Infographics continue to be insanely popular.

In 2012, the hashtag #infographic was shared 56,765 times on Twitter. A few experts back then believed it was just a fad that would self-destruct in a couple of years. 

Fast forward to today, infographics are more popular and stronger than ever.

According to HubSpot, infographics are liked and shared on social media 3x more than any other type of content.

There is a reason why this is the case.

Eye-tracking studies have shown internet readers pay close attention to information-carrying images. And according to Search Engine Journal, an infographic is 30 times more likely to be read than a text article.

And, if you need more convincing, this article by SEJ makes a compelling argument for the inclusion of infographics and why they deliver great results for businesses.

Infographics are the perfect combination of visuals and text. Most infographics are visually appealing, often containing interesting information about a certain topic that readers can easily skim through. 

More importantly, good infographics have the ability to make your content go viral, generate tons of high-quality backlinks, and improve your site’s overall SEO.

Infographics that go viral have these 3 elements in common:

• Amazing design. First and foremost, infographics that go viral are visually-appealing and are professionally designed.
• Well-researched statistics. A good infographic, in most cases, contains interesting statistics or facts on a given topic.
• Promotion and outreach. The above two elements are mostly useless if the infographic is not promoted well. Therefore, social media promotion and email outreach are just as important in order to make your infographic go viral.

In this article, I’ll show you how you can easily design an infographic on your own, promote that infographic effectively, and generate tons of high-quality backlinks for that infographic.

Ready? Let’s get started!

Side note: For even more in-depth information on building backlinks through infographics, we’ve created a whole eBook on the subject. Download it here for free.

Designing Your First Infographic

Before finalizing on a topic for your infographic, it’s important to do some keyword research and find out what topics are trending in your niche.

For instance:

If you’re running a blog on meditation, then you can start by doing a Google image search on “meditation infographics” to see what kind of infographics already exist.

Or…

You could use BuzzSumo to discover some of the infographics that have gone viral on social media.

Just type in the keywords ‘meditation infographic’ in the search bar and check out the infographics that have gone viral in the past year.

Pay special attention to ‘Pinterest shares’ because this is where infographics are the most popular.

And finally, you can use Pinterest itself to find interesting and trending infographics. You’ll find a deluge of infographics here on practically any topic.

Check out the stats (total number of pins) of these infographics to gauge their popularity.

With the above three methods, you’ll find tons of infographics that are engaging and popular on social media.

Open a spreadsheet and note down each of the topics you find interesting. List down at least 10 topics that you think you can design an infographic on.

Once you zero-in on a topic you can design an infographic on, it’s time to start creating your own version of it.

But remember:

There’s no point wasting your time creating an infographic that is not as good as the original one. Your aim here is to create an infographic that is better in every way possible — better design, better information, and more interesting.

Bonus Tip: Need some more inspiration? Check out these 62 best infographics, a list curated by Creative Bloq.

How to Design a Good Infographic

Not all infographics are created equal.

If you want your infographic to go viral and get tons of authoritative backlinks, you’ve got to spend a considerable amount of time designing an infographic that is share-worthy!

While there are several sites that can now help you design your first infographic, I recommend the following resources:

1. Canva – Canva has several free pre-designed infographic templates to choose from and almost each one of them is professionally designed.

2. Piktochart – You can create high-quality infographics using Piktochart’s easy-to-use infographic maker.

While you may have to upgrade to one of their paid plans to get access to premium infographic templates, the free plan offers a few decent templates you can start with to familiarize yourself with the tool.

3. Venngage Infographics – Venngage will make you become a design wiz in a few clicks. With more than 500 professionally designed infographic templates for you to edit, Venngage is definitely an easy-to-use infographic maker you should consider.

4. Fiverr – Want to outsource the design of your infographic? Fiverr is your best bet!

Fiverr has many designers who can help you design a good infographic. While you can get a decent infographic designed for $5, you may have to spend a little more to get a high-quality infographic.

If you have a bigger budget, you can hire designers from sites such as Upwork, Growth Geeks, or my personal favorite, Design Pickle.

Promoting Your Infographic (and Generating High-Quality Backlinks)

Stand-alone infographics rarely perform well in search engines.

Therefore, spend some time creating good, engaging content with your infographic. This will increase the chances of your article being noticed by search engines and help you rank higher in SERPs.

