Ajay Paghdal
Only Outreach Founder
Last updated on
Since link building entered the SEO scene to rank a webpage, it has become indispensable. No other practice holds value quite like link-building does because it has proved to be the most efficient source of organic traffic.
A study by Ahrefs shows that 90.63% of websites get absolutely no traffic from Google searches!
The sole reason for this is that they don't have any backlinks.
And to construct an infallible link profile, a proficient digital marketer needs a set of handy tools for link-building outreach because even experts need a bit of help.
But link-building is different from the one-person job it used to be in the past. Marketers took many liberties and were involved in some pretty shady businesses when it came to acquiring backlinks. But the almighty, omniscient Google algorithm doesn't let such cheap tricks fly by anymore.
These link-building malpractices or black hat practices from the past you MUST AVOID:
Any ethical and savvy digital marketer would know that these are things in the past.
Coming back to the previous point, proper assistance would do your link-building wonders. There are many great tools available that can help you. If done manually, keeping the authenticity intact can be pretty daunting.
There are some services you could outsource this task to. But if you want total control in building your backlink profile and making your domain rank, I say it is absolutely possible.
Benefits of using tools for link building outreach include:
Now imagine, with all these advantages giving you a lift-off, why would you not use the help of link-building outreach tools?
That's not even a question. Of course, you would.
My main objective is to assist fellow SEO and link-building experts. In this article, I've outlined some of the activities which are intrinsically involved while link-building.
Along with those activities, I have mentioned some of the most amazing tools which take care of the corresponding activity, so you can focus and build more long-term goals for your brand.
Here's an overview of this article in stock for you. So let's dive right into it, shall we?
The primary purpose of using any tool is to reduce the time and effort spent by any marketer on any activity which can be automated. The same goes for backlink-building outreach efforts. So I will come to the communication part.
Relationship management is nothing but that. Automated Relationship Management (ARM) refers to using technology to automate and streamline the process of managing relationships with customers, clients, and other stakeholders.
Some examples of ARM tools include customer relationship management (CRM) software, marketing automation software, and chatbots. These tools can be used to automate tasks such as email campaigns, lead generation, and customer support.
Automated Relationship Management (ARM) can be integrated into the link-building outreach process by automating tasks, providing insights into potential partners, and making it easier to manage and analyze the effectiveness of outreach efforts.
These tools can automate sending personalized email campaigns, automated follow-up emails, tracking open, click-through rates, and managing responses.
Automated Relationship Management tools can also generate leads for potential link-building partners.
Other significant benefits of an ideal automated relationship management tool are Contact Management, Customizable Templates, personalized messaging, Automated Follow-ups, and generating reports and analytics.
Fully automating a series of communication is undoubtedly jolting to think of. But handling a massive amount of back and forth is not a task that can be taken care of entirely manually.
And since link building outreach tools make the automation of all your communication streamlined and customizable simultaneously, why not give it a shot?
BuzzStream is designed perfectly, with each feature reducing your work when you are toiling to build your outreach campaigns. You can forget those spreadsheets to keep a list of your prospects and contacts, and Gmail runs for every communication string.
This capable piece of tech will help you deal with all of that from one place!
Whether you are looking for prospects for content promotion or link-building opportunities, all the solutions can be right in your palms. Instead of going to Google and searching for people with keywords and then manually searching for their contact info, use BuzzStream.
If you go to the “Discovery” feature and enter the relevant keywords, for example, ‘fitness bloggers’, you get a comprehensive list of them. Sort them based on their DA scores and save them into projects.
But now I come to the email outreach part.
You can create email outreach templates and add them to your messages, so there is no need to copy-paste. You can also use custom fields for specific details in the emails you send, and BuzzStream fills them up automatically. When you outreach a specific person, the tool will gather a ton of information about them and which you can use to personalize your message to them, like what was their latest tweet about.
BuzzStream has one of the most fantastic follow-up email features. The “Sequences” feature lets you program unlimited follow-ups, and you can apply this to any outreach emails you send.
And if you would like to avoid the concept of totally automated follow-ups, they have a solution. You can set up reminders for the number and frequency of follow-ups you need to take and compose them manually when the time comes.
All of this comes at a very reasonable price.
Here are some of the features that make BuzzStream an automated relationship management as well as a link building outreach aficionado:
BuzzStream has 4 different pricing plans in place right now.
So far, we have talked about lead generation and automated relationship management. Now let's get down to business and discuss one of the most critical aspects of link-building, i.e., outreach campaigns.
