In 2025, successful link building isn’t just about finding a few websites and sending cold emails. It’s a precision game. And like any high-level game, you need the right gear.
The right tools will not only save you time—they’ll give you a serious competitive edge.
Whether you’re an in-house SEO, agency, or solo operator, your link-building stack can make or break your results.
At LinkyJuice, we’ve tested dozens (if not hundreds) of link building tools—and we’ve narrowed down the best ones into three core stages of the process:
- Research & Prospecting Tools
- Outreach & Relationship Management Tools
- Monitoring & Reporting Tools
And one more thing—automation. If you’re not automating parts of your process in 2025, you’re already behind. Combining tools like Google Sheets + App Scripts + ChatGPT can turn your workflow into a powerhouse.
Let’s dive into each stage and the tools that dominate in it.
Research & Prospecting Tools
Ahrefs – The King of Link Building and not only link building.
If we had to choose one tool that your team must have—it’s Ahrefs. There’s simply no better tool for backlink analysis, competitor research, and link opportunity discovery.
Ahrefs is packed with powerful features that make it a top choice for link builders—so let’s break down each of them and see how they can level up your strategy.
Ahrefs Site Explorer
Ahrefs’ Site Explorer is a powerhouse when it comes to competitive intelligence and backlink analysis. Whether you’re researching your competitors or evaluating a potential link opportunity, this tool gives you almost every SEO metric you need in one dashboard.
Let’s break down what you can see and do with Site Explorer:
- Domain Rating (DR) & URL Rating (UR): You get an instant sense of a domain’s authority with Ahrefs’ proprietary DR and UR metrics. For example, in the screenshot above, the domain has a DR of 91, which signals an extremely strong backlink profile.
- Backlink Profile: You can see both the total number of backlinks and referring domains (in this case: 16.5M backlinks from 88.4K domains). You’ll also see recent changes—like how many links were gained or lost over time—which is helpful to evaluate link velocity and stability.
- Organic Keywords & Traffic: Want to see what a site ranks for in Google? You can check the number of ranking keywords (301K) and estimated organic traffic (5.7M visits/month). This gives you insight into the visibility and value of the site’s SEO performance.
- Traffic Value: If you’re wondering how much that organic traffic is “worth” in PPC terms, Site Explorer estimates it—in this case, the site’s organic traffic has a value of around $3.9M/month.
- Top Organic Countries: You can also break down the traffic by location. This is great if you’re targeting specific regions (e.g., US, UK, India). In the example, you’ll see most of the traffic comes from the US (1.6M) and India (1.2M).
- Top Performing Pages, Anchors, Referring Domains, and More: On the left sidebar, you’ll find everything from broken backlinks to referring IPs, anchor text distributions, and top content. This helps you make precise decisions for your own link-building campaigns or client reporting.
Ahrefs Keyword Explorer
Ahrefs Keywords Explorer is one of the most powerful keyword research tools available in 2025. Whether you’re targeting blog content, linkable assets, or outreach-focused content, this feature helps you understand what’s worth ranking for—and how hard it’s going to be.
Let’s break down what you’re seeing in the screenshot:
- Keyword Difficulty (KD): The tool gives you a keyword difficulty score on a scale from 0–100. In this example, “link building” has a KD of 88, labeled “Super hard”, meaning you’d need backlinks from ~619 referring domains to compete in the top 10. It’s perfect for prioritizing which topics are realistic to go after.
- Search Volume & Trends: You can see that “link building” gets 6.4K monthly searches in the U.S. and 27K globally. There’s also a trend chart showing performance over time, so you can assess whether a keyword is gaining or losing popularity.
- Traffic Potential: It estimates the total traffic you could earn if you rank #1—not just from that keyword, but from all the variations your content could rank for. In this case, the traffic potential is 4.3K monthly visitors, with a value of $34.3K if you were to buy that traffic via ads.
- Top Ranking Pages: You’ll see what’s currently ranking at the top for your keyword. This is critical when analyzing your competitors and reverse-engineering their content and backlink strategies.
- Global Volume Breakdown: See where most of the search demand comes from. Here, the U.S. leads with 6.4K searches/month, followed by India, Brazil, Russia, and the UK—ideal data for localized SEO strategies.
- Keyword Ideas & Questions: Ahrefs also gives you related keyword suggestions, common questions people ask, and other SERP insights. This is gold for identifying long-tail variations and optimizing content depth.
Ahrefs Content Explorer
Ahrefs Content Explorer is your ultimate toolkit for discovering content ideas, identifying link prospects, and finding authors or publications you can reach out to. Think of it as a search engine—but just for high-performing web content.
