Effective link building is a massive undertaking – especially for smaller businesses.
In fact, for a consistent stream of backlinks, you need to have at least one person managing it full-time.
And even then, you need automated link building tools to find link opportunities, emails, and just handle the sending for you.
In this article, we’ll be looking at how automated link building software like Respona can help you get more quality links in less time.
Link building cheat sheet
Reasons to Invest in Automated Link Building