Manual link building, or coming up with link building strategies, is hard work and I tip my hat to those in the SEO industry that not only do it, but do it well.
I consider myself to be a very successful link builder which is why I know that even before you attempt the link, there’s heavy research to conduct and careful analysis to consider.
Don’t believe me? How else will you get the info you need about your top competitors? What types of links are they getting? Where did they get their strongest links? What anchor text are they targeting? Are there any opportunities for my site??
This is why a huge part of link building often involves gathering and sifting through mountains and mountains of data.
Maybe not a problem if you’re doing it for just one site (i.e. your own) but what if, like me, you’re often doing several different campaigns at once? Never before have I gathered and managed so much data, on so many different sites, as when I started to do link building professionally for clients.
I love it though. Which is why I happily do my own research (using Google and Yahoo), chart everything in Excel and then draw conclusions and select prospects based on my own criteria. This method takes time though and, being a busy little link builder, time is something I’m in short supply of lately.
Therefore, in an effort to streamline my services, I’ll be actively looking for and trying out various paid link building tools that make my life easier.
Maintaining the same level of quality that my clients are used to is extremely important to me though, so you can be sure that the tool(s) I finally settle on (if any!) will be, what I consider, the best.
Since I’ve had a few curious followers express their interest on twitter, I’ll also be writing about my findings here. If you’ve ever wondered which link building tools truly give you the most bang for your buck (I certainly have!), then you won’t want to miss this 
And, if you’ve had any experience (good or bad) with paid link building tools or if there’s a tool you think I should try, be sure to leave a comment below!
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
Certainly look forward to what you are able to uncover Melanie. We’re constantly on the lookout for new tools & strategies that work (keyword there)…. We see garbage all the time, but don’t use anything on clients that hasn’t been internally tested & proven to be effective.
If you are going to blog about your findings in the link building world then I must follow your blog!
SEOmoz Competitive Link Finder is the bizzomb.
I tried “the link juicer” but am really unsure of the results. They give one month free trial if you want to see if it fits.
Not sure which tools you have in the line up, but why don’t you try the shoemoney tools link tools to see how it stacks up, SEO Book, SEO MOZ.
Hi Tommy,
The link juicer works really well for me. Some sites rank on the first page of google by using the link juicer only
Thanks,
I’d have to agree with Darren the competitive link builder is pretty good. However getting links from competitors isn’t always the most realistic approach which is usually what Competitive Link Finder pulls up. Linkscape is demonstrating to be rather interesting though. Today for example examining pcl.com I found 2358 inbound links to their sites. Most of their premium links were from charitable organizations. A lot of links are karma, but I’d sure like to know where the other good ones are lol
Paid tool are good but usually people like to do it manually. I prefer to do it with Yahoo Site explorer to identify backlinks of competitors along with I prefer to do research manually on google. Although its a lengthy process but its really helpful in identifying quality links with good PR and other important factors. Plus you can control budget as well. In Paid tools most sites are their self promoted.
I understand link building is very important to be successful on the internet. I’m quite skeptical about using paid link services and looking forward to your experiment hoping to learn a thing or two from you.
Give a try to SEOmoz Juicy Link Finder – it’s 99$ per month, but I’ve heard that it’s worth it. It won’t make the link buidling, but it will help You in finding potentially good places where You can put Your link
SEOMoz is good link finder. It does offer many other tools too.
Link building building being an essential component of SEO is also not as easy a s 1,2,3. Since doing research on you own takes forever, i think the idea of using tools to facilitate the process is wonderful. I must also point out that, just because you know where your competitor’s links are coming from, doesn’t men you can acquire links from the same sources. Thank you for the post my fellow Canadian.
thanks for the tips Melanie! Great site
I’d be curious of your thoughts on top paid and top free tools. I like your comment Atif, the tools may help with time and organizing but do you get your head really wrapped around the data the same way. As long as you can come to the same end result (or better) then of course break out the tools!
Looking forward to more Melanie.
You now have another curious follower. A good tool could really speed things up a bit and make things a bit easier, keep me posted on your finding as well
Nice article melanie.
How about market samurai? Is it a useful tool or not?
Has anyone used Link Vine or Serpassist for article submission & syndication? I’d be interested to see how they compare to some of the basic article submitter software or sites.
Also Melanie, I’d be interested in seeing a more detailed explanation of what kind of research that you do, how you do it, what tools do you use, how you chart it and analyze it, etc.
Cheers!
I find that downloading the .csv file from majestic seo and spending about an hour gives me all the info I need to prepare a proposal for a client. It’s powerful to actually scour a competitors profile before presenting a solution to a client.