15 Best Link Building Tools for SEO in 2025 [Free & Paid]

If you are struggling with backlinks or want to save your productive time by escalating the process, you must pick the best link building tools for your campaign. Launching a link-building campaign can be easier, but it gets hard when it comes to counting results.

Like you, I also did a lot of struggle when I started my career in SEO. But right now, I’m dealing with backlinks like a cup of tea.

In this article, I’ll review the best tools and extensions for:

• Backlink research (Free & Paid)
• Email outreach (Free & Paid)

All those tools will lead to the success of your link-building campaign. But before you dig into this article, I recommend you bookmark the article on how to check backlink quality. It will clear everything.

1. Ahrefs – Best for backlink research

Ahrefs is the most popular & potent link-building SEO tool. It is great for building backlinks. I’ve been using this tool since I started my career in search engine optimization. It is the most powerful, fast, and accurate tool ever.

It’s handy in checking existing backlinks for a website. Ahrefa also helps to find Anchor text ratio, Nofollow Dofollow domains, High DR with low DR link filter, Backlink by traffic, and more. you can use it to check dead links, internal-external backlinks, etc. as well.

The Ahrefs Chrome extension shows site metrics from a Google search at a glance. It also shows the number of internal links and external links on the page.

It also has a helpful feature to find out PBN backlinks by checking IP addresses, which is a very useful and powerful tool for all link builders.

Another great feature of this platform is backlink tracking. it means you can track your competitor backlinks, so you will always have new prospects to source and outreach. Also, I get a weekly email from Ahrefs about my website and how many backlinks I got in the last 7 days. It’s amazing, right?

Ahrefs Key Features:

• Competitor Backlinks Analysis
• Backlink Gap Analysis
• Internal & External backlinks analysis
• Backlink Domain IPs
• Backlink Gap
• Broken Backlinks

Ahrefs Free Features

• Free Webmaster Tool
• Backlink Checker (top 100 backlinks, top 5 pages & top 5 anchor texts)
• Broken Link Checker
• Website Authority Checker
• Keyword Generator (Google, Bing, YouTube, Amazon)
• YouTube Keyword Research
• SERP Checker
• Free WordPress Plugin ​

Pros:

• Most accurate data
• Large backlink database
• Worth every penny
• User-friendly interface
• Full control to check any website and keyword

Cons:

• Expensive
• Their traffic data isn’t up to the mark
• No trial option

2. Ubersuggest – Affordable Backlink Research Tool

Ubersuggest is a very recent SEO tool. I’ve been using the tool since its launch, and I just love it.

Note that Ubersuggest is the best tool for traffic.

This tool has 2 useful features. 

The first one is a backlink check. You can check your and your competitor’s backlinks within a few clicks. By checking your competitor’s link, you can find a lot of prospects in your niche. 

The 2nd great feature is the backlink opportunity. This is also a great feature. You can compare your link profile with your competitors. After comparing, you can see a list of sites where you don’t have backlinks but are good for you as well.

This software is also a great way to start a link-building campaign.

Key Backlink Features:

• Link profile analysis 
• Backlink gap analysis
• Alternative text distribution 
• Referring domain trend 
• Backlink Filter (Nofollow-Dofollow)

Free SEO Features

• SEO overview (first 3 sites are free)
• Keyword Analysis (3 keywords daily)
• Backlink Analysis (10 sites)

Pros

• Very affordable
• Most accurate traffic data
• Fast and clean design
• Easy to use

Cons:

• Backlink data accuracy is not up to the mark
• Small database
• Several great features aren’t present in this tool

3. SEMrush – All-in-One Link Building Tool

SEMrush is my other favorite tool for backlink building. In my opinion, I think this is a complete link-building tool. With this, you can do almost everything you need to do for your backlink campaign. 

How does SEMrush help with link building?

It has 4 amazing link-building features. All the features are really very helpful in building a successful off-page SEO campaign.

Let’s Explore All SEMrush Features

• Backlink analysis: It lets you check a site’s full backlink profile. Here, you can see all types of data you need to check for a website. It’s a powerful and easy tool. You can note your competitor’s backlink using it.
  
• Backlink Audit: It checks 8 things in total to show the audit data. Here, you can also add your Google search console to check actual data. From the backlink audit, you can see a percentage of toxic backlinks, total referring domains and backlinks, and more in-depth insight.
  
• Link-building tool: By adding some keywords and competitors’ sites, you can see a great list of your link gaps. It means you can see all the link-building opportunities that you currently don’t have but your competitors do.
  
• Email Outreach: From the list, you can pick any website, SEMrush will help you find their email and social info. If you want to do outreach from there, you can definitely do so. It also has an auto follow-up process, and that’s why I call it it is a complete tool for acquiring backlinks.
  
• Bulk Analysis: Using SEMrush, you can also check a large amount of site quality. If you have 20-30 or 100+ leads, but you want to check these sites’ quality with 1 click, this is the option you can try.

SEMrush Free Features

• 10 searches per day
• 10 organic keywords research
• 10 backlinks research
• 10 anchors text preview

Pros:

• Complete outreach system
• Fast and Easy to Use
• Advanced Filtering

Cons:

• Data accuracy is not up to the mark
• Very limited data in the free option
• Need to pay extra to see some regions (Worse Part of SEMrush)
• Some deep features are missing

4. Link Assistant – Great Alternative

Link Assistant is another great tool for backlink analysis. This tool has both options, free and paid. Many marketers use this tool to analyze backlinks, competitor research, alternative text (alt text), and more.