You can either have the infographic at the start of the article or at the end.

Once your infographic is published, it’s time to promote it.

Follow these steps below:

Step 1. Make Your Infographic Easily Shareable with Sumo’s Image Sharer Plugin

It goes without saying that your visitors should be able to share your infographic on social media easily.

I recommend you install Image Sharer plugin by Sumo.

With this free WordPress plugin, when someone moves their cursor over the infographic, they’ll be shown social media sharing buttons, as shown in the screenshot below, making it super easy for them to share your infographic with their network.

Step 2. Generate an Embed Code for your Infographic

By generating an embed code for your infographic, you make it easier for others to share and embed your infographic onto their own site.

You can do this by using Siege Media’s Embed Code Generator.

But here’s the best part…

Every time someone includes your infographic in their content, you get an attribution. And just like that, you get a high-quality backlink.

Step 3. Submit your Infographic to Infographic Submission Sites

There are tons of infographic submission sites where you can submit your infographic for free or for a small fee. Here are just a few of the popular ones:

• Graphs.net (DA – 55)
• Infographic Plaza (DA – 32)
• InfographicBee (DA – 27)
• Visual.ly (DA – 78)
• Cool Infographics (DA – 60)
• Infographic Journal (DA – 55)
• Submit Infographics (DA – 46)
• Only Infographic (DA – 34)

Here’s the full list of 40 infographic submission sites where you can promote your infographic and generate contextual backlinks.

Step 4. Promote Your Infographic on Reddit

Infographics are quite popular on Reddit. There is even a subreddit dedicated to infographics with 160,000+ members. You can share your infographic here and get tons of upvotes.

You can find other smaller infographic-dedicated subreddits as well. Just make sure you read the submission guidelines of each subreddit before sharing your infographic.

Pro Tip: Check out these 25 best marketing subreddits where you can promote your infographics + other marketing content.

Step 5. Try the Guestographic Link Building Method

The guestographic link building method, spearheaded by Brian Dean, is one of the most popular and scalable white hat link building methods at the moment.

To learn this method fully, I’d urge you to check out this article by Brian Dean.

In short, the guestographic link building method goes something like this:

• Publish a high-quality infographic
• Find other interesting sites that write on the same topic
• Send them your infographic
• Offer them unique content
• Get your contextual backlinks

You can use a tool like Ninja Outreach or BuzzSumo to find influencers in your niche. Once you have a list of people you can reach out to, send them an email using the script below:

When people reply to your email showing interest, you share the infographic with them and offer to write a short 150-300 word introduction if they are willing to share the infographic on their site.

And just like that, you have an authoritative, contextual backlink.

Once again, a shoutout to Brian Dean for sharing this excellent link building tactic.

The key points in this article have been highlighted in this infographic – A Beginner’s Roadmap to Building High-Quality Backlinks with Infographics.

Over to You

Link building is one of the most challenging aspects of SEO.

Well-designed, informative infographics can help you get a boatload of backlinks, helping you rank high in search engine rankings. Just follow the steps outlined in this article to create and promote a killer infographic.

It’s totally worth the time and effort.

Hope you found this article useful. Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

If you liked this article, please share it on Twitter using the link below:

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on April 4, 2017 and has been updated regularly since then for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

Related Articles

• 26 Best Google Chrome Extensions for SEO
• Image SEO: 7 Actionable Tips to Supercharge Your Organic Traffic
• How to Get High-Quality Backlinks (25 Proven Techniques)
• 40 Infographic Submission Sites to Promote Your Infographic (and Get Backlinks)
• SEO Tools Showdown: Semrush vs Ahrefs vs Moz Pro vs SpyFu

The post How to Get High Quality Backlinks with Infographics (and Boost Your SEO) appeared first on 99signals.

When it comes to backlink analysis, the tool you can always count on is Ahrefs.

Headquartered in Singapore with its roots in Ukraine, Ahrefs believes in the lean startup model with this manifesto: “First do it, then do it right, then do it better.”

Launched in 2011, Ahrefs’ index is updated with fresh backlinks every 15 minutes, and the crawler processes up to 6 billion pages a day.

Lots of marketing and SEO pundits trust Ahrefs as their go-to backlink analysis tool. This is because of its index size and the accuracy with which it presents the data.

