As an SEO agency owner or head of SEO in your company, you know just how frustrating link-building can be. It is also time and resource-intensive, which is challenging for small businesses and startups. 

Fortunately, automated link-building lets you cut down your workload to focus on creating quality content.

In this article, you’ll learn to use automated link-building to improve your organic search ranking and skyrocket your company’s online presence.

However, if you need to boost your search engine ranking quickly, we recommend working with a link-building agency. 

Profit Engine helps you leverage niche edits, guest posts, tiered link campaigns, and HARO backlinks to establish your website as an authority in your category and rank higher on SERPs. We use a 16-point checklist to vet potential backlinks, ensuring they are non-spammy and industry-relevant.

Schedule a free consultation to learn how we can help streamline your link-building strategy!

What is Automated Link Building?

If you already know the meaning of link-building, it becomes increasingly easy to understand what automating the process means.

As a quick recap, link building is the process of adding quality backlinks from high-authority domains to your website to boost your SEO efforts. The inbound links act as a seal of approval from reputable domains that your website contains helpful content.

Usually, the link-building process involves the following steps:

• Identifying potential link targets,
• Sending backlink requests,
• Scanning for broken backlinks, and
• Tracking link-building progress.

Automated link-building means using software tools to complete these tasks ‘hands-free.’ Automation reduces the required human intervention, increasing efficiency. 

Why Automated Link Building Matters for SEO

The importance of backlinks for SEO cannot be stressed enough. Even with well-optimized content, it could take time for your website to establish authority.

Manual link-building takes time, slowing down your SEO progress. Here’s where automated link-building comes in and offers the following benefits:

• Increased Efficiency: The tools quickly scrape the internet to find industry-relevant backlinks that align with your SEO strategy.
• Easy to Scale: You can acquire a large number of backlinks in a short time, which helps you establish authority quickly.
• Boost Your Website’s Organic Ranking: Search engines consider referral traffic as an indicator that a website contains important information, assigning it a higher domain rating.
• Data-Driven Insights: Automation tools leverage AI and machine learning to analyze your backlink profile and those of your competitors to identify suitable link-building opportunities that will give your website an edge.
• Consistency and Reproducibility: Automated link building workflows follow specific criteria and rules, ensuring the backlinks meet the expected quality.

How Automated Link Building Works

Now, let’s look at the link-building automation process to help you understand how it works:

1. Identifying Linking Opportunities: Use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and BuzzStream to identify websites with relevant content and keywords that you can use for backlinks.
2. Email Harvesting: Tools like BuzzStream, Hunter.io, and Pitchbox can help you retrieve emails associated with the identified domains.
3. Validating the Contact Information: Some tools go a step further and verify the email addresses, reducing the risk of undelivered messages.
4. Outreach and Follow-Up: Email automation tools like Mailshake and Respona provide customizable templates that you can use for link building outreach and follow-up messages.
5. Monitoring the Backlinks: Automation tools help you track the acquired links, including assessing the impact on your website’s SEO performance. Also, the tools notify you in case of broken backlinks so you can contact the domain owners.

Pros and Cons of Link Building Automation

Next, let’s explore the pros and cons of automating your link-building workflows:

Pros of Automated Link-Building

Here are the expected gains of automating your backlinking process:

• It is faster than manual link-building, which is time-consuming and expensive.
• It makes it easy to identify broken links.
• Automation tools help you analyze your competitors’ backlinks for insights on refining your campaigns.
• You can execute several link-building campaigns simultaneously.
• Saves personnel costs associated with manual link-building.

Cons of Automated Link Building

Below are some drawbacks of link-building automation:

• You may need a steep learning curve, especially as a first-timer.
• Increased risk of backlinking to spammy websites that hurt your social proof.
• Significant costs associated with acquiring the automation software and training your SEO team to use it.

You can mitigate these risks by outsourcing automation to a backlinks agency. This lets you enjoy the benefits of automated link-building without incurring high costs.

Top Automated Link Building Tools for SEO

Wondering which software to use to streamline your link building strategy? We have compiled a list of tools for automating your backlinking process.

However, remember that link-building tools are only meant to automate repetitive tasks, not take over the whole process. Overreliance on link-building automation tools puts you at risk of associating your website with spammy domains, which could result in Google manual penalties.

As such, we always advise website owners to outsource link-building automation to a reputable backlinks agency.

At Profit Engine, we leverage the best automation tools to streamline link-building and help you scale your backlinks profile quickly. We also follow a stringent 16-point checklist to filter out low-quality backlinks so your website is associated only with high-authority domains.

Book a free, no-obligation call to learn how we can use automated link-building to help you grow your website’s domain authority and rating!

Now, let’s look at the best tools for link-building automation:

1. Ahrefs

Ahrefs provides tools for keyword research, link audits, and link-building automation. 

You can also use Ahrefs to monitor your competitors’ link-building strategies and receive automated notifications whenever they gain a new backlink.

2. Majestic SEO

Majestic SEO was among the first companies to offer backlink services and has been in operation for over two decades. Though overtaken by SEMrush and Ahrefs, Majestic SEO remains a favorite among digital marketers for its advanced analytics and insights.