In the screenshot above, we’re using the “All Pages” mode filtered by Live & Broken content, which gives a full landscape of published and republished URLs based on our search criteria. Here’s what you can do with this tool:
- Pages Over Time Visualization: The bar graph shows the number of live pages published over time, both originally and as republished content. This helps you spot content trends and understand when interest peaks for a particular topic. For example, this chart shows massive activity spikes between 2020 and 2022—likely an SEO trend boom.
- Powerful Filtering Options: You can filter by:
- DR
- Traffic
- Publication date
- Platform (e.g. WordPress, YouTube)
- Language
- Link status (live or broken)
- And even explicit content removal
This makes it easy to identify linkable content that still earns traction or spot broken links you can replace with your own.
- Export Functionality: Once you narrow down your targets, export them and plug them into your outreach pipeline.
- Link Prospecting Made Easy: By sorting pages by traffic, referring domains, or social shares, you can find high-performing content to study, replicate, or reach out to for backlinks. Combine this with filters like “DR 70+” to find high-authority sites worth pitching.
Content Explorer is especially useful if you want to:
- Find authors who write about a topic across multiple sites
- See which articles have earned the most backlinks
- Track content freshness and update frequency
- Pinpoint broken content opportunities for outreach
This feature is pure gold for discovering top-performing content across the web. Filter by DR, backlinks, organic traffic, and more—and instantly spot link-worthy pages and authors.
Ahrefs also offers advanced features like AI Content Helper for creating SEO-driven content and Brand Radar for tracking unlinked brand mentions—both useful add-ons for link builders.
Pricing: Starts at $99/month and goes up. Ahrefs also charges based on credits for certain advanced usages like content and keyword reports.
Semrush
Semrush is one of the most well-rounded SEO platforms, but when it comes to link building research, its power lies in competitor analysis and prospect discovery.
Here’s how our team at LinkyJuice uses it:
- Backlink Gap Tool: This lets you compare your domain to multiple competitors and instantly spot linking domains you’re missing out on.
- Link Building Tool: With one setup, it shows you outreach prospects (and even gives basic outreach workflow management).
- Domain Overview: Quickly check the backlink profile strength, referring domains, authority score, and more.
If you’re serious about scaling link acquisition based on your competitors’ wins, Semrush should absolutely be in your stack.
Pricing: Starts at $129.95/month. Semrush charges based on usage tiers and limits on reports/rows per day.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo isn’t your typical backlink tool — it’s more of a content intelligence powerhouse. But that’s exactly why it works so well in the research phase.
At LinkyJuice, we often use BuzzSumo to:
- Find viral content in a specific niche and see who linked to or shared it.
- Identify journalists, influencers, and publishers who consistently engage with content similar to yours.
- Discover “link bait” formats that actually get attention in your niche (studies, listicles, templates, etc.).
The “Top Sharers” and Backlink Referrer features make it incredibly easy to build a highly targeted outreach list based on proven interest.
Pricing: BuzzSumo offers a free version with limited data. Paid plans start at $119/month. Credit-based limits apply depending on plan.
Outreach & Relationship Management Tools
Pitchbox
Pitchbox is one of the most complete outreach platforms for link builders. It combines prospecting, contact discovery, email sequencing, and reporting — all in one.
At LinkyJuice, we’ve found Pitchbox incredibly useful when:
- Managing large-scale outreach campaigns with multiple steps
- Assigning outreach tasks across teams
- Customizing templates and tracking replies in one dashboard
It integrates with Ahrefs, Moz, and SEMrush to pull in domain metrics, helping you prioritize your best prospects.
Pricing: Starts around $495/month. It’s built for teams and agencies, not solo link builders on a tight budget — but the automation and scale can pay off fast.
Hunter.io
You’ve got a list of websites. Now you need contacts — Hunter makes that process fast and simple.
Here’s how we typically use it:
- Find email addresses tied to specific domains
- Verify email deliverability before outreach (reduce bounces)
- Enrich leads with job titles or roles when possible
It’s especially helpful when combined with tools like Google Sheets or your CRM.
Pricing: Free plan includes 25 searches/month. Paid plans start at $49/month and operate on a credit system.
Instantly
Instantly is quickly becoming a go-to for agencies and power users who want to manage hundreds or thousands of cold emails per week — without hitting spam folders.
We love it because:
- It lets you connect unlimited email accounts (great for scale)
- Inbox rotation and warming features help protect deliverability
- Campaigns are easy to personalize with variables and conditions
If you’re running link building outreach across multiple personas or brands, Instantly makes it easy to keep it all under one roof.
Instantly offers a powerful feature that sets it apart: it provides pre-warmed email addresses, so you can kick off your outreach campaigns immediately without waiting weeks for proper inbox warming.
Pricing: Starts at $37/month. Very affordable for how much it offers — especially for agencies.
Apollo.io
Apollo is more than just a contact database — it’s a full-scale sales intelligence and outreach tool that works incredibly well for link builders, too.
At LinkyJuice, we use Apollo to:
- Find verified contact emails at scale from a database of 270M+ professionals
- Filter by role, domain type (.edu, .org, etc.), and keywords to target the right people
- Send and manage outreach campaigns directly within the platform
- Enrich your CRM or Google Sheets with contact and company-level data
It’s especially powerful for teams that want precision targeting and outreach in one tool — no jumping around.
Pricing: Offers a free plan with limited credits. Paid plans start at $49/month and scale based on outreach volume and credits.
SalesQL
SalesQL is a Chrome extension designed to pull verified email addresses and contact details directly from LinkedIn profiles. It’s a goldmine for link builders who use LinkedIn to prospect — especially for hard-to-reach decision-makers in niche industries.
Key reasons we like SalesQL:
- Pulls emails, phone numbers, and social links from 1st, 2nd, and even 3rd-degree connections
- Organizes prospects automatically by folders and lists
- Offers a lead export function to CSV or CRM
- Works smoothly alongside tools like Apollo for deeper enrichment
Pricing: Free plan available with limited credits; paid plans start at $39/month.
Monitoring & Reporting Tools
This stage is where all your efforts come together. After researching and reaching out, you need to track the results—whether it’s links that went live, responses from editors, or SERP movement.
Here are the tools we recommend for tracking, analyzing, and reporting on your link-building campaigns:
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is not just great for research—its Site Explorer and Backlink Reports are essential for tracking new and lost backlinks. You can monitor the growth of your backlink profile, get alerts for new links, and check anchor text distribution.
Why we use it for reporting:
- Real-time backlink indexing
- Tracks lost or removed links
- Easily filters dofollow/nofollow and referring domains
- Automated alerts for new/lost backlinks
If you’re already using Ahrefs for research, its monitoring tools complete the cycle beautifully.
Google Search Console – Essential!!!
While it’s not a link-building tool per se, GSC helps you:
- See which pages earned backlinks
- Analyze traffic from linked content
- Monitor site performance as you build links
Plus, it’s free and easy to connect to your site.
Google Sheets
No fancy price tag, just raw power. Our team at LinkyJuice uses Google Sheets to track:
- Outreach status
- Live links
- Prospect lists
- Monthly performance
You can even automate reporting using Google Apps Script or integrations with tools like Zapier.
Google Apps Script
Google Apps Script is a hidden gem when it comes to managing and automating your link-building process inside Google Sheets.
Here’s how it can seriously level up your workflow:
What Is Google Apps Script?
Google Apps Script is a JavaScript-based platform that lets you add custom functionality to your Google Workspace tools—including Sheets. Think of it like a lightweight automation engine built directly into your spreadsheet.
You can write scripts that automatically pull data, send emails, create reports, or update link statuses—without touching anything manually.
How Link Builders Use Google Apps Script
Here are a few real-world use cases (some we use at LinkyJuice daily):
- Auto-track live backlinks
Use scripts to check URLs and verify if a backlink is live or removed. You can set this to run on a timer (daily/weekly).
- Update outreach statuses automatically
When a prospect replies or a link goes live, your Sheets can update rows with new statuses or even timestamp them.
- Sync data across multiple sheets
Perfect if you’re managing a large team. Sync status updates from your team members’ sheets into a master dashboard.
- Send automated follow-ups
Scripts can be triggered to send follow-up emails based on the status column (like “No Response in 5 Days”).
- Generate client reports instantly
Push a button → pull data from your live log → auto-generate a new report tab or PDF to send to clients.
Combine Google Apps Script with ChatGPT, and you’ve got yourself a powerhouse combo. Apps Script handles the automation, while ChatGPT takes care of the code generation, smart suggestions, and great ideas for improvement of the processes —together, you can scale processes, save hours of manual work, and build links like a machine.
Final Thoughts: Build Smarter, Not Harder
Link building in 2025 is no longer a guessing game—it’s a data-driven, tech-powered process. The right tools won’t just speed things up; they’ll give you the insights and systems to land better links, at scale, with less effort.
From pinpointing golden opportunities with Ahrefs and Semrush, to streamlining outreach through Apollo and SalesQL, to automating the backend with Google Apps Script + ChatGPT—your stack is your edge.
At LinkyJuice, we’ve tested all these tools in real client campaigns. They work. But remember: tools only amplify your strategy. Without solid execution, even the best software won’t move the needle.
Use this guide to refine your link-building setup—and if you ever need a partner who lives and breathes this stuff, you know where to find us.
Need help putting these tools into action?
Book a call with LinkyJuice and let our team supercharge your backlink strategy.
