach Out is to send your business pitch via email to the professionals you’re interested in working with. 

They even provide you with email pitch templates and a strategy and action plan builder. Depending on which plan you go with, the features you have access to will vary. Each plan allows for a specific number of users ranging from just one of the cost-efficient plans, all the way up to five on the more expensive plan. 

Cost: 

Free, plans available ranging from $199 to $699 per month

7. Ninja Outreach

What Is It:

Ninja Outreach is a link building tool that is geared towards influencers. With that being said, there are several features to using this tool. Let’s see which features Ninja Outreach has for you.

What It Does And Notable Features:

Other than helping with link building, Ninja Outreach can help you find people to collaborate with on YouTube videos, projects, or podcasts. It can help you collect contact information, generate leads, and even cold emailing. 

Companies such as Walt Disney Pictures, Amazon, and Walmart trust Ninja Outreach. This tool allows you to find potential colleagues simply by searching a keyword relating to your niche. They offer double the influencer and marketing API compared to other link building tools. API stands for application programming interface and it essentially makes data work from a website to another platform, such as mobile app. There is a free trial available to give you the opportunity to see if Ninja Outreach is a good fit for you. 

This tool is one of my favorites out of the 10 on this list. It helps you create powerful backlinks, promote your content, and even helps with social media prospecting. It’s an all-in-one tool that every entrepreneur should use.

Cost: 

Free trial; two plans available at $49 and $149 per month billed annually

8. Google Search Console

What Is It:

Google Search Console is one of the most popular options when it comes to free link building tools. It is packed with a ton of helpful information that can help improve your website’s search engine optimization ranking.

What It Does And Notable Features:

Google Search Console has several features that correlate to building links. It will collect information including sitemap indexes, internal link structures, and even external links to your site. You can also easily monitor, test, and track your AMP pages using Google Search Console. AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. Google uses this term when referencing a faster mobile experience for users. 

When Google Search Console collects external links, you can use these to see which links are actually bringing traffic to your page. This can be incredibly beneficial and help you see which links aren’t bringing traffic in and then you can change them to improve your website overall. They provide customized reports to make it as easy as possible for website owners to test and improve the mobile version of their website. 

Another thing to note is that with Google Search Console you’ll be able to view and fix several other SEO problems that your website may be having. Whether you’re needing to build the links or not, this is a tool that every website owner should utilize.

Cost: 

Free

9. Check My Links

What Is It:

Check My Links is an extension of Google Chrome. It is used as a gateway to help you find link building opportunities within your website.

What It Does And Notable Features:

For starters, you can easily install it for free right on your Google Chrome browser. The extension does a handful of things that will help you when it comes to building links. For starters, you will notice a variety of red and green highlighted words on your website or blog page. The red color is to indicate broken links, while the green shows links that are working well.

You can use the Google Chrome extension to easily find links that are broken on high authority websites or web pages. If you’re worried about it the internal links on your site, this free extension will quickly check to see if there are any broken internal or external links. You will be able to easily highlight and copy all the bad links Check My Links finds and add them to your clipboard to prevent using them in the future.

Because this is an extension, it is continuously updated to bring users the best experience they can get. 

Cost: 

Free

10. Google Analytics

What Is It:

You may be wondering why Google Analytics is on this list if it isn’t solely a link building tool. Well, Google Analytics is a must for every website owner and it can help you create backlinks and utilize keywords to improve your link building.

What It Does And Notable Features:

Google Analytics will research keywords that relate to your website to improve how your website ranks on search engine results. The same keywords that it finds can be used when building links. Google allows you to see insights that aren’t available on other search engines. With an average of two trillion searches conducted every year, it may be important to use a Google link-building tool.

With Google Analytics, you are able to easily see the ends and outs of your website. What is successful and what isn’t will be shown to help you improve your site. You’ll be able to see things such as the general location of your website traffic, the browser they use to visit your website, and other demographic information.

Cost: 

Free

Bottom Line

Now that you’ve read in-depth reviews about the top 10 link building tools available today, I hope you find a tool that works perfectly for you. Whether you’re looking for something that only provides help with building links or something like Google Analytics that has several other features, you now have a variety of options to choose from. 

Remember that you can build links by having the right keywords and networking with high authority websites.