Automated outreach campaigns are a type of marketing strategy that uses software to automate the process of reaching out to potential customers or clients. This can include sending emails, making phone calls, or sending messages through social media. And for backlink building, emails are the key component, as you can guess.
An automated outreach campaign aims to increase efficiency and scalability while also personalizing the messaging to each recipient. Some common use cases for automated outreach include lead generation, event promotion, and customer retention.
And since automation is the trend we are going with, the best approach for outreach campaigns is to take the help of a link-building outreach tool.
With so many businesses using digital marketing, it's becoming increasingly difficult to stand out and reach potential customers or clients. Automating your outreach campaigns can help you reach more people more efficiently, giving you an edge over your competition.
Consumers expect a high level of personalization from businesses, and manual outreach can take time and effort to scale. Automating your outreach campaigns allows you to personalize your messaging to each recipient more efficiently.
Automating your outreach campaigns can save time and money compared to manual outreach, which is time-consuming and expensive. And the need to adapt to the digital age is real. As more and more businesses go digital, automating your outreach campaigns can help you stay competitive in the digital age.
You don't want to be left behind now, do you?
And now, I will familiarize you with an excellent tool for conducting automated outreach campaigns equipped to take care of many more link building activities.
We discussed automated outreach in the previous section. So what is the point of introducing a different tool for outreach campaigns yet again? Let us give a bit more detail and enlighten you all.
Pitchbox is an influencer outreach and link-building tool that does much more than automated emails. It is an automated outreach campaign tool that helps businesses and marketers reach out to potential customers or clients more efficiently.
This tool's email automation feature is pretty awesome, but the way it integrates so many details into one dashboard is a work of art. If you have Pitchbox, you will not have to leave the tool for anything else.
Different types of campaigns are categorized for a number of your needs to help their algorithm give you better opportunities. These categories are:
You can easily search for bloggers and influencers according to your objectives or promote your blog on specific sources for apt exposure. You can contact websites to get a link added to one of their resource pages.
I have got to elaborate on a very unique but very canny feature of Pitchbox, which has been responsible for many people switching from manual to automated tools.
You can start an outreach email campaign and send hundreds of emails in just one click. But usually, doing so can lead to Gmail flagging your activities and making your emails land straight into the spam folder. But Pitchbox has a perfect workaround for this problem.
When you click on "Launch," The tool sends your emails with a few time gaps of a couple of minutes, making them appear manual to the system. Hence the arrows reach their correct targets.
Here is a brief overview of the prime capabilities of the tool, making it a perfect fit for your outreach campaigns:
Pitchbox is more expensive than other tools with similar capabilities. It has not revealed its pricing for the public, but I have an estimate from a marketing agency using the tool. The Agency package costs $395 per month.
Another thing to look out for is that this tool will charge you annually, meaning you will have to pay for a whole year if you subscribe to it. However, it does give an excellent trial period experience, customized to each user and a designated trainer, so you can get the whole experience of what Pitchbox can do for your business.
Lead generation and email verification have been discussed in the previous section of this article when I talked about sales prospecting, but we are trying to identify each domain of link building and put it in laser focus, that is why we are going to dive into it again here.
Lead generation is the process of identifying and cultivating potential customers for a business. In terms of backlink building, lead generation can play a role in identifying potential website owners or bloggers who may be interested in linking to a business's website.
And since email is the approach digital marketers take to contact their prospects, they must do an authentic email verification first.
However, it's also worth noting that even with verified email addresses, outreach campaigns can only be effective if the message and approach is tailored and personalized to the individual or organization you are trying to reach.
By identifying these potential link partners and building relationships with them, a business can increase the number of high-quality backlinks pointing to their website, which can help to improve their search engine rankings.
Email verification can be essential in outreach campaigns for link building, as it ensures that the email addresses you are using for outreach are accurate and active.
Additionally, sending outreach emails to invalid or non-existent addresses can negatively impact the reputation of your domain and IP address's reputation, which can affect your emails' deliverability in the long run.
Now let us introduce a tool that is a specialist in these activities.
Hunter is a lead generation and email verification tool that can help businesses find and verify email addresses for potential customers or link partners. Hunter allows users to search for email addresses associated with a specific domain and also provides a feature for verifying the accuracy of email addresses.
Hunter's lead generation feature allows users to find email addresses for specific individuals or departments within a company, making it easier to target the right person for outreach.
Hunter also provides the ability to find phone numbers and social media profiles, which can help to build a more comprehensive picture of a lead.
Hunter is a valuable tool for businesses looking to conduct effective and targeted outreach campaigns.
