How do you reach thousands of bloggers without spending extra time working on weekends? With the help of blog outreach tools. But it’s more than that.
Every SEO expert knows a solid backlink profile means higher rankings, more organic traffic, and outperforming your competition.
However, to be effective at building backlinks, you need professional backlink software or tools to climb to Google’s VIP list. Unfortunately, most backlink software tools are out of reach for small businesses and startups with limited budgets.
That’s why we’ve created this guide to offer a solution: affordable blogger outreach tools to maximize your outreach efforts. But first…
What is link building software, and do you need it?
Apart from blogger outreach tools, you might have heard about link building software or blogger outreach software. Question is, do you need blogger outreach software for your outreach campaign?
Link building software helps you find link building and backlink outreach opportunities. The three major players in the game right now are Buzzsumo, Ahrefs, and SEMrush, though there are various excellent options as well.
Each link-building tool has slightly different features. Mainly, they help you find websites that serve as good sources to get backlinks from.
For example, Ahrefs shows you which sites link to your competitors but not to you. How does that help you?
Answer: If your competitors get links from those sites, it means those sites accept guest posts or are willing to give out outbound links for other reasons.
The same goes for SEMRush and BuzzSumo:
- SEMrush helps you find outreach opportunities and contact information based on keywords or competitors you enter into the tool and integrates with Gmail to help you run outreach campaigns.
- Buzzsumo helps you find content creators in your niche who share content similar to yours.
How much does link building software traditionally cost?
The problem with traditional link-building software like Ahrefs or SEMrush is they are simply too expensive for most small business owners.
When you Google “best link building software”, almost all the results will list sites like Ahrefs or SEMrush. As for the price? Well…
- Ahrefs: Ahrefs’ cheapest plan is $99/month. Each Link Intersect report will only give you 10 rows if you have the cheapest plan. You need the $179/month plan to truly use the backlink tool.
- SEMrush: SEMrush is even more expensive, with the cheapest monthly plan at $119.50/month.
- Buzzsumo: Buzzsumo’s cheapest plan is $99/month. Although there’s a free plan, it only gives you 10 searches/month, which isn’t very helpful.
As you can see, the three tools together cost well over $300/month for the cheapest plans, which equals more than $3,600/year.
That’s out of the reach for most small businesses. While you can get discounts when you pay yearly (for example, Ahrefs offers two months per year free for yearly billing), that still requires you to pay a hefty sum each year, which can eat into your budget.
Link building tools you can use
We’re not saying to disregard blogger outreach software like Ahrefs, SEMRush, or BuzzSumo. What we’re saying is…
There’s nothing wrong to start with budget link-building tools.
We’ll talk more about how we can help in a second, but let’s first take a look at some free or cheap link-building tools that exist. To meet our criteria, tools need to cost less than $25/month; ideally, less than $15/month.
1. Linkody
Linkody is probably the best and most affordable link-building software tool we’ve come across by far. It has a $14.90/month plan, making it affordable for small businesses too.
Here’s what you can do with Linkody’s $14.90/month plan:
- Analyze your backlink profile
- Compare your profile to your competitor’s backlink profile
- See which sites link to your competitors but not to you
- Check your pages for 404 errors, so you don’t lose link juice
- Monitor your backlink profile 24/7
- Receive email notifications about your or competitors’ backlink activity
- Use the disavow tool to disavow links
For $14.90/month, you can monitor two domains and 500 backlinks. For $24.90/month, you can monitor five domains and 2,000 backlinks.
2. Link Builder
Link Builder, or LinkBuilder.io, is an entirely free Google search results scraper that helps you find relevant websites to reach out to. While it is free, it is very limited; for example, it doesn’t give you contact information for those websites.
All it does is create a text list of the results on Google. You can set positive and negative filters for specific domain types like .com or specific keywords to exclude sites like Wikipedia.
3. Hunter.io
Hunter.io has a free, albeit limited, plan.
