Semrush Link Building Tool: Helps to build SEO-friendly links

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The website is your online asset meant to drive traffic towards your brand. And SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the heart of this asset. One of the essential components of SEO is link building. In SEO, backlinks act as “votes of confidence” from other websites, affecting rank in search results.

Strong backlinks help you give cutting-edge competition to your rivals and gain better convertible leads. Search engines, including Google, may see backlinks as signals of authority, and Google treats certain backlinks as endorsements, which can result in higher rankings in organic search results.

Links from authoritative sites usually have more SEO impact than those from less authoritative sites, and backlinks carry more weight when they come from sites in your niche, implying respect from experts in the field.

Semrush has developed a comprehensive suite of SEO tools, including its link-building tool, to help you acquire high quality backlinks and avoid Google penalties by monitoring and managing your backlink profile.

This tool enables you to run an efficient outreach activity to gain potential links, while also allowing you to conduct a competitive analysis of your SEO rivals and an outreach campaign.

The Semrush database has over 16.7 trillion backlinks, according to their record for 2019. Backlinks with descriptive anchor text help search engines understand what the linked page is about, and not all backlinks have the same impact on SEO; some may have no effect, while toxic backlinks can be harmful.

This review focuses on this tool’s features and functionality, mainly when it is used to launch a project through Semrush.

Launching a project on Semrush for a better online presence

Semrush projects are set up to analyze all the aspects of a business’ online presence using 12 analytical tools. Semrush is a comprehensive suite of SEO tools that covers link-building, backlink analysis, outreach campaigns, and more, making it an all-in-one platform for boosting online visibility.

Depending on your subscription type, there is a variation in the number of projects your Semrush can host at a given time.

The number ranges from 1 to 25 projects. All the briefs related to your ongoing projects are visible on the Dashboard.

You can also get detailed tabular information on all of them, depending on the analysis conducted by all the 12 analytical tools. Semrush automates tasks and uses AI to speed up content creation and SEO efforts, streamlining your workflow.

You only need to launch your project on Semrush and get the tool configuration done perfectly for accurate reports that will help you improve your online visibility. One of the essential tools among them is the link-building tool. Let’s talk about it in detail!

Semrush is best suited for small businesses with an in-house marketing person who can dedicate time to using the platform.

What is a link-building tool?

The link-building tool by Semrush is dedicated to exploring the link-building opportunities for any domain of yours, providing you with an interface that can help you acquire potential links for a successful outreach campaign.

The tool helps users find backlink opportunities and identify backlink prospects for outreach, making it easier to improve your site’s authority and SEO performance. The tool performs the following functions to achieve this goal:

• The tool provides a huge list of outreach prospects based on the target keywords and SEO rivals.
• Efficiently performs bulk backlink analysis to evaluate multiple backlink opportunities across competitor domains.
• Workflow management of the outreach processes.
• Allows users to manage outreach campaigns directly, including sending personalized emails to prospects and facilitating direct contact with website owners through integrated email outreach.
• Gmail integration for communication through project reports.
• The tool also helps to retrieve the contact information for the target websites.
• It also provides timely reports of the campaign/project.

Significance of link building

Link building is as important as any other SEO activity your website undergoes for better online visibility. Building links and earning links naturally are crucial strategies to improve your SEO performance, as they help you acquire high-quality backlinks that boost your search rankings.

The search engine targets these links to find your website. Thus, they also decide your rankings on SERPs.

Hence, looking around for newer and stronger backlinks is essential to maintain and upscale your website’s rankings.

The #1 search result contains an average of 3.8x more backlinks than positions #2 – #10, highlighting the ranking power of backlinks and the value of acquiring more links from authoritative sources. And the link-building tool helps you with the same.

Configuration of the Semrush link-building tool in your project

Configuration of the link-building tool in your project requires some simple steps as follows:

1. Go to your project dashboard.
2. In the link-building widget, click on the setup button.
3. Enter ten keywords in the window
4. Semrush will provide you with multiple keyword suggestions.
5. You can either remove or add your suggestions.
6. Semrush also allows you to change the regional database for searching keywords through the country selector.
7. Now you can also add ten competitors.
8. You will get the list of competitors by Semrush from their Organic competitor reports.
9. You can now add or remove the competitors’ domains from the list. Analyzing a competitor’s domain can reveal valuable backlink opportunities, such as identifying gaps or broken links that you can target for your own link-building strategy.
10. You need to review your prospects and reach out to the websites with the best opportunities for your firm.