But contrary to popular opinion, Ahrefs is more than just a backlink analysis tool.

In the last few years, the team behind Ahrefs has worked diligently to introduce new features and also innovate the existing ones. One example of this can be found in the continuous improvement to its flagship keyword research tool, Keywords Explorer.

So in this Ahrefs review, I’ll not just examine the tool’s backlink analysis capabilities, but also explore its various SEO and content marketing features, and evaluate other factors such as pricing, customer support, ease of use, and overall online sentiment around the product.

Finally, I’ll provide a quick overview of how Ahrefs compares with three of its biggest competitors: Semrush, Moz, and SE Ranking.

Let’s get started.

Please feel free to jump to any section of this Ahrefs review using the links in this TOC:

Ahrefs Pricing

All good things come at a price. Ahrefs is no exception. The prices start from $99/month or $82/month if you choose to pay annually.

Ahrefs offers four monthly pricing plans:

• Lite – $99/month
• Standard – $179/month
• Advanced – $399/month
• Agency – $999/month

The table below contains the features and limitations of each plan:

If you’d like to use Ahrefs to manage just one blog, then the Lite plan should be sufficient for your needs.

If you’re running multiple blogs, then the limitations of the Lite plan may hold you back. In that case, upgrade to the Standard plan which allows you to track more keywords and backlinks.

And if you run multiple websites or manage clients’ websites at your agency, then you’ll need to upgrade to Advanced or Agency plan depending on your requirements.

Ahrefs Review: Key Features

Ahrefs has built a reputation over the past few years as a reliable backlink analysis and competitor research tool. But in the recent past, Ahrefs has launched new features and revamped existing ones to be a full-fledged SEO and content marketing tool.

So let’s explore all these features in detail, starting with the Ahrefs dashboard.

Once you login to your Ahrefs account, you’ll be prompted to create a new project and add your domain.

Next, you’ll be asked to enter the keywords, locations, and the competitor websites you’d like Ahrefs to track.

You can enter up to 5 competitor websites. Ahrefs makes this task easier by crawling your website and suggesting the right keywords and competitors for your website.

Next, you’ll be taken to Ahrefs’ dashboard which presents you with all the vital stats of your site, including Ahrefs rank, domain rating, backlinks, referring domains, organic keywords, and the progress of your tracked keywords in search engines.

Depending on your plan, you’ll have a limit on the number of projects you can add to your Ahrefs account. The Lite plan allows you to add up to 3 projects.

#1 Site Explorer

Site Explorer gives you an in-depth look at the organic search traffic and backlink profile of any website or URL. A large portion of your time on Ahrefs will be spent on Site Explorer. You can either generate data on your own site or your competitors’ sites via Site Explorer.

To get started, click on Site Explorer and type any URL into the search box. Ahrefs will give you an overview of the site.

From here, you can view a website’s total number of backlinks, organic keywords, organic traffic for those keywords, paid keywords, and also see important SEO metrics such as URL rating, domain rating, and Ahrefs rank.

When you scroll down, you’ll find other useful information such as:

• Referring domains and pages pointing to your website
• New and lost referring domains
• New and lost backlinks
• CTLDs (Country Top Level Domains) distribution
• Anchors cloud, anchor phrases and terms

Site Explorer is a great way to start using Ahrefs as it presents a quick analysis of your site. To unleash the true potential of Site Explorer, however, you’ll need to use other features discussed here below.

Backlinks

This is where the real fun begins. From Site Explorer, you can access a report that lists all the sites linking to your target website or URL. You can filter down this data by Link Type (DoFollow, NoFollow, Redirect, etc.), Platforms (Blogs, Wiki, Comment Systems, etc.), and Languages.

You can view the new/lost/broken backlinks and referring domains of a site, view all its anchors, and top referring content (most popular content of your target website based on the number of social shares).

Ahrefs provides you with an option to export all this data onto a CSV or PDF file.

Organic Keywords

This report will show you all the keywords that a target website or URL ranks for in the top 100 organic search results. You’ll be able to see:

• New Keywords – A report that shows if a keyword moved to a higher “group” since last week. There are 3 “groups”: rank 1­-3, rank 4­-10, rank 11-­50.
• Movements – A report that shows the history of all ranking movements that Ahrefs’ bots have noticed for a target website or URL.
• Top Pages – A report that ranks the pages of a target website based on how much organic search traffic they bring.