Some of the key features of Hunter include:
Hunter in total has 6 plans. The highest one is the “Enterprise” plan which is customizable. Here is the details of the first 5 plans for your closer inspection:
It's worth noting that Hunter also offers a 14-day free trial for all plans, which allows users to test the tool before committing to a paid plan.
A cold email is an unsolicited email sent to a recipient who has had no prior contact or relationship with the sender. And people in marketing of any kind are quite familiar with it.
Cold emails are often used for sales or business development purposes, but can also be used for networking, especially by backlink builders. They are called "cold" because the recipient has not expressed any interest in the product, service, or information being offered.
Management of these cold emails is the process of planning, executing, and tracking the performance of cold email campaigns. This includes tasks such as researching and identifying potential contacts, creating email templates and personalizing them for specific recipients, scheduling and sending emails, and tracking the response rate and other metrics to measure the success of the campaign.
Cold email outreach management requires attention to detail, effective communication, and data analysis skills. It can be scaled up or down depending on the needs of your business, making it a flexible option.
Cold emailing is a relatively inexpensive way to reach many potential customers or clients compared to other forms of marketing or sales outreach. This allows you to target interested individuals or companies, increasing the chances of success.
It's important to note that cold emailing has a low response rate and can be considered spam if not done properly. It's essential to comply with the perceived regulations of email marketing and to use techniques such as personalization, segmentation, and providing value to increase the chances of success.
Here is a perfect tool for all your cold email outreach management.
Mailshake is a cold email outreach management tool that helps businesses plan, execute, and track the performance of cold email campaigns.
It allows you to create and schedule email campaigns to reach out to multiple contacts at once. It is a dedicated outreach tool for email outreach management. So it has a specific target, unlike the tools I told you about earlier.
And it is very good at what it does!
MailShake, formerly called Connector, has a very non-flowery and intuitive user interface. And people really like it. It doesn't support Google sheets, but that is a minor inconvenience because all you have to do is save your prospects' information into a sheet and convert it into a CSV file which Mailshake accepts. Upload it and then compose your emails.
You will readily get a custom field for multiple things like names, emails, and so on, giving you the customizations you need.
A very convenient capability in Mailshake lets you see your outreach email of how it exactly looks to the recipient. This will save you from whole campaigns with embarrassing typos.
You can track opens and link-clicks in real time once the data comes in.
Here are Mailshake’s features at-a-glance:
Mailshake is a pretty affordable tool for smaller agencies and larger teams as well. It is very upfront with the fact that it does not have any free trial period. But if you are not satisfied within 30 days, it will provide a full refund for both available plans.
Competitor analysis can be very important for successful link-building outreach because it allows you to identify potential link opportunities and understand your competitors' strategies to acquire links.
Additionally, by understanding your competitors link-building strategies, you can identify areas where you can differentiate your efforts and acquire more high-quality links.
Overall, competitor analysis can help you to create a more effective link-building strategy by giving you a better understanding of the opportunities and challenges in your industry.
There are several benefits of insight gathering for competitor analysis. By analyzing your competitors' backlinks, you can identify websites and publications that are likely to link to the content in your industry and reach out to those sites with your link-building requests.
To understand industry trends, you must keep up with competitors' content and marketing strategies. The things currently resonating with your target audience will point you toward the information your content and marketing efforts need.
By understanding your competitors' strengths and weaknesses, you can identify areas where you can gain a competitive advantage.
Also, by gathering data on your competitors, you can create a benchmark of their performance, which will help you to measure your performance and track your progress over time.
Partnerships, sponsorships, and collaborations show up as you dig into these things as well. Here is a tool to help you with your competitive analysis and insight gathering while building backlinks.
When it comes to managing and finding data, NinjaCat is pretty good at it all. It has a total market share of 0.02% in the Search Engine Management industry. Its analytics and reporting capabilities make it one of the most in-demand tools for that specific purpose.
The tool is highly user-friendly, making it a cakewalk for even users with lesser technical knowledge to use. At the same time, it maintains interconnections with more than 150 sources to collect data online to congregate information and give them to its users in comprehensive forms. These sources include Instagram, Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Analytics 360, Bigquery, Snapchat, Reddit, and many more.
NinjaCat is the perfect tool for competitive data analysis as it provides comprehensive and actionable insights into the competitive landscape.
With its powerful analytics suite, NinjaCat allows you to uncover data trends and gain a deeper understanding of your competitors' strategies and tactics.
NinjaCat's proprietary algorithms enable users to identify market movement patterns and capture real-time changes in competitor activity.