After reviewing prospects, check the overall rating of each domain and evaluate your website’s backlink profile. Use metrics like indexed pages and link attributes (such as nofollow, sponsored, and UGC) to prioritize the most valuable link-building opportunities.

How does the link-building tool work after the configuration?

Semrush takes time to extract all the data from the internet that matches your configuration setups. The tool will further display four tabs on the screen to manage the workflow:

1. Overview: This tab displays a report which is a summary of your campaign size and growth through the following aspects:
   • Number of prospects involved in your campaign
   • Number of prospects that you remain to reach out
   • Number of replies you have attained from your prospects
   • Number of domains that you are currently monitoring
   • Visual charts and analytics to help you monitor your campaign’s progress and assess the effectiveness of your link-building strategy
2. Prospects: Out of all the prospective link-building foci mentioned here, you can remove the ones you wish to avoid and get the final list of your prospects. The prospect report mentions the following details:
   • Your prospects’ domains
   • The domains that rank high on the organic keyword search
   • Domains that offer backlinks to your rivals and the ones that mention your brand name
   • Domains that you uploaded to your campaign
   • The domains that have a history of linking to your site
   • Manage outreach campaigns and track outreach efforts to site owners directly from this tab
3. Progress: The list of prospects now advances to this tab, where you can contact them with a specific outreach strategy. This tab also allows you to monitor the status of your outreach campaigns and measure the effectiveness of your outreach efforts to site owners.
4. Monitor: Once you contact your prospect, you can move them to the monitor tab and wait for their reply. The tab also helps you to track new backlinks arriving from your prospects. Additionally, you can track lost backlinks, identify which links have disappeared, and note that not all backlinks are equally valuable, some may be harmful or have no impact. Regular link building audits are essential to track new, lost, and potentially harmful backlinks.

Analyzing competitor backlinks with the Semrush Link Building Tool

Understanding your competitors’ backlink strategies is a game-changer for any successful link building campaign. The Semrush Link Building Tool offers a powerful backlink analytics tool that lets you dive deep into your competitors’ backlink profiles, uncovering valuable insights and new link building opportunities.

By analyzing competitor backlinks, you can identify the referring domains, anchor text, and backlink types that are helping other websites rank higher, giving you a roadmap to strengthen your own SEO strategy.

Here’s how you can leverage the Semrush Link Building Tool to analyze competitor backlinks and supercharge your link building efforts:

1. Enter your competitor’s domain: Start by entering the domain of a key competitor into the link building tool. This will generate a comprehensive backlink profile, showing you exactly where their links are coming from.
2. Explore backlink analytics: The tool provides detailed backlink analytics, including the total number of backlinks, referring domains, and the anchor text distribution. This helps you understand which links are driving the most SEO impact for your competitors.
3. Spot the backlink gap: Use the backlink analytics tool to identify gaps in your own link profile compared to your competitors. This reveals missing backlinks and highlights new link building opportunities you can target to close the gap.
4. Discover new link building opportunities: Semrush suggests potential referring domains and anchor text based on your competitors’ backlink profiles, making it easier to find high quality backlinks that can boost your online visibility.
5. Track competitor backlinks over time: Monitor your competitors’ link building progress by tracking new and lost links. This ongoing analysis helps you stay ahead, adapt your outreach process, and respond quickly to changes in the competitive landscape.

Filters offered by the Semrush Link Building Tool

While reviewing your prospects, the link-building tool allows you to apply filters and search your potential backlinks through keywords, URL types, or top-level domains.

These filters help users find backlink opportunities and analyze backlink prospects more efficiently, making it easier to identify and prioritize the best sites for outreach.

You can choose wiki URLs if searching for domains that informally share factual knowledge.

Similarly, you can go for blog URLs if you wish to write a guest post or promote your product and services on their blogs. Further, you can opt for news, forums, and general URLs according to your requirements.

If you want to apply one of the keywords as your filter, you can choose the respective filter and select the keyword. The link-building tool will search the domain accordingly. Applying the TLD filter, you can search for the domains belonging to different countries.