Best Pages

Ahrefs allows you to view the pages of a target website based on their total number of backlinks.

In this section, you’ll be able to view a site’s best pages by number of backlinks, best pages by links’ growth, best pages by total number of social shares, and top content by total number of shares.

Paid Search Data

Ahrefs is a reliable PPC tool as well as it displays paid search insights that can really help you plan your PPC ads. This section of Site Explorer helps you unveil your competitors’ paid search keywords and ad copies.

You’ll be able to view all the keywords that a site ranks for in paid search results. You can also view a preview of the ads as seen in paid search results and finally, you’ll be able to see the top landing pages that receive the most paid search traffic.

All this data can be exported onto a CSV file.

#2 Rank Tracker

The Rank Tracker feature on Ahrefs helps you keep track of a list of target keywords. Remember the keywords you entered while creating a new project on Ahrefs? This is where you can track the progress of those keywords in SERPs.

Ahrefs lets you track 500 keywords with the Lite plan and 1500 keywords with the Standard plan.​

In addition to this, you can also see how your rankings for a particular keyword progress over time through position history charts. Ahrefs also allows you to track your rankings in multiple locations (country level) both for desktop and mobile devices.

You can also enable Rank Tracker Notification which will allow Ahrefs to send you a weekly or monthly report of your rankings via email. Click on ‘Notification Settings’ to enable Rank Tracker Notification.

Rank Tracker Notification is particularly useful if you manage a lot of sites or offer SEO services.

#3 Disavow Links

Spammy links pointing to your site can really affect your search rankings. As such, you should monitor your backlink profile on a regular basis to identify any suspicious links to your site and disavow them from time to time.

Ahrefs makes this task easier by giving you an option to add links to your disavow list while browsing Site Explorer reports.

The other option is to add disavow links manually in this format:

Once the disavow links have been added to the list, you can export the file to upload it to Google Search Console.

#4 Ahrefs Alerts

By setting up alerts for your domain or keywords, you ensure that you never miss another backlink or mention of your site. Ahrefs sends you an email every time you lose or gain a backlink and will also notify you when someone mentions your website or brand name.

To set these alerts, click on ‘Alerts’ from the main menu. From here you can set up three types of alerts:

• Backlinks Alerts
• New Keywords Alerts
• Mention Alerts

Click on ‘New Alert’ for each of these to activate Ahrefs Alerts.

You can also spy on your competitors by setting up alerts for your competitors’ websites and businesses as well.

#5 Domain Comparison

Ahrefs lets you compare 5 domains side-by-side.

The results displayed include a comparison of referring domains and IPs, backlinks, backlink types (dofollow vs nofollow), and graphs of changes in each domain.

#6 Keywords Explorer

In addition to analyzing backlinks, Ahrefs is also a powerful keyword research tool. Keywords Explorer can help you generate tons of keyword ideas with its database of over 3 billion keywords.

With Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer, you can do the following:

• Discover new keyword ideas – With the latest update, Ahrefs provides you with massive amounts of keyword ideas, including phrase match, having same terms, search suggestions, and more.
• “Clicks” metric – In addition to search volume for keywords, you also get to see clickstream data, allowing you to calculate search volumes more accurately.
• Keyword Lists – Once you come across some new keyword ideas, you can now save them into a list for future reference. A huge time saver if you’re doing keyword research for multiple projects.
• Keyword Difficulty Score – Ahrefs’ Keyword Difficulty (KD) score is an estimation of how hard it would be to rank on the 1st page of Google organic search for a given keyword. It is measured on a scale of 1 to 100 (low difficulty to high difficulty).
• SERP overview & Positions History — Ahrefs’ new SERP overview report brings all the core SEO metrics together to help you make educated decisions about the actual difficulty of a given SERP.

#7 Content Explorer

Content Explorer helps you find the most shared content for any topic. Type any topic into the search bar and Ahrefs will show you the most popular content for the topic with details on total social shares, domain rating, referring domains, and the organic traffic it generates.

You can filter down the results by publish date, languages, number of shares, domain rating, referring domains, organic traffic, and word count.