It lets you find contact details for any domain name. Simply enter a URL, and it will scrape contact details from the web. If there are no verified addresses, it will show you the most likely email addresses. The free plan allows you to make 25 searches/month.
4. BuzzStream
BuzzStream allows you to monitor backlinks, discover contact details for outreach campaigns, manage your outreach campaigns and track replies, send automated follow-ups, and more.
The cheapest plan costs $24/month, allows you to track 1,000 backlinks, conduct 30 prospect searches, and manage outreach to 1,000 contacts.
All of these four tools together cost you less than $40/month, which is a big step down from $300+/month. If you delete Buzzsumo, the three other tools will cost you less than $15/month.
How we can help
We know how difficult it can be to build quality links on a budget, which is why we offer various affordable link-building services for small and local businesses.
Our goal is to make link building accessible for everyone, regardless of how many employees they have or whether they employ anyone at all.
Take our Budget Tier 1’s service, for example. We have an exclusive list of high-quality, tier-1 domains we can get backlinks from in a wide range of niches. We can’t tell you our secret list, but they are real blogs, with real content, and the average DA for the top 20 sites is 54.
You can also check out our regular Big Citations service for local citations, which costs just $29.99.
We have over 23 sites in our network which we submit to manually. These include the major local data sites. Compare our Big Citations service to services such as Yext and Universal Basic Listings, which cost hundreds of dollars a year.
For additional affordable citations, we offer our Hyper-Local Citations service, with packages starting at $39 for 40 citations.
Blogger outreach tools to maximize your outreach strategy
Writing is only half the battle when you’re running a successful blogging business.
Using the best blogger outreach tools help you find high authoritative sites currently linking to your competitors. So what can you expect from this section? You’ll find…
- The best blogger outreach tools to use
- FREE blogger outreach tools you can start with
- Email outreach tools to maximize your email outreach efforts
1. BuzzSumo
Pricing: Plans start at $99/month; Allows up to 5 users, 5 projects, and 50 exports
BuzzSumo is an excellent tool for finding popular content within your niche. Once you have a list of prospects, you can reach out to those bloggers and content marketers.
BuzzSumo allows you to filter by type, which allows you to contact specific brands and influencers. You can also filter by location and top content.
What that means is you won’t have to scroll through a 10,000-long list of contacts to find the right bloggers for your outreach campaign. Thanks to BuzzSumo’s filter features, what you’ll see is a list that contains ONLY relevant bloggers in your niche.
The best part of BuzzSumo is its intuitive design and ease of use. You’ll be able to use this tool immediately and contact top bloggers and brands in your niche.
2. Ninja Outreach
Pricing: Plans start at $89/month (7-day free trial available); Allows up to 1 user, 1,000 contacts, and 4,000 emails per month
If there’s one thing about Ninja Outreach that makes it so attractive, it’s how massive their influencer/blogger database is.
You aren’t just limited to finding key influencers for your niche by industry or location, but also on Twitter, Instagram, and email.
Every individual you find using Ninja Outreach’s database comes with their complete profile. Instead of doing extra work to find a blogger’s email address, follower count, website URL, and so on, Ninja Outreach provides it for you!
Now if your blogger outreach strategy or outreach process could use more automation, Ninja Outreach also allows you to run email outreach campaigns whether it’s for guest posts, link building, lead gen, or content promotion.
3. BuzzStream
Pricing: Plans start at $24/month (14-day free trial available); Allows up to 1 user and 1,000 contacts
BuzzStream is a great all-in-one outreach tool for blogger outreach. You can do more than simply find new bloggers or prospects. When it comes to managing blogger relationships and your outreach campaigns, BuzzStream has built-in features to help you do so.
What else can you expect from BuzzStream? Here’s what:
- Filter and segment prospects – Filter your search based on key metrics such as domain authority, follower count, tags, and even relationship status
- Email templates – Personalize your email messages and put an end to generic email messages that cost you money and effort when cold emailing
- Follow-up features – Close more deals thanks to having the ability to follow up on prospects that opened your emails but provided no response.
