As has always been the case, building links remains one of the most powerful components in the SEO toolbox. By earning links from other websites and blogs, your brand enjoys a better reputation among search engines and increased traffic flowing from these sites. While there are certainly instances in which an earned link can actually harm your SEO, most situations are to be desired.

There are many different ways to go about building links, but there are processes and tools for each and every one. Today, we’ll look at three utilities specifically that can help make the link building process a breeze.

Google Alerts

One of the easiest ways to build backlinks is to look for other websites that mention you – but who have forgotten to link back to you. While there are many utilities that make pinging servers for mentions easy, the easiest one to use that’s also free has to be Google Alerts. This platform makes it incredibly easy to see any mentions of your brand or website that has been indexed by Google, and can be an invaluable utility when using for the first time. Just think of all the potential mentions out there that you’ve never noticed or looked for: you can now begin the process of reaching out to these sites and asking for a link to be included!

Ahrefs

Long known as a link building authority, Ahrefs offers a complete dashboard and set of utilities that come in handy when building links. Not only can you quickly find all of your existing backlinks through its backlink checker function, but you can also seamlessly use the utility to disavow any negative or otherwise bad backlinks earned in the past.

Sometimes, building links revolves around analyzing the competition: from where are they earning links? Ahrefs makes it easy to determine this information; through its Site Explorer function, you can inspect the backlink profile of any site on the internet, helping to discover exactly who you might want to target in the future for new links.

Broken Link Builder

Backlinks you’ve earned – but that aren’t currently working – aren’t backlinks at all. As such, never assume that an earned link will always remain relevant. There are also plenty of situations where somebody did try to link to your website, but accidentally messed up the URL (or you may have recently changed your URL structure and not properly setup forwards).

In any event, getting to the bottom of broken backlinks is crucial. With the Broken Link Builder utility, you can quickly begin pinging servers and determine which links are not working and rectify the problem. It can also be used to search for broken links within a given topic or niche, meaning that you’ll have opportunities to point out problems to potential websites and earn links over your competitors.

Building links is more work than it may seem, but there are many ways in which to do it. Whether you’re looking for non-linked mentions, fixing broken links or analyzing the competition, there are many opportunities available.