You can also find out who tweeted the articles by clicking on the ‘Who tweeted’ button. This data can be exported onto a CSV file which you can use late for outreach purposes.

#8 Site Audit

Site Audit is Ahrefs’ weakest link. This is despite the fact that the company has made significant improvements to the tool since its launch.

The biggest problem with the Site Audit tool is that it takes way too long for Ahrefs to crawl all the pages on your site and return with a report. Even if your site has less than 1000 pages to crawl, Ahrefs will take well over 2 hours to generate an audit report.

Now, when a tool takes this long to generate an audit report, you would at least expect a comprehensive report that identifies the important technical SEO loopholes on your site. Sadly, that’s not the case.

In my experience, I’ve seen Ahrefs toss out health scores of over 90% for sites that were plagued with critical SEO errors.

For that reason, it’s best if you Ahrefs’ Site Audit tool to identify and fix only the most basic SEO errors on your site.

Ahrefs Review: Ease of Use

Ahrefs’ user interface is clean and organized. This makes the tool very easy to use, an impressive achievement considering the vast amount of data and features the tool offers.

The team behind Ahrefs has worked really hard to create a platform that’s immensely user-friendly not just for beginners, but advanced users too who are migrating from other SEO platforms.

Ahrefs Review: Customer Support

Ahrefs provides customer support via phone, chat, and email. You can also search for questions at their help center to see if they’ve already been addressed by the team before.

They don’t organize webinars like Semrush, but their blog is highly resourceful with tons of blog posts that you can read to sharpen your SEO skills. You can also follow the Ahrefs YouTube channel, where they upload in-depth SEO and digital marketing tutorials to help you achieve higher search rankings.

Here are some of the top blog posts we highly recommend you read:

• The Beginner’s Guide to Link Building
• On-Page SEO: Complete Beginner’s Guide
• Keyword Difficulty: How to Determine Your Chances of Ranking in Google

Ahrefs Review: User Reviews and Ratings

Ahrefs has garnered quite a reputation among professional bloggers and marketing pundits in the last few years. The tool is a part of most marketers’ must-have SEO tools and it’s easy to understand why that’s the case.

The same is the case with online review sites such as G2, TrustRadius, and Capterra. Here’s how Ahrefs is rated on these sites:

• G2Crowd – 4.6/5 (280 reviews)
• TrustRadius – 8.9/10 (189 reviews)
• Capterra – 4.8/5 (278 reviews)

Most reviews commend the accuracy of data obtained from Ahrefs and its backlink analysis features while a few others complain about the steep monthly subscription price of the tool.

Ahrefs does not have as many reviews as some of the other SEO tools such as Semrush and Moz. This may be due to the fact that Ahrefs is a relatively new tool compared to Moz and Semrush.

How Ahrefs Compares with Other SEO Tools

In this section, I’ll quickly compare Ahrefs with three of its biggest rivals: Semrush, Moz, and SE Ranking.

Ahrefs vs Semrush: Is Ahrefs Better?

When it comes to backlink analysis, Ahrefs is definitely better than Semrush. Although Semrush has a larger link index, Ahrefs’ backlink data is more in-depth and accurate.

Ahrefs also has an edge over Semrush in terms of user interface. Ahrefs has a clean and polished UI which makes it easier to obtain the information you need.

But Semrush is better in all other aspects, including keyword research, competitor analysis, technical SEO audit, and content marketing.

Semrush is the most comprehensive SEO tool on the market. It helps you scale up your SEO efforts and drive results faster than any other tool out there.

That said, both Ahrefs and Semrush are exceptional tools. If you have the budget, I’d highly recommend you subscribe to both these tools.

For a more in-depth analysis of these two tools, check out my Semrush vs Ahrefs comparison post.

Below is a breakdown of how Ahrefs compares to Semrush on key parameters:

Ahrefs vs Moz: Which is Better?

Ahrefs is most definitely better. Since Rand Fishkin’s departure from Moz, things have gone from bad to worse at Moz.

Both tools are similarly priced, but that’s where the similarities end. From keyword research to backlink analysis to competitor analysis, Ahrefs is simply faster and better. Not to mention, Ahrefs’ UI is smoother and more user-friendly than Moz’s cluttered, confusing mess of an interface.

Ahrefs vs SE Ranking: Is Ahrefs Better than SE Ranking?