It can track a company's website traffic, search engine rankings, social media engagement, and more. Additionally, Ninjacat can also help to find the competitors' keywords and backlinks which can help to understand the SEO strategy of competitors.
Here some more features of NinjaCat:
The tool does not have any fixed pricing as customizing and white-labeling are prevalent among its clients.
There are many activities, as I have discussed till now, which occur before and after the actual outreach for link building. The primary marker which starts off your efforts would be discovering opportunities, and there are several ways of doing just that.
We have talked tons about lead prospecting earlier, which also might be counted as finding opportunities but here I'd like to mention a few more. Below are some of the other ways you can focus on for potential links:
Now once you have started with your outreach activities and campaigns, it is imperative that you monitor your progress. You can use a link-building tool that helps you to track your progress, such as Ahrefs, Majestic, SEMrush, and others.
Keep track of the links you acquire due to your outreach efforts. Besides that, you can monitor your website's backlink profile and search engine rankings and keep track of referral traffic.
It would help if you kept an eye out over all the activities you are conducting for backlink building as you can see which strategies are working and which are not, and make adjustments as needed.
Measuring the progress of your link-building efforts by measuring the ROI can determine the effectiveness of your strategies and make data-driven decisions. And, as showing proof of your progress, whether for your team members or clients, is crucial, generating reports of the results is a vital activity you just can’t ignore.
Now, if you think about what tool can help you with all these activities, I have already answered your question.
Let me elaborate.
This one is a go-to for every digital marketer for any SEO activity. Ahrefs is a comprehensive toolset for SEO and link building, and it includes several tools and features.
A tool like Ahrefs has so many diverse features that a whole other article is needed to go in-depth about it. It is not just one tool but a collection of capabilities like link building, keyword research, competitor analysis, rank tracking, and site audits.
You can find content on it that has been performing well for the number of links it has or the social shares it has gotten. You can also do extensive keyword research, finding the volume and level of difficulty to rank it.
It can give you a detailed record of your backlink profile to analyze and build further with relevant data to back you up.
But one thing is for sure, it will take you much time to master Ahrefs due to the very repository of extensive features that it has. It's not achievable but certainly requires much getting used to.
Another nifty feature it has that deems a mention is that it shows you the domains linked to your competitors but not to you. So that gives you a point to start from.
Here's a brief overview of the features of Ahrefs:
Ahrefs offers several pricing options for its toolset, including:
Content is king, and that couldn't be more true. The relationship between the number of backlinks, the quality of content, and the organic traffic on that page are directly proportional.
So if you are trying to build your link profile, content analysis is inevitable.
Content analysis is a process used in link building to evaluate the quality and relevance of a website's content about a specific topic or keyword. This analysis can help identify potential link-building opportunities by identifying websites with high-quality, relevant content that may be willing to link to a client's website.
Additionally, content analysis can also be used to identify websites that may be linking to a client's competitors so that the client can reach out to those websites to request a link as well.
Influencer outreach can be an important aspect of link building because it allows you to build relationships with people with a large following and influence in your industry or niche. These influencers can help to promote your content and link to your website, which can help to increase your website's visibility and search engine rankings.
However, it's important to note that influencer outreach should be part of a comprehensive link building strategy, not the only one. It would be best if you also tried to get links from different types of websites and sources, such as directories, resource pages, and relevant communities.
Now let me introduce you to a tool perfect for content analysis and influencer outreach.
BuzzSumo is a tool that allows users to analyze the performance of the content on various social media platforms. It can track the number of shares, likes, and comments on a specific piece of content and show who has shared it and the overall engagement level.
It can also be used to research top-performing content in a particular industry or niche. Overall, it is considered a valuable tool for content analysis and tracking content performance.
And BuzzSumo also has some fantastic influencer outreach capabilities.
It allows users to identify and research influencers within a specific industry or niche. Users can search for influencers based on the number of followers, engagement rate, and location. The tool provides information about an influencer's content, audience demographics, and contact information, which can help reach out to them and build relationships.
It also has a feature that allows one to create a list of influencers and track their activity, which can help identify potential collaborations and partnerships.
Here are the pricing plans currently available:
Email tracking for link-building outreach is a technique used to monitor the effectiveness of an email campaign for acquiring backlinks to a website. It involves using software that tracks when an email is opened and clicked, allowing the sender to see which recipients are most engaged with their message.
This information can be used to optimize the campaign and target the most responsive prospects. It can also track the click-through rate on the link you want to track if it's placed in the email.