- Performance reports – See what works and what isn’t working in your campaign. You can tweak and improve your outreach process from the feedback you collect.
If you want to learn more about the best-performing blogger platforms today, this article should help.
Are there free blogger outreach tools?
Although BuzzSumo, Ninja Outreach, and BuzzStream rank as the best blogger outreach tools, they might feel slightly expensive for some.
If you are a relatively new blogger with a limited budget, it might be better to look at some free options that still provide excellent value for your blogger outreach campaign.
1. Hunter.io
Hunter allows you to find the email address of bloggers and influencers within your niche. Simply enter the domain name of the website you want to link to, and Hunter will show you the emails you need to connect to individuals who work for that site.
2. Voila Norbert
Viola Norbert allows you to find your first 50 emails for free.
That’s not bad, especially since 50 emails can give you a lot of feedback on what’s working in your outreach strategy, improve your outreach process, and enough to help your blogs rank higher on Google.
Viola Norbert keeps a contact database updated regularly—ensuring everyone you email still works at the website you want to link build with.
3. Clearbit Connect and Email Matcher
Clearbit Connect & Email Matcher comes with a plug-in you install for your Gmail account. You can search company domain names and also people.
You’ll also be able to find out important information through this plug-in—including location, personal details, social media profiles, and financial details.
Which tools are the best?
Emailing someone directly is one of the best ways to pitch a guest blogging proposal. By using an email outreach tool, you save valuable time by having emails readily available for you to use.
1. Mailshake
Buzzstream allows you to send personalized messages to every contact you want to reach out to. You can sort and filter your database, allowing you to segment your contact lists.
Buzzstream includes automated follow-ups, follow-up reminders, and various templates to choose from.
2. Snov.io
Sno.io is a powerful tool with the following features:
- Find email addresses you can filter by name, domain, or company.
- Generate leads by location, skills, and job title
- Verify your email lists to ensure you don’t have duplicate, temporary, or disposable email addresses.
- Schedule email follow-ups in advance
- Create email sequences based on a user’s actions, schedules, and triggers so you can send messages when your prospects are most active
Although Snov.io has a premium plan, you can avail of their free plan up to 50 credits/month and 200 contacts. This plan is forever free! Even with just 200 contacts and 50 credits per month, you can’t deny the value you’re getting.
3. Lemlist
Lemlist enables you to personalize cold emails, automate follow-ups and engage with different leads across various channels.
By using this tool, you can personalize emails at scale by writing engaging intro lines and calls to action and add company logos and custom texts in your emails.
How is that important? Personalization goes a long way in email outreach. Apart from allowing you to generate leads and improve your chances of success, this prevents your emails from being considered as spam.
Blogger outreach tools compared
You now have a handful of options for your blogger outreach campaign. However…
Among all the tools, which will help you reach MORE relevant bloggers, find relevant blogs or find social media influencers, and help you create an effective outreach strategy?
Even with the best blogger outreach tools, we’re sometimes torn between 1 or 2 options. And that’s what this section is for. To compare the best blogger outreach tools to help you decide which is right for you.
BuzzSumo vs SEMRush vs BuzzStream
All three are top blogger outreach tools whether it’s for guest posting, to manage relationships, research influencers, or build links.
- Buzzsumo’s platform shows you which influencers make a difference and which bloggers write the big, viral stories—allowing you to identify potential project collaborations and industry connections.
- SEMRush has a variety of tools you can use to reach out to bloggers. Their Backlink Gap tool allows you to compare your site’s backlink profile to your competitors. Their Link Building tool allows you to send outreach emails to bloggers in your niche directly from the tool.
- Buzzstream stores a history of notes, tweets, emails, and social details of every blogger you have contacted—allowing you to nurture and grow your relationships. The platform also allows you to easily manage your campaigns and track your work with bloggers you have collaborated with.
BuzzSumo, SEMRush, and BuzzStream are all top-notch tools you can’t go wrong with. So how do you decide? It all boils down to price.