Once again, Ahrefs offers better backlink analysis features than SE Ranking. It also has a more accurate and up-to-date rank tracker. But when it comes to other essential SEO features like keyword research and site audit, SE Ranking is better. SE Ranking also has more value-added features.

Furthermore, SE Ranking is more economically priced than Ahrefs. SE Ranking’s basic plan is $60 cheaper than Ahrefs’ basic plan. So if you’re on a shoestring budget, SE Ranking will offer more bang for your buck.

But if you can afford to shell out more money for an SEO software, Ahrefs’ comprehensive backlink analysis and position tracking features justify the steep price. If your objective is to scale up your link building efforts, you need a tool like Ahrefs by your side.

For a more in-depth analysis, check out my Semrush vs SE Ranking comparison post.

Below is a breakdown of how Ahrefs compares to SE Ranking on key parameters:

Ahrefs Review: Final Verdict

Ahrefs has built a brand around its backlink checker capability because of the sheer depth of its index, but once you start using the tool, you realize that it is much more than a backlink analysis tool. From Rank Tracker to Keywords Explorer, Ahrefs provides quality data that can be invaluable to your website.

If you’re serious about SEO and content marketing, this is a must-have tool in your marketing toolkit.

Side note: If you’d like to make the best use of your Ahrefs subscription, do check out this insanely in-depth guide on Ahrefs by Nathan Gotch at Gotch SEO. 

If you liked this review, please share it on Twitter using the link below:

Editor’s Note: This Ahrefs review was originally published on 30 June 2017 and has been updated regularly since then for relevance and comprehensiveness.

Related Articles

• Semrush vs Ahrefs: Which SEO Tool is Better?
• 5 Best Ahrefs Alternatives You Should Consider
• Semrush Review: The Best Tool to Improve Your SEO and PPC
• 8 Best Keyword Research Tools to Boost Your SEO
• Serpstat Review: The Ultimate SEO & PPC Tool for Bloggers

The post Ahrefs Review: More Than Just an SEO Backlink Analysis Tool appeared first on 99signals.

Despite the changing landscape of SEO, generating high-quality backlinks for your website has never been more important. Since the Penguin algorithm updates, SEOs have had to resort to more nuanced techniques to gain backlinks.

Some of these methods include broken link building, influencer marketing, infographic marketing, and so on.

To implement these methods successfully, you need reliable link building tools by your side.

Here are the 8 best link building tools you should use to build high-quality, authoritative backlinks.

8 Best Link Building Tools to Improve Search Rankings

#1 Ahrefs

Ahrefs has the largest and most accurate database of live backlinks. Considered the best link building tool by many SEO experts, Ahrefs’ Site Explorer feature provides an in-depth look at a site’s backlinks, including new, lost, and broken links. This is incredibly useful if you’re planning to spy on your competitors’ backlink profile and want an inside peek into the sites your competitors are generating their backlinks from.

You can also set up alerts for new/lost backlinks for any domain via Ahrefs Alerts, so that you are always aware of the new or lost backlinks on your own site as well as your competitors’ sites. You’ll receive an email from Ahrefs whenever you or your competitor receives or loses a backlink.

Ahrefs also shows you the backlink strength of each backlink through a metric called Domain Rating, similar to Domain Authority used by Moz. If you’re aiming to build authoritative backlinks, ensure that the domain rating of the websites you’re targeting is greater than 45. 

Price: Starts from $99/month

Recommended reading: Ahrefs Review: More Than Just an SEO Backlink Analysis Tool

#2 Ninja Outreach

Ninja Outreach is one of the most popular blogger outreach tools in the market, helping you connect with influencers and bloggers to get those authoritative backlinks.

Here’s what you get with Ninja Outreach:

• Outreach Templates: Ninja Outreach provides you tons of outreach templates which you can customize to ensure that your message is personalized.
• Email Finder: Email Finder feature allows you to find anyone’s email address just by giving a search for the specific domain (as shown below):

• Automate Outreach and Check Email Stats: You can automate your email sends and track stats such as open rate, click-through rate, and reply rate.

Price: Starts from $52/month

Sign up for a 14-day unlimited free trial here

#3 SEMrush

While not in the same league as Ahrefs when it comes to backlink analysis, SEMrush is still a powerful SEO tool that you can use for link building alongside other SEO activities.