For example, the software lets you track your domain’s trust flow, which evaluates the quality of the links that direct traffic to your website. Another standout feature is that you can find out who links to your website and contact them for backlinking partnerships.

3. Linkody

Linkody lets you manage your backlinks from a centralized dashboard. You can analyze the links to determine which ones generate organic, high-intent clicks for your website.

Also, Linkody sends automated notifications whenever another domain links to your website or removes an existing one. Lastly, you can use Linkody to identify and disavow spammy links.

4. SEMrush

SEMrush is arguably the most widely used SEO toolkit by global brands. It claims to be the go-to option for over 30% of Fortune 500 companies, including Amazon, Samsung, and FedEx.

With SEMrush, you can access up to 2,000 unique prospects for your website domain. Also, you can use its customizable outreach templates to send backlink requests to reputable domain owners.

5. MozPro

MozPro is another pioneer in the digital marketing niche, with noteworthy contributions in SEO and link-building. In fact, according to a recent study, Moz has the largest index of links spread across various sectors, including medical, finance, and technology sites.

Besides automated link-building, Moz provides additional tools for analyzing the quality of your inbound links and identifying high-performing backlinks that your competitors are using.

How to Ensure Quality Link Building with Automation 

While link-building automation is time and cost-efficient, you risk associating your domain with spammy websites. 

Here’s how to avoid such risks:

• Manual Oversight: Apply manual filters to remove high-risk and spammy backlinks.
• Ensure the Websites Are Related to Your Niche: Vet the identified websites before sending the backlink requests to ascertain the associated domains are relevant and authoritative.
• Track Your Backlink Profile: Learn important metrics for link building to monitor how the backlinks impact your organic ranking. 
• Use Reputable Automation Tools: Look for trusted link-building automation tools with a proven track record. These tools usually charge higher fees than standard software but offer better value for money.
• Personalize the Outreach Emails: While the outreach and follow-up emails are automated, tailor the messages to specific domain owners to increase their response rate.

Alternatives to Automated Link Building

Not everyone fancies automated link-building. You might prefer building your website’s backlinks manually. At this point, you must decide whether to set up an in-house link-building team or outsource to an agency.

Managing your link-building efforts internally gives you the most control over your strategy, but it comes at a significant cost. For example:

• You must hire an SEO link builder with an average salary of over $40,000.
• Also, you will need a guest post writer (average annual salary of $53,000) and a premium link-building automation tool (around $6,000 for the business package).

The estimated cost is just shy of the $100,000 mark without adding the cost of acquiring the backlinks. It goes without saying that running an in-house backlinking team is out of reach for most businesses.

This is where outsourcing comes in.

The cost of link-building services varies from one agency to another. However, you can get an entry-level package under $1,000 and increase your budget as your business grows. Visit our pricing page and pick a package that works for you!

At Profit Engine, we help SEO agencies and in-house marketing teams scale their backlinks to grow their websites’ authority and SERP ranking.

Our service catalog includes the following:

• Guest Post & Outreach: We post your guest blogs on high-authority websites and backlink them to your domain.
• Niche Edits: We add backlinks to published, high-ranking articles that align with your niche.
• HARO Link Acquisition: We help you get placement in reputable publications to establish your brand as an industry leader.
• Tiered Link Campaigns: We provide tier 2 and tier 3 backlinks to boost your domain rating and signal search engines that your website contains helpful information.

Ready to scale your SEO efforts? Learn how our link building packages can help you improve your organic search ranking.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) 

Got more questions about automating your link-building workflows? Let’s answer some of them below:

Can Automated Backlinks Harm SEO?

Yes. Automated backlinks can harm your SEO if you use backlinks from spammy domains, which can hurt your website’s credibility and trustworthiness. Also, Google might penalize your website for using backlinks from unrelated sources.

Shield your website against spammy backlinks by auditing the identified domains manually. Also, you could outsource link-building services to Profit Engine and benefit from our 16-point checklist, which we use to vet backlinks to ascertain that they meet standard quality standards. 

How Does Backlinks SEO Software Improve Rankings?

Backlinks SEO software tools improve your rankings in two ways:

• They streamline the link-building process so you can scale your backlinks quickly, improving your website’s authority.
• They help you track and resolve broken or spammy backlinks so they don’t undermine your website’s SERP ranking.

Is Link Building Automation Suitable for All Websites?

No. Link-building automation is not recommended for all websites. The following websites may not need automated link-building:

• New websites with very little content for backlinks.
• Medical websites that require manually vetting the backlinks for compliance with industry standards.
• Businesses catering only to their neighborhoods, as they only require local SEO.

Conclusion

Automated link-building takes care of repeat tasks like writing outreach and follow-up emails, which usually take time. Also, the tools cast a wider net to find suitable domains to which you can backlink to boost your website’s authority.

However, we recommend balancing between automated and manual link-building. Otherwise, you might end up with bad links or backlinking to unrelated domains, undermining your website’s credibility.

An easier option, though, would be to outsource to a link-building agency.

At Profit Engine, we have over a decade of experience helping online businesses, affiliates, and SEO agencies build high-quality, strategy-driven backlinks that improve their search engine rankings. We use a results-focused process to help you achieve measurable outcomes like increased traffic and lead generation.

Looking to revamp your backlinking strategy? Book a free consultation today!