SEMRush offers a free version which is great for new bloggers who don’t have a lot of money to invest.
BuzzStream is the second cheapest option, starting at $29 per month. BuzzSumo is the most expensive option, starting at $99 per month, all the way up to $299 per month, spending on your membership.
Although BuzzSumo may come off as the best blogger tool, it’s also the most expensive option. Needless to say, it has all the key features you need to start creating lasting relationships with industry bloggers.
Personally, we feel BuzzStream offers excellent value and it’s a great tool to use even for beginners.
Are there blogger outreach tools alternatives?
There are a variety of other blogger outreach tools including, GroupHigh, Netpeak Checker, and Klear.
1. GroupHigh
GroupHigh is a pure blogger outreach tool. And what we mean by that is the impressive 50-million website database you have access to.
This tool has features such as “Blogger CRM,” which makes it easy for you to organize your contact lists and easily manage your relationships with industry bloggers.
2. Netpeak Checker
With the use of search engine scraping and data aggregating, you’ll be able to analyze sites in bulk so you can decide which blogs accept guest posts. You’ll also gain easy access to bloggers’ contact emails and check backlinks.
3. Klear
Klear is a blogger outreach tool constantly improving and implementing new features.
It operates on an impressive 5 years worth of data and can analyze individual bloggers in depth. Each blogger is scored based on their success on different platforms, allowing you to reach out to exactly who you need to help improve your content marketing strategy.
If these tools don’t quite fit what you’re looking for, there are blogger outreach agencies you can use too.
What about email outreach?
Ninja Outreach, Pitchbox, and Mailshake are three of the best email outreach tools today.
- Ninja Outreach has a database of more than a million websites so you can easily find emails of bloggers and business professionals within your niche.
- Pitchbox focuses on influencer outreach and link building through its platform. It allows you to automate your outreach and follow-up sequences. Pitchbox’s features such as email outreach, performance reporting, templates to personalize your outreach, and relationship manager capabilities make it perhaps the strongest contender among all three tools.
- Mailshake comes with an intuitive design that’s easy to use. Its platform allows you to upload your list in bulk—making it easy to send outreach emails to bloggers within your niche.
If you’re just starting out, we recommend Mailshake, costing just $9. It’s a great budget option. Ninja Outreach comes with a 7-day free trial but costs $119 per month.
If you have a big team and enough budget to cover, we recommend Pitchbox. Pitchbox starts out at $195 per month for the basic account and continues to go up with added key features.
Blogger outreach guide for beginners
If you’re in the early stages of your blog, outlining a strategy beforehand for effective blogger outreach is one of the best ways to drive traffic and new users to your website.
Here are some of the best strategies and practices we recommend:
One of the best strategies for blogger outreach is reaching out to relevant websites with a higher authority rank.
The higher the domain authority, the better the link quality. These days, it’s quality over quantity.
But wait. Isn’t it hard to reach out to blogs with high domain authority? You’re absolutely right, which brings us to our next best outreach strategy: personalize your pitch.
An authentic, personalized pitch garners a higher response rate.
How do you get better at pitching? Keep testing your pitches, use a tool that gives you feedback on your email outreach, and improve as you go.
What if you’re still completely new to the blogger outreach space? Find a domain authority with a good medium rank and grab a few before stepping up to the big leagues.
By reaching out to bloggers at these sites, you can pitch a proposal for a guest blog for their website. After guest blogging, you can ask them to link your article back to your website, creating a backlink for your blog.
Some websites offer guest posting opportunities.
If you come across a “Write for Us” page on a blog’s site, consider that as a guest post opportunity.
You can contact a blogger or site and offer to write a guest post, but before you do, look up for some email templates on how to pitch a guest post to give you a good idea of what counts as good practice.
What are the best practices for blogger outreach?
The best practices for blogger outreach are building relationships and offering something of value in return. That sounds simple but in reality, many campaigns barely incorporate this practice.
Here’s a scenario: A friend walks up to you, asks for a favor, and offers to give you a 10% cut for every product sold. In return, your friend only asks you to mention or promote his product on your blog.