With SEMrush‘s backlink checker, you can:

• Conduct a deep link analysis
• Understand referring domains’ authority
• Check backlinks’ types
• Spot your links’ geolocation

Aside from using the tool’s backlink analysis feature, you can also find new link building opportunities with the ‘SEO Ideas’ feature.

Using SEO Ideas, you can analyze each page on your website and view instant actionable SEO tips to optimize these pages, including the sites you should target for backlinks to rank higher in SERPs.

Price: Starts from $99.95/month (Get 1-month free access to SEMrush Pro)

For more info on SEMrush, check out our SEMrush review here.

#4 Majestic SEO

Playing itself up as “the largest link intelligence database in the world”, Majestic SEO helps you uncover your competitors’ link profile, allowing you to identify new link building opportunities for your site.

Type any URL into the search box to access the following information:

• External Backlinks
• Referring Domains
• Referring IPs
• Referring Subnets
• Backlink History
• Backlink Breakdown
• Anchor Text

Price: Starts from $49.99/month

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#5 Google Search Console

Google Search Console is not just free, but it’s also one of the most accurate tools for link building.

Once you’ve added your site to Google Search Console, go to ‘Links to Your Site’ section to access information like:

• Who links the most
• Your most linked content
• How your data is linked

You can use this information to get backlinks from similar websites and find out which is the most linked page on your website. You can also view the anchor text on your website. All these reports can be downloaded. Download these link reports once a month to compare it to future reports.

Price: Free

#6 Serpstat

Serpstat is yet another SEO tool which allows you to view your site’s as well as your competitors’ backlink profile. Serpstat’s Backlink Analysis feature allows you to uncover your competition’s link building strategies and highlights new sources you can tap into to build new backlinks.

Type any URL into the search box to access the following information:

• Referring Domains
• Referring Pages
• Referring IPs
• Referring Subnets
• New/Lost Backlinks
• Anchors
• Top Pages

Use this information to generate backlinks for your site using any of the link building techniques featured in this article.

Price: Starts from $19/month

Need more info about this tool? Check out our Serpstat review here.

#7 Moz Open Site Explorer

Open Site Explorer developed by Moz allows you to see important backlink metrics of any site, including the site’s domain authority, top pages by number of backlinks, anchor text, spam analysis, and more.

If you’re a Moz Pro user, you get full access to Open Site Explorer where you can unlock the Link Opportunities feature to discover new link building tips from Moz.

Price: Starts from $99/month

Related: SEO Tools Showdown: SEMrush vs Ahrefs vs Moz Pro vs SpyFu

#8 BuzzSumo

Aside from helping you find the most popular content in any niche, BuzzSumo also helps you connect with influencers and bloggers. Using BuzzSumo’s influencer search, you can find influencers in your niche and filter by factors such as page authority, domain authority, retweet ratio, average retweets, and so on.

Once you’ve identified the influencers, you can save them to your BuzzSumo outreach list which can be imported into your outreach software’s contact database.

When combined with a blogger outreach tool like Ninja Outreach, BuzzSumo becomes a powerful link building tool.

Price: Starts from $99/month

Conclusion

Link building is an important aspect of SEO, but make sure you also give equal importance to other factors such as on-page SEO and technical SEO.

You can use these tools to build high-quality backlinks discussed in detail in these articles below:

• 25 Proven Ways to Get High-Quality Backlinks
• How to Get High-Quality Backlinks with Infographics (and Boost Your SEO)
• How to Create Shareable Content: 7 Proven Tactics

Do you agree with our list of must-have link building tools? Let us know in the comments section.

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The post Link Building for SEO: 8 Best Link Building Tools to Improve Rankings appeared first on 99signals.

In 2016 during a

In addition to RankBrain (Google’s artificial intelligence system), Lipattsev stated the other top two factors were: “Content and links pointing to your site.”

This should come as no surprise for those acquainted with SEO. It’s ancient knowledge that building quality backlinks is essential if you want to improve your site’s ranking for target keywords.

In the past, black hat SEO tactics were widely deployed to game Google’s algorithm and artificially inflate rankings. Fast forward to today, such tactics are no longer viable – seeking to exploit loopholes in Google’s algorithm will quickly get you penalized!

