In the past when link building was all about quantity and not quality, building links was easy. You just needed a couple of thousands of backlinks and would rank ahead of everyone else with a number below that.
Today, link building is a different ballgame. You need quality backlinks to move the search engines to rank your site. That also means it’s become a difficult affair—that needs specialized hands and strategies.
And since we’ve been building quality links ahead of everyone else in the industry, we know what works and does not. That’s why in this article, we’ll take you through secretive tools and strategies you can use today to build backlinks and get results.
At the end of this article, you’ll have understood:
- What is a backlink builder?
- What are 10 link building services that actually work?
- What are the top 8 best link building companies of 2024?
Sounds good? Let’s get started.
What is a backlink builder?
Let’s start with some basics.
A link or backlink is a referral link that your site gets from another website. It demonstrates that your site has helpful information that is worth sharing with another audience.
Google and other search engines use backlinks (off page SEO) as an important ranking factor. In other words, the more quality backlinks your site has, the higher the chances it has to rank for its target keywords—because links demonstrate the level of trust and authority your site has.
But how do you get these backlinks? To be honest, some links will come naturally, and some links you’ll have to build yourself (more about this later).
So, to build backlinks, you need a backlink builder service. This is a service that helps business owners and SEOs to acquire backlinks from other sites, through various tactics.
These tactics come in various shapes—some are manual and others are done using automated tools—varying in price, quality, and effectiveness.
That’s what we’re about to talk about in the next section. Let’s do this.
10 Link Building Services That Actually Work
Now, let’s look at some of the link building services we recommend you use to build backlinks.
#1. Content Marketing Agencies
The first and perhaps most important (relevant) link building service to use is content marketing. This involves hiring an SEO link building company to produce content for your site. It could be blogs, articles, graphics, videos, and so on.
When done right, this strategy or service is capable of earning you high quality and natural backlinks which we call editorial backlinks—links that you deserve (and that Google LOVE and PRIORITIZE).
There is only one way out here—generating content that demonstrates Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust (EEAT) —something that Google uses to determine the helpfulness of your content, thereby ranking it.
On top of that, this service also comes with tons of benefits including traffic, and brand awareness and you don’t have to worry about any penalties, because it’s a white hat strategy.
#2. Help a Reporter Out (HARO)
We can’t say this is a link building service per se, but it has been more popular recently in the space. HARO is a service that journalists use to find sources and quotes from experts that they can cite or report in their news.
Ultimately, if they cite you in their news, you have a chance to get a backlink. However, this is not a guarantee but a very good opportunity to get a link from a highly authoritative site—that otherwise, wouldn’t link to you.
To get this service, you need to register as a HARO source on their website, then you’ll start getting emails sent to your inbox with questions about your niche.
So what you do is to respond to the best of your knowledge and then if they like it, they can cite you and give you a backlink.
From our previous analysis, though, most of these backlinks are no-follow which means they don’t pass PageRank but they do send a good amount of traffic which is as well.
#3. Broken Link Building
Broken link building is a service where link building service providers find and replace dead or broken links with working links to your website, which can help you gain more backlinks and improve your SEO.
This service involves finding relevant broken links, creating alternative content, reaching out to the webmaster, and asking them to replace the dead link with the content (live link) that you’ve published.
This strategy tends to work because you’re not just reaching out for a link but you are also offering value in return.
#4. Guest Posting Services
This is a high quality link building service that involves reaching out to other websites that accept guest posts and publishing content on their site and getting a link in return.
So what you do is identify relevant and authoritative sites in your niche (because of PageRank), write a guest post that their audience could benefit from, and then link the same article to your site.
This service not only helps you build quality backlinks but also results in exposing your brand to a new audience that would not have known about you, anyway, and brand mentions which are key for your business.
#5. Niche Edits
Niche edits are a link building strategy that involves placing a link in an existing piece of content. It involves reaching out to the webmaster of the website in which you’re interested and asking them to link back to you.
It’s important to note that searching and identifying good anchor texts is a good way of leveraging this strategy—this is aimed at making it relevant and contextual.
Niche edits are useful for SEO because they are cheaper and easier than guest posts, and they can boost the ranking of the linked site by leveraging the authority and trust the existing content has garnered over time.
#6. Unlinked Brand Mentions
This backlink building service is a low hanging fruit in SEO that allows you to leverage opportunities where some bloggers have mentioned your brand but have not linked to your site.
To find unlinked brand mentions, you need to identify the keywords and phrases that other people might use to refer to your product or brand. This might be any of the following:
- Your company name
- The name of one of your products, or
- The names of influential people in your company.
Once you have them, you can start by filtering the SERP through advanced Google search and reach out to these webmasters asking them to link back to you.
#7. Blogger Outreach
This is an email outreach strategy that involves hiring individuals or agencies who reach out to bloggers for link building. It’s a white hat strategy that in most cases will result in quality contextual links that are pretty
Blogger outreach is important for SEO because it can help you build relationships with influencers in your industry, which can lead to them linking to your website from their blogs.