Features of the progress tab in the Semrush link-building tool

The progress tab of the Semrush link-building tool allows you to perform a variety of functions on your domain prospects with the following features:

You can monitor your link-building campaign’s progress with intuitive charts, making it easy to track performance and results over time.

Connect your email account to manage outreach campaigns directly from the tool. This integration allows you to contact domain owners, track responses, and streamline your outreach process without leaving the Semrush platform.

The tool provides customizable email templates to improve outreach efforts. These templates can be tailored for different outreach campaigns, helping you personalize communication, increase response rates, and enhance the effectiveness of your link-building strategy.

1. Adding or connecting the tool to your mail account:

You can automate your email outreach campaign by connecting the link-building tool to your Gmail, Outlook, Exchange Online, or Office 365. Once you complete this step, you can easily send and receive emails and keep track of your campaign.

Thus, through this feature, you can send around 500 emails per day from a Gmail account or 100 emails/per day from a Microsoft account.

2. Keeping track of the domains

The “Domains in progress” option on the progress tab helps you get a simple analysis of your campaign. It displays the emails that are still not sent to the prospects and those that have been delivered, seen, and replied to (manually or auto-reply).

3. Importing domains from other platforms

Suppose you have a list of potential domains and want to add them to your list; you can click on “Import” and choose from the file of domains present in your system. Once you add a domain, the Semrush link-building tool will get the contact information and reach out to the prospect.

4. Checking the domain quality and domain health

Semrush provides options for testing the domains’ quality based on four important factors: Traffic, Keywords, Backlinks, and Referring domains.

The Backlink Audit tool helps determine the domains’ health based on around 50 factors. The health is displayed in scores ranging from 1 to 100, where one is the best and 100 is the worst.

It also helps users avoid Google penalties by evaluating the Domain Health of prospects to prevent building toxic links, ensuring a healthy backlink profile and safeguarding against potential google penalties.

5. Email customization

If you wish to generate a campaign-specific pitch customized for different domains, you can edit your emails anytime by selecting the emails and editing them. The edits you make can include changes in email templates, messages, and even font formatting.

Other features include optimization of the outreach strategies, saving different templates, and filtering the prospects.

Features of the monitoring tab in the Semrush link-building tool

The monitor tab breaks all the domains into five classes viz, Active, Lost, Undefined, Rejected, and Deleted. It also allows you to track lost backlinks, helping you identify and recover links that have disappeared due to page removals or site changes.

Additionally, you can analyze which pages on your site have the most backlinks, using this data to inform and refine your future link-building strategies. Apart from this, you can perform the following functions:

1. Filtering the data

You can filter the data displayed on the screen based on the type of link and Google Search Console index and redirect chains. These filters help you to search for and check the reports of all the domains in your interest.

Further, some domains are marked as undefined, lost, rejected, or deleted. Finding these domains will help you know the reason behind their unavailability. You can also resolve any issues related to them on your side and add some of them back to your campaign.

2. Importing domains and exporting backlinks

Like the process tab, the monitor tab provides an option for importing domains. Further, you can keep track of the backlinks you monitor by exporting them into a CSV file and saving them on your system.

3. Updating data

You can update the data on the monitor tab according to your plans and actions at any given time. Once you update the data, the monitor tab will show the new data within minutes.

Conclusion

Thus, the Semrush link-building tool is highly efficient in managing your SEO, especially when launching a project. The tool makes every process that goes into the backlink generation and runs a successful outreach campaign more accessible and faster.

It manages every step by categorizing the data and displaying it in a highly sorted manner. Further, the tool offers various automation while contacting and monitoring the domains. You can join the free trials, watch the tutorials to get a hands-on tool, and then start using the professional version for better outcomes.

More tips to improve your SEO Strategy using Semrush tools

• Semrush Site Audit Tool – Everything you need to know
• A guide to SEO-friendly content writing with Semrush
• Semrush Review – On-page SEO Checker
• Increase Your Online Visibility With Semrush – Special Offer Inside
• How to do local SEO keyword research
• Guide to disavow low-quality backlinks using Semrush and Google tools
• How to use Semrush Keyword Research Tools?