Features:

• Backlink landing page
• Domain rank
• Page rank
• Anchor text
• Dofollow nofollow status
• First found 
• Last check

Link Assistant Free Features:

• Top 10 backlinks research
• Anchor text research

5. Moz – Best for Spam Link Checker

Moz is a very old and still a great tool for building backlinks. I’ve been using this tool since I started my career in SEO. Moz has a great feature called spam link checker, which is not available with any other tool in the market.

Feature:

• Linking domains
• Anchor Text
• Top pages by backlink
• New and lost link
• Link Compare
• Spam score

Moz’s Free Backlink Features

• 5 Queries per day
• 50+ Links Analysis
• 10 Backlinks
• 10 Anchor texts Analysis
• Top 10 pages

With the free method, you can check 10 backlinks every day.

Moz Cons:

• Data accuracy is competitively low
• Short Backlink Database
• Backlink Aquiracy is very poor

6. SeoReviewTools – Best Free Link Research Tool

SEOReviewTool is a great free backlink checker for SEO beginners. If your site doesn’t have a good amount of backlinks in your website, this tool is enough to check your website backlinks.

This tool shows 100 backlinks for a free account. It also shows,

• Backlinks anchor text,
• Dofollow-nofollow status,
• Website Traffic

7. Google Alert – Best for Brand Mention & Tracking

You can use Google Alert for your various link-building campaigns, especially for brand mention. This is a free Google tool that will help to find where people talk about your brand or about your niche. In this way, you can track many things like,

1. Competitor Brand Keyword
2. Your own Brand Keyword
3. Recent Blog Post about your topic/niche
4. Find sites that have mentioned your brand but are not linked to you and more.

See my video on how you can use the Google Alert service in your SEO Campaign.

8. BuzzStream – Best for Link Building Outreach

Buzstreat is a very popular AI-powered outreach tool. It will help you to automate your outreach campaign. This is a favorite tool for most outreach managers.

Top Features: 

1. Helps to find lead/prospect contact information 
2. Track Email (Open, click, response)
3. Auto Follow-Up in different conditional stages 
4. Email Schedule in any time zone 
5. Super useful Chrome extension
6. Outreach Success monitor

9. GMASS – Best for Small Outreach Campaign

GMASS is a great choice for a small-size outreach campaign. This tool has some great features to save you lots of valuable time. 

Top Features

1. Mass Emails in Gmail
2. Mail Marge with Google
3. Email Reporting Analytics
4. Personalization
5. Bulk Email Send
6. Auto Follow-up (Conditional)
7. AB Testing 
8. Outreach Success Monitor
9. Email List Builder
10. Reply Management and More

10. Hunter.io – Best for Email Finding

Hunter.io is the best tool for finding email. I’ve been using this tool for a long time, and it’s serving me the best. It has a Chrome extension. By using this, you can easily find any website email, and most of the time, the result is accurate.

Note: With a free account, you can check a maximum of 50 website verifications & 25 searches per month.

11. Hubspot – Best Free Email Tracking Tool

To track email free of cost, HubSpot is my best choice. It’s a very fast and easy tool that I’ve ever used. By creating a free account, you can easily track all of your potential emails that are being read, times they have been opened, etc.

I still use this tool for large link-building campaigns. For a basic outreach campaign, if you are not planning to go for paid outreach right now, you must use this tool to track prospect behavior. 

12. CloudHQ – Best in Free

CloudHQ is a great tool for a small amount of email outreach campaigns. It’s many great features in the free method. After sending a ton of emails, it will ask for the paid version. I personally used this tool for some years

Top Free Features:

1. You can save 10 email templates for free
2. Auto Follow-Up Email
3. Conditional Email Follow-up

13. Ahrefs Toolbar – Best Chrome Extension for Backlink

It is also the best productivity tool for the backlink campaign.

Ahrefs toolbar has been my favorite tool since its launch. It helps to check a website’s all the important matrices at a glance. by this, you can measure a website’s quality without opening it. It’s amazing, right? 

To access this extension, you have to get premium access to Ahrefs and install it from the Chrome store.

After installing it, you just need to enable this extension. If you have already logged into your account, you see a feature like this on Google SERPs.

So you can see all the important data in a quick time. If all the data of a site matches your goal or meets quality backlink guidelines, you can pick the link without a doubt. I assure you, the numeric data in this extension is true 9/10 times

14. Ubersuggest Chrome Extension

Ubersuggest also has a great browser extension to check website metrics faster. Free and paid, both members can use it, but there are some limitations as well.

Feature:

• Page-wise traffic preview 
• Backlink preview
• Social media share counter
• Domain Authority checkup
• Domain Overview
• Keyword Overview
• Backlink Overview
• SEO Analyzer

Free Features

• 40 Searches per day
• All features will work with limited query

15. Send Check It – Best subject line tester – Free

This tool is still bookmarked on my browser. If you use this tool, you can check how powerful your subject line is.

Nowadays, people are not interested in opening an email if the subject is not eye-catching or useful to them. This tool will guide you to improve your subject line.

Do you have any recommended tools that I should add? 

Please comment or email me if you think I missed any tool that needs to be added to my list.

If you find my post helpful, please share it with others & suggest to me some new topics you want to know.

Thank You.