What are the 4 link-building tools to use for your SEO? That's the question we aim to answer in this article.
The goal is to help you better understand the stakes of link building and, above all, to use it wisely to optimize your site's SEO.
The link building (also called link building) picks up the metaphor of the Internet as a "web": it consists of weaving links.
In-depth work on link building increases the number of hyperlinks pointing to your website.
But beware: to work well for SEO, link building must come from coherent sites and be done in a way that always appears natural.
As we'll see, link building can occur naturally (for example when a site is praised for its quality and gradually strengthens its reputation) or more artificially through buying or exchanging links.
How can you find your way, which tools and link-building techniques should you use to boost your SEO? We tell you everything in this article, detailing the performance associated with each tool.
Understanding the stakes of link-building
First of all, let's take a moment to understand the stakes of link building. In SEO, link building is simply the crux of the matter.
Link building, which works on peer recommendation, gives your site what is called an "authority cue".
Because recognized sites recommend your site, link to it as a reliable additional source of information, or even as a reference, it signals that your site is trustworthy.
Both in the eyes of users and Google's indexing bots, which include link building among the factors in the algorithm that determine SERP ranking.
There was a time when "blind" link building was rampant, creating an excessive number of links or links of poor or even absurd quality.
That period is definitely over. Today, to perform in SEO, well-ordered link building should only weave links with coherent semantics (that is, whose theme matches your site's).
Moreover, links should bolster your site's legitimacy: not too prestigious if you are a brand-new obscure site, and not too haphazard in the opposite case.
Should you favor promotional article links, especially to your sales pages? While they can be useful, it is rather advisable to use them only rarely and to "drown" them in the diversity of other links backlinks.
You can also resort to partnerships between sites: most often a bilateral agreement between two sites, but it is also possible to set up a backlink triangulation between three sites, which has the advantage of being more discreet.
Or practice guest blogging, that is an exchange of links between your site and the site of one of your writers.
The essential thing, ultimately, for productive netlinking in terms of SEO, is to appear natural.
That way you are sure to perform a "clean" optimization and to stay under Google's radar, which watches for and penalizes netlinking over-optimization.
We know it: you are eager to launch your netlinking strategy because you know how crucial it is to secure those precious top spots in the search results.
And you're right. However, in this field as in others, patience and the passage of time achieve more than force or fury.
If you buy links en masse, or quickly create low-quality links, the SEO boost will be felt fast but can collapse at any moment like a house of cards once Google discovers the manipulation.
That's why, with a long-term perspective, it's better to rely on a slow but sustainable netlinking approach. SEO is a marathon…
1. Majestic
Majestic is the reference tool for netlinking and SEO tracking.
Indeed, the two metrics established by Majestic (Trust Flow and Citation Flow) have become benchmarks well beyond this tool.
Trust Flow is the number of external links pointing to your site.
It's a "trust signal", similar to someone's professional recommendations on a network like LinkedIn.
This phenomenon of "co-optation" is essential, because it functions as an authentication stamp in the eyes of both the internet user and the indexing bots ofGoogle indexing : if reputable sites hold your site in high esteem, it's because you are trustworthy.
Citation Flow indicates how many times you are cited by an external site.
In addition, Majestic offers an interesting feature: Search Explorer.
The whole point of Search Explorer is to list pages according to their degree of influence: a considerable asset when looking for new partner sites to expand a site's link building.
Majestic is available in a basic free version and a paid version. Note that the free version already lets you use Majestic's essential features.
Finally, Majestic enjoys a certain reputation in the SEO world, because it has a major advantage over its direct competitor Google Search Console: it allows you to analyze not only your own site but also your competitors' by entering a simple URL!
A powerful way to understand competitors' link building strategies, or even try to appropriate in turn their quality backlinks.
2. SEMrush
SEMrush is also among the top tools available to improve a site's link building.
It's a powerful tool, favored by SEO professionals, and offering original features: the volume of backlinks and the organic traffic of competing sites, and keyword competitive monitoring.
SEMrush therefore firmly establishes itself as a tool truly focused on performance — what we call SEO "benchmarking": the analysis of link building techniques that work for other companies, to draw inspiration and boost your own link building strategy.
This is particularly important, since there isn’t a single, definitive “Google code of conduct” that you could understand and follow once and for all:
some of the criteria of the Google algorithm that govern the SERPs are both confidential and constantly changing, which is why it’s essential to monitor in real time which link-building practices work for which companies so you can replicate them.
This benchmarking approach is all the more important because your SEO competitors aren’t necessarily the same as the “real-life” competitors identified at the start of a market study…
3. Google Search Console
It needs no introduction Google Search ConsoleAnyone with even a passing interest in the SEO health of their site has dealt with it.
It provides precise indicators on the volume and nature of backlinks pointing to your site, as well as detailed data on overall site traffic and page-by-page visits.
A good way, therefore, to know where to place your backlinks most wisely.
Indeed, even if most backlinks point to your homepage, to balance SEO “juice” across your site and highlight deeper pages it’s good to have some backlinks pointing to lower-level pages.
Google Search Console is a free, essential tool, if only because it connects with the rest of Google’s suite of features.
Compared with Majestic, however, Google Search Console has the drawback of being able to analyze only your own site, not your competitors’ sites.
But it still scores points thanks to a feature unique to it: the disavow tool for bad links.
As in life, your site can sometimes receive links from undesirable sites: either because they’re dangerous, because they’re low quality, or because their content isn’t coherent with yours.
In any case, these “bad links” (in other words, “bad company”) can harm your site in two ways: first by undermining your credibility with users, and second by raising the suspicion of Google’s indexing bots.
4. On-site content quality
We’ve just presented 3 essential link-building tools to boost your off-site SEO.
But we could not conclude this reflection on inbound links for a site without mentioning the importance of working on on-site content for SEO.
Indeed, regularly creating enough high-quality text content is a reliable way to earn external links and improve organic search rankings.
How do you create this precious key?
You should first work on the keywords, sometimes choosing to favor keywords from long-tail queries in order to attract backlinks on very specific topics and thus showcase your deeper pages.
In that respect, the YourTextGuru tool can be useful: it provides keyword suggestions based on the keywords you enter. However, it doesn't tell you how to integrate them…
Next, you need to ensure a solid internal linking structure, developing semantic cocooning mimicking naturalness as much as possible.
Finally, keep in mind that to boost your organic traffic and receive authentic backlinks that reflect genuine appreciation for your site's content, the ideal is to focus on the quality of your texts. Here, rigor must be paired with creativity, and grammar with originality.
Short on time or inspiration to write relevant, high-quality texts? Call on the team of professional writers at Rédacteur.com for your projects.