If you want to learn more about this service, we’ve covered more details in this article Link Building Outreach Email Example: Crafting Compelling Messages for Effective Backlink Acquisition.
#8. SEO Agency
Another alternative way of building backlinks is hiring an SEO backlink building agency that will do everything for your site—and you don’t have to be directly involved.
#9. Press Release
A successful PR campaign can land you links from some of the largest news sites that otherwise wouldn’t have linked to your site—naturally.
In this strategy, you have to find people who are well-connected with these news sites and have built relationships over time to be guaranteed a backlink.
So what these best link builders do is write your press release and pitch it to leading news sites like Forbes, MSN, and so on who can feature your article on their sites.
At the end of the day, these simple links are going to earn you some trust, brand awareness, traffic, and if you’re really lucky, some PageRank as these links tend to be no-follow.
#10. Linkable Assets
Linkable assets tend to attract more backlinks from bloggers who cite them in their work.
Here are some examples of linkable assets that you can create to improve your SEO and build backlinks:
- Blog posts
- Infographics
- Case studies
- Tools and calculators
- Research studies
Here is why people would want to link to your assets:
- It provides a solution for a specific problem;
- It offers a unique angle toward a particular topic;
- It backs up a point they’re trying to make (in their existing article);
- It is something their audience would find interesting.
Now that you’ve understood some of the best link building services that we have (and use), let’s jump into some of the effective tools that enable a successful link building campaign.
The 8 Effective Link-Building Tools (Must Have)
#1. Google
Google has the largest index of web pages on the planet and arguably the best search algorithm. Which makes it the largest source of link prospects worldwide for free.
To get this data, you need to use search operators which are commands that help you refine and filter search engine results.
Here is an example:
[keyword] (intitle:resources OR intitle:resource) (inurl:resources OR inurl:resource)
Once you find these prospects, it's your job to reach out and start the link building campaign.
#2. Ahrefs
This tool has a searchable database of over 9 billion pages on its Content Explorer feature that allows you to find link prospects for your link-building campaign.
With Ahrefs, you can:
- Track how your backlink profile changes.
- Extract link opportunities for different terms.
- Perform a complete backlink analysis.
- Get broken links from websites.
#3. Linkody
This is an easy-to-use backlinking tool that offers features like monitoring backlinks, tracking link metrics, and providing timely alerts.
For example, the new link discovery feature notifies you by email whenever one of your competitors or your website gets a link.
That’s pretty helpful because if you know how your competitors are building links, you can as well refine your link building campaign to get to their level.
#4. Semrush
This is a comprehensive SEO tool that provides a wide range of features, including backlink analysis, keyword research, and on-page optimization.
It also has a built-in outreach tool that allows you to find prospects, prepare your outreach sequence, and track your campaigns in minutes.
#5. Respona
This is a powerful link-building outreach platform that offers a variety of pre-built campaigns to choose from.
It walks you through the entire process of finding high-quality opportunities and getting contact info to send personalized emails.
Here are some of the campaigns you can choose from:
- Podcast Outreach – you input a person in your industry, and they give you all the podcasts they’ve been featured on.
- Resource pages – you input keywords, and they give you top resource listicles on those topics.
- Skyscraper Technique – you input competitor articles, and they give you a list of URLs linking to them.
- Product Review – you input competitor domains, and they give you a list of blogs that recently reviewed them.
- Guest Post – you input topics, and they give you a list of websites accepting guest posts.
Once you select a campaign, this tool allows you to find verified contact information that you can use for your outreach.
#6. HARO (Help A Reporter Out)
This is a platform that connects journalists with sources. When you subscribe to this platform, you connect with bloggers and journalists who need sources to cite and in exchange get links and exposure for yourself.
So what you do is use the HeadStart to get notifications ahead of everyone else. This is beneficial because you can then respond or pitch quickly so that your pitch can be seen.
#7. Buzzsumo
This content marketing tool allows you to get alerts whenever your brand or that of your competitors gets a mention.
With this feature, you can either get brand mentions without links or identify bloggers that have linked to your competitors and are therefore likely to link to you too (assuming you have high-quality content).
#8. Moz Link Explorer
This tool allows you to reverse engineer your competitor’s backlinks. Now what this means is that you can be able to see your competitors’ backlinks and their respective DA, spam score, and most importantly where they’re coming from.
…why is this helpful? You can use the data and target these websites that are linking to your competitors to link back to you as well.
Final Thoughts
Up to that point, we’ve covered what a link builder is and gone into detail on some of the strategies and tools you can use to build quality backlinks to your site (s).
The tools we mentioned can be listed in three areas:
- Link Research Tools.
- Prospecting & Outreach Tools.
- Reporting Tools.
Also, the strategies and tactics mentioned range from low-hanging fruits to some that are sophisticated.
Start today using any of them and then slowly scale them to ensure you get optimal results.
Download