Would you pass that up? Most likely, you’d grab the opportunity.
But what if… instead of a friend asking for a favor, it’s now a total stranger who you never met.
You don’t know this person, and you might think: “Can I trust this person?”
What Does This Tell Us?
Both the stranger and your friend are willing to offer you a 10% cut and a lucrative opportunity to earn on the side, and yet, you’re not as willing to do it for a stranger as you would a friend.
The same concept can be applied to blogger outreach. You’re more likely to return a favor to a friend than you would a stranger, which brings us to our point.
Building relationships and managing those relationships consistently is a key factor to your campaign’s success. Whether you want to generate leads, pitch to bloggers, or request for links, none of this is possible if you don’t build relationships or more importantly, trust.
So, finally:
- It’s NOT enough to send the same generic email to 100 bloggers and hope they respond.
- Your efforts should be personalized. Don’t focus solely on what you gain, focus on building trust.
- You can start providing value by following their social media account and genuinely commenting on their Facebook and Instagram posts.
How do you write an outreach email?
A good outreach email is concise and relevant. State specifically what you are offering and what you’d like in return. Also, make the tone friendly and personalized.
A bad outreach email isn’t personalized and doesn’t address the recipient’s name. Having spelling and grammatical mistakes is poor practice since no one would trust someone to write for their website if they can’t spell properly.
Here’s a good sample email template:
Hey [First Name],
I just want to start by saying that I’m a huge fan of [their site name]. I’m reaching out to you to offer up a unique and value-packed guest post for you.
I did some research on topics that have performed well for [their site name]. Here are some ideas I had:
[Insert 3 headline ideas – make sure they’re in bullet form, not sentence format]
You can check out some guest posts that I’ve already published at [Authority Site] and (Authority Site).
Please let me know how that sounds
Cheers!
[Your Name]
Now take note, email templates aren’t the same as fast food take-out, meaning don’t just grab a template and use it exactly how it’s presented.
Use templates as inspiration and add personalization elements to provide an even higher response rate.
What is influencer marketing and where do you start?
Influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing where influencers endorse and mention products—showing them to their thousands or even millions of followers across different platforms.
With over 2 billion monthly active users, Instagram is a great starting place with influencer marketing. Influencers can show products in their posts, stories, or reals, along with catchy captions.
Always reach out to social media influencers within your niche. If you sell gardening tools, a fashion influencer won’t make sense for your brand to work with.
Look past vanity metrics such as the number of followers an influencer has.
Although the number of followers is important, you should look more at conversion metrics and if the influencer has a history of bringing results to past brands they have worked with.
If you are starting a blog that is mostly written content, looking for influencers on content-heavy sites like Twitter would serve your business more than a video-heavy site like Tik Tok.
Which outreach tool is right for you?
This depends on the approach you want to take in your outreach campaign, which we discuss below.
Sniper approach VS shotgun approach
The sniper approach focuses on getting to know the people behind a brand and personalizing your messages to make them understand the value you can bring to them.
The shotgun approach is a little more “barbaric” since this approach is defined as reaching out to as many people within your niche as possible by using generic messaging.
We prefer the sniper approach since it often leads to longer-lasting relationships and higher open rates and response rates due to the personalized messaging.
The best sniper-based outreach tool is BuzzStream. It allows you to find email addresses and personalize your message to potential collaborators within your niche.
The best shotgun-based outreach tool is Mailshake. This platform allows you to scale your link-building efforts by sending a large number of personalized emails through a variety of outreach templates.
How many outreach tools do you need for your outreach campaign?
The number of tools you need for your outreach campaign depends on your budget and marketing goals. It makes sense to use a tool with several features for a reasonable price, such as BuzzSumo.
We recommend using one email finder tool like Snov.io, Voila Norbert, or Hunter.io, one outreach tool like Ninja Outreach or Pitchbox, and one SEO tool such as Ahrefs, SEMRush, or Moz.