Fortunately, for those looking to build quality backlinks while remaining in Google’s good books, there are plenty of link building tools at your disposal.

Here are 5 essential link building tools used by SEO experts around the world that will dramatically improve your link building endeavors.

5 Best Link Building Tools

1. Ahrefs

If you’re taking link building seriously, Ahrefs should be in your arsenal. It has a gigantic link index database (updated daily), comprehensive backlink analysis tools, and a rapidly increasing number of content marketing functions. 

Site Explorer is the key feature of Ahrefs. It allows you to enter a URL and immediately view its inbound links.

Ahrefs gathers its data using a crawler, similar to Googlebot. Unlike other backlink checkers, Ahrefs has an enormous link index database and breaks down the data in extraordinary ways.

Being able to view backlinks by type, referring IPs and anchor text gives excellent insight into the backlink profiles and link building strategies of your competitors.

Regularly checking the backlink profile of your own site is important, too.

Ahrefs Alerts notifies you whenever you gain a backlink, lose a backlink, and get mentioned on the web. This enables you to build relationships with those mentioning your site, as well as determine which aspects of your link building strategy are effective and which you need to fine-tune.

Ahrefs also has a useful Content Explorer tool, which allows you to see what pieces of content are receiving the most engagement in a specific niche. This can help lead your own content marketing strategy and allow you to create content that resonates with your target demographic.

Additionally, the Ahrefs blog is a must-read! Its numerous articles provide highly actionable advice on how to boost your presence online and run successful link building campaigns.

2. Majestic

With the largest link index database in the world, Majestic is incredibly convenient. As with Ahrefs, you can break down each website’s links in detail (however, the way the data is presented is not popular with everyone).

This information is great for analyzing your main competitors, viewing their backlink profiles, and discovering new link building opportunities.

You can also use Majestic to determine the efficacy of your own link building strategies. After identifying the top domains linking to your site, you can build relationships with them to ensure that the links stay live and encourage them to give you more links.

You can also identify which pages on your site are receiving the most inbound links, so you know to promote them during your outreach link building campaigns.

3. BuzzStream

BuzzStream is a fantastic outreach management platform that enables you to manage relationships with sites that you want to generate links from.

Essentially, it’s a CRM system for link building with a variety of useful functions, including finding contact information, tracking social media, monitoring backlinks, and tracking outreach conversions.

BuzzStream provides useful statistics regarding the success of your email outreach campaigns, which helps you create more impactful email copy.

Researching backlink prospects, sending them emails, and managing their responses is infinitely easier when using a system like BuzzStream (compared to doing it manually with a spreadsheet and email account).

The ability to delegate tasks to team members is also crucial for those looking to scale their link building efforts. This makes outreach management much more efficient, particularly for remote teams where tasks are often assigned by email, and confusion over responsibilities can rapidly escalate.

4. LinkResearchTools

This is a highly comprehensive backlink analysis tool.

Among many of the metrics available in this tool is link velocity trend (LVT). This describes the speed of link growth to a domain, often measured in new links per month.

LVT helps you to determine which domains are building their link profiles naturally, and which may be using underhanded tactics to accumulate new links. An extremely negative LVT score indicates that the web has lost interest with the domain or page.

LVT is an important signal in the key feature of LinkResearchTools: Link Detox.

With Link Detox, you can scan your backlinks and identify suspicious links that can put you at risk of a penalty by Google. This is the only tool on the market that enables you to audit websites for toxic links, making it a crucial asset in your link building arsenal.

5. Buzzsumo

For content marketers looking to accumulate more backlinks, Buzzsumo is incredibly useful. The tool lets you see the types of content that generate engagement in your specific industry.

With these insights, you can produce content on similar topics that people are sure to resonate with (and link to).

BuzzSumo is also a great asset for influencer marketing. BuzzSumo has an influencer section where you can enter specific keywords and find out who is writing about specific topics.

You can also view the types of content these influencers have shared and receive updates every time they post or share new content. This information will help you create the kind of content that will immediately grab their attention! You can also quote these influencers in your content and kindly request that they share and link to it.

Wrapping Up

There you have it. From backlink analysis to content creation to conducting actual outreach to link opportunities, these five tools will have you covered.

Using them in combination will dramatically improve your link building efforts and will lead to increased organic traffic and rankings.

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