16 Free Online Link Building and Link Building Tools

To rank number 1 on major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing, a link builder needs to know the backlink profiles of their competitors and industry allies. Having this kind of knowledge makes link building easier, more efficient, and most of all, more effective.

The tools listed below will not only help you discover your competition’s backlink profiles, but also give you ways to get relevant backlinks yourself.

TOOL #1 – Backlink Watch – The Backlink Watch tool is a very simple way to check a website’s backlink URL, anchor text, and total OBLs (outbound links) on the same page as that link.

TOOL #2 – Analyze Backlinks – Another gold mine for exploring a competitor’s backlinks. This provides more valuable options that allow you to filter URLs from the same domain and look for factors such as target keyword mentions surrounding links.

TOOL #3 – Yahoo Site Explorer – Not really a link tool, but you can quickly check a site’s backlink count and its top 10-1000 links. Although this tool is not much better than the previous 2, it shows the title of the link pages and allows you to crawl your own websites if you are logged in and verified site ownership.

TOOL #4 – Google Search (link:yoursite.com) – No different than above except for the fact that the number of backlinks according to Google’s search engine is ALWAYS considerably lower than Yahoo! results. But the links that made it to Google results are allegedly affecting search rankings.

TOOL #5 – Alexa Backlink Checker – You can see the total number of domains linking to a website and what domains they are. This Alexa tool also provides other great website data.

TOOL #6 – Bad Neighborhood Text Link Tool – Great way to see what kind of links a website is accumulating, either from you or from a potential link partner.

TOOL #7 – SoloSEO Link Finder Tool – Possibly the easiest way online to find relevant backlinks, which are pretty easy to get.

Web Confs Backlink Tools – Webconfs has over 20 SEO tools to offer. But these are your best link building tools.

TOOL #8 – Text Analysis Webconfs Anchor Links – Compare the top ranked site’s text links to yours. There is a difference?

TOOL #9 – Webconfs Backlink Generator – Enter a keyword. Copy the entire list(s), paste into Excel. Filter…, or get to work.

TOOL #10 – Webconfs Backlink Summary – A quick summary similar to the results delivered by Analyze Backlinks & Backlink Watch.

TOOL #11 – SEO Add-on for FireFox – In addition to being able to give you on-demand access to top-ranked sites data instantly, the SEO Tool for Firefox also provides a great feature that highlights nofollow links (in red), making it easy to identify which links count and which don’t.

TOOL #12 – Google Webmaster Tools – In addition to getting the best perspective on your website through the eyes of Google, Google Webmaster Tools also tells you what links they have found and their anchor text.

TOOL #13 – Link Harvester – This tool is towards the bottom of the list because it provides data type well beyond what the basic linker needs. It’s an oldie though, but a goodie.

TOOL #14 – We Build Pages Search Merge Tool – Not really a link builder at all. But adding phrases like “resources”, “links”, “favorite sites”, “suggested url”, etc. could add some fun to it.

TOOL #15 – Recip Links – A tool that crawls a site (or a list of sites) and checks if they link to a specific domain.

TOOL #16 – Link Appeal Tool – Is a link from your website really worth it? Find out with this tool the value of your website based on various factors. Try to get links from sites of higher value than yours.