Link building has become a very hard and tricky job, and because of that you need professional tools to help you with that. LinkResearchTools developed 21 different tools that you can and should use for discovering and building new, high-quality links.


7. Discover competitors' common backlinks

If you research your competitors, you will probably notice that they have some backlinks in common which you don’t have yet. Well, if they managed to get these backlinks, why shouldn’t you too?

All you have to do is analyze these backlinks and try to get them as well. The Common Backlinks Tool (CBLT) is a tool especially made for this. Enter up to 10 competitors and start your report. CBLT will help you not only find common backlinks, but also discover competitor’s sources and techniques.
Common backlinks for the top 6 UK newspapers, sorted by LRT Power*Trust dom


8. Get an indirect backlink from your competitor


It is quite common that some of your competitors link to the same sites. Link Juice Thief (LJT) finds places where your competitors commonly link to. These sites are usually big authorities in your industry.
The Link Juice Thief (LJT) has a similar results matrix to the Common Backlinks Tool (CBLT). In many cases, you will find that the pages your competitors link to are authoritative sites in your niche.
Common websites where the top 6 news websites in the United Kingdom link to sorted by LRT Power*Trust dom.

A link from such a place would be very helpful as to the powerful link juice your website would receive. But there is something else: if you manage to get your backlink here, your competitors will indirectly link to you.
The Link Juice Thief (LJT) tool helps you get backlinks from high authority pages in your niche.
A-H are your competitors, commonly linking to #1, #2 and #3. If you get a link from #1, #2 or #3, you will have your competitors indirectly linking to you.

What are you waiting for? Go and build those links! Just make sure that these websites are relevant to your niche, have low risk for your backlink profile and a decent LRT Power*Trust.
Have in mind that the Link Juice Thief (LJT) tool is available only in the LinkResearchTools Superhero plan and higher plans.

9. Recover your dead backlinks


Sometimes you might find broken links to your website. This may be the case if the location of your page changes or if another webmaster misspelled your link. In both cases, these backlinks will return a 404 error.
Such issues may also commonly occur after a site was re-launched or migrated to another domain. You should then redirect these backlinks to some other page.
The Link Juice Recovery Tool (LJR) helps you find the backlinks that your site has, that are linking to a non-existent page (HTTP-code 404). You should try and recover this power and trust those links have either by recreating the page, or redirecting the link to another existing page.
LJR doesn’t only detect HTTP-code 404 errors, it also detects timeout errors (504) or invalid access errors (403) for example. When re-launching your website, you want to look at all these errors, find the root problem and fix it before you get in trouble.
The Link Juice Recovery Tool is very simple to use; just pop in your URL there and run the report. First, you will get a list of all your broken backlinks:

Once you have the list, the LJR tool will generate a .htaccess code which you can easily insert into your .htaccess file.



Check also Wikipedia's dead links

Did you ever think about using Wikipedia's dead links as a link building source? Google finds Wikipedia to be as a very trustworthy site. You can find dead or broken links there and forward or replace them. A good, free tool for this is Wikigrabber. There you can search for keywords and get the pages that require a citation on Wikipedia or have a dead link on them.
Even if the Wikipedia links are NoFollow links, they still pass on a lot of trust. Don't think that Google doesn't look at NoFollow links. It does since we've also seen them mentioning NoFollow links in Manual Action penalty claims. Read more about NoFollow links in this research we published here.
Link Research SEO Toolbar Wikipedia SEO Metrics at a Glance


10. Turn your mentions into backlinks


This is probably one of the easiest ways to gain some new backlinks. Somebody already wrote something about you. They mentioned your brand or product, but they have not linked to your website. In situations like these, it is usually enough to contact the webmaster and ask him to convert that mention into a backlink.
But, how do you find those mentions? With LinkResearchTools is easy. All you need to do is start a Backlink Profiler (BLP) report and filter the results by Link Status > MENTION.
Backlink Profiler (BLP) - Mentions

The Backlink Profiler (BLP) is a great tool for finding mentions that look like links but to find brand mentions that don’t look like URLs will take a little more digging.
Another way to find and monitor mentions is by using the SERP Research Tool (SERP) with a smart combination of advanced search operators.
Here’s an example where we try to find mentions of Active Campaign, with no link to www.activecampaign.com, using the SERP Tool from the LinkResearchTools SEO toolkit.