This can give insights into how well the link works and if it's worth continuing to pursue.
The benefits of email tracking include increased efficiency, improved targeting, greater visibility, better follow-up, improved link-building metrics, and a better understanding of engagement.
Now, let's come to a tool that does all of this perfectly!
Mailtrack is a popular email tracking tool that can be used for outreach campaigns. It is a browser extension that works with Gmail and G Suite and allows you to track when your emails are opened and clicked.
From the reviews, Mailtrack is considered a reliable and user-friendly tool for tracking email campaigns, but it may be better suited for small to medium-sized businesses. It may have fewer features than some of the more advanced tracking tools, but it is a good starting point.
Some of the features that Mailtrack offers include:
Mailtrack offers 3 pricing plans for its email tracking service.
Keyword and ranking monitoring in link building refers to the practice of tracking the performance of specific keywords and the website's ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs) concerning those keywords.
This information can be used to identify which keywords are driving traffic to a website and where the website ranks in search engine results for those keywords. This information can then be used to adjust and optimize the website and link-building efforts to improve search engine visibility and drive more traffic to the website.
Keyword and ranking monitoring are essential for link-building because it allows you to track the effectiveness of your link-building efforts and make informed decisions about optimizing your website and link-building strategy.
SERanking is a software used for keyword and ranking monitoring as part of a comprehensive SEO strategy. It allows users to track their website's performance on search engines for specific keywords.
It can also track your competitors' ranking and compare it to yours, giving you an idea of how you are performing in relation to them.
With SERanking, you can see which keywords drive the most traffic to your website and which keywords you need to focus on to improve your search engine visibility.
SERanking also allows you to set up alerts for changes in your website's rankings, so you can quickly respond to changes in your search engine visibility. Furthermore, it allows you to monitor your competitors and their ranking, which can be used to inform your own SEO strategy and tactics.
Here are some key features of SERanking:
SERanking has 4 plans in all.
AI writing tools have taken the content marketing scene by storm. So no way can this list of link-building tools be complete without mentioning them. They have enabled marketers to generate content more quickly and efficiently.
And in this competitive industry where time equals money, AI tools sound like the need of the hour. 54% of businesses employing AI assistance believe their productivity has increased.
With the advancement of AI technology, the capabilities of AI writing tools have gone up as well. They may now be able to generate more sophisticated and personalized content with greater accuracy.
As more marketers have begun to understand the benefits of AI writing tools, the adoption rate has likely increased, leading to more sophisticated and effective campaigns.
AI writing tools can be helpful in link-building outreach by helping to generate personalized and relevant content for outreach emails. This, in turn, increases the chances of getting a response and, ultimately, a link.
AI writing tools can analyze data on a recipient, such as demographics, browsing history, and search queries, which can help personalize the content of the outreach emails.
They are also great at assisting with SEO optimization by suggesting keywords and phrases that will improve search rankings. Additionally, AI writing tools can assist with language translation and localization, expanding the reach of a brand's marketing efforts.
However, it is essential to note that these tools should be used in conjunction with human oversight and editing, as they may not be able to fully capture the nuances and tone of language that are necessary for effective outreach.
It is an AI writing tool that can help users to generate written content such as emails, social media posts, and product descriptions. The tool uses advanced natural language processing (NLP) technology to analyze a user's inputs, such as keywords and prompts and then suggests written content that is relevant and tailored to those inputs.
Copy.ai also allows users to collaborate and share the generated content with others. It's been used in various industries, such as e-commerce, digital marketing, and content creation.
Copy.ai aids in creating compelling content that can be used to attract natural backlinks. By analyzing the keywords and topics related to your industry, Copy.ai can generate high-quality and engaging content that other websites may want to link to.
Some important features of Copy.ai include:
The tool includes two defined pricing plans, one of which is free.
You can get a free trial of the Pro plan for 7 days.
As we have seen, the right link-building tools can make it easy to conduct a successful link-building outreach campaign. Of course, you must also include other vital components, such as quality content creation and effective outreach strategies, to make your campaigns successful.
Your time and effort in using and exploring these tools in-depth will surely give you huge returns in your backlink-building ventures. So, don't let yourself fall behind, and get familiar with the best link-building practices today!
Whether for a professional or personal project, the right set of tools is irreplaceable. Read and share this article with those who want to know the ins and outs of an effective link-building campaign. Be sure that everyone reaps its rewards. Have fun link-building!
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Our refined link building outreach and vetting process will help you get the backlinks your website deserves.
Our refined link building outreach and vetting process will help you get the backlinks your website deserves.