Here are the search operators we used in this example:

  • “active campaign” OR “activecampaign” -activecampaign.com
  • “active campaign” “marketing automation” -activecampaign.com
  • “active campaign” “email marketing” -activecampaign.com

To find the most mentions you should select all results from any time or the last year. It’s best to use the local search engine and language that your target audience will use too. In the metrics section, you can select the metrics you wish, but you will want to look at the LRT Trust*Power Details.
Once your SERP report is completed, you need to select “NO” in the ‘Linked’ column to see the URLs that are not linked to your site.
ActiveCampaign Mentions - SERP Tool

To find the strongest pages mentioning your brand, you can sort the results further by LRT Power*Trust.
High LRT Power*Trust ActiveCampaign Mentions - SERP Tool

If someone already mentioned your brand, then why wouldn’t they want to link to you?
A simple email like this will usually do the trick:

“Hey [NAME],
I'm [YOUR NAME], [POSITION] at [WEBSITE].
I see you mentioned my [WEBSITE] on [Your Page] about [The Subject]. Thank you for doing that I really appreciate it.
However, I was wondering if you would mind adding a hyperlink, so that people can find out more about [The Subject].
I think it would be super-useful for your visitors.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this.
Thanks a lot.
All the best.
[Your Name]”
The SERP Tool might not find as many mentions as a straight Google search. However, it will find the most relevant results, so you can avoid wasting time chasing links that may be weak or irrelevant.


11. Find the strongest competitors healthy backlinks


Since Google launched the Penguin update in 2012, strong links are not the only webmaster's concern. If you do not want to be penalized, links must be safe as well. How do you find those strong, and yet not risky links, relevant for your niche?
You can use Competitive Link Detox (CDTOX) to compare your site against 10 of your competitors. After you get the report results, you can easily sort links by LRT Power*Trust and by very low DTOXRISK.
Italian Coffee Sellers Competitor's Links With Low DTOXRISK and High LRT Power*Trust


12. Find the most relevant link building opportunities


There are many opportunities for link building on the Internet. There are many forums, blogs or sites where you could place your backlink, but usually it is not so easy to find them. Whether you want to find a strong relevant site or blog where you can place a guest article or thematic forum with Follow links – the SERP Research Tool will help you. SERP is designed to help you find the most relevant and strongest results.
After you get your results, you can sort them by strength, theme or any other metric you want. The best thing about SERP is that you know these links are relevant and high authorities in your industry.
Here's an example on how to use the SERP tool to find great guest post opportunities for the bodybuilding and fitness industry.
Search operators:

  • inurl:submission-guidelines + muscle building,
  • inurl:write-for-us + workout routines
  • workout +guestpost +health
  • contribute +fat loss

If you sort the SERP tool results by LRT Power*Trust, you will discover some great guest posting opportunities.
SERP Tool Guest Post Opportunities Sorted by LRT Power*Trust



13. Be aware of your competitor's new links


Very often, a quick reaction can mean the difference between success and failure. On the Internet, it is pretty similar. It is extremely important to be aware of your competitor's activities.
Link Alerts (LA) is a tool made to inform you about your new backlinks, but, apart from that, you can also use it to monitor your competitors.
Not only will it help you find some new backlink opportunities, but it can also enable you to discover some new sources and techniques you could use in the future.

The best thing about Link Alerts is that you can set it up to send you e-mail notifications with fresh backlinks. It's like Google Alerts, but for links. This will allow you to identify negative SEO attacks right away. In case of new, unwanted links, you can react immediately, and thus protect your site from being hit by a Google Penalty. Read all about the risks and techniques of negative SEO attacks here and learn how you can protect your site.

14. Launch a "Scholarship" contest or a giveaway campaign



.gov and .edu links pass a lot of Trust, but they are also very hard to get. Here's a great example of how The HOTH does it.
They launched "The HOTH SEO Scholarship Program" awarding a scholarship to students in the United States who write a blog post on the topic “How Companies Can Take Advantage of Digital Marketing”. The requirements are simple:

Students have access to University Blogs and magazines. I bet that The HOTH will get a lot of high-trust links from this campaign. After a quick peek at their backlink profile, I see that they already earned a lot of .edu links from the "Scholarship" campaign. A very smart link building idea if you can afford it.



The HOTH Backlink Profile .edu Links
EasyMoney Reviewed by EasyMoney on . Advanced link building tips Link building has become a very hard and tricky job, and because of that you need professional tools to help you with that. LinkResearchTools developed 21 different tools that you can and should use for discovering and building new, high-quality links. 7. Discover competitors' common backlinks If you research your competitors, you will probably notice that they have some backlinks in common which you don’t have yet. Well, if they managed to get these backlinks, why shouldn’t you too? All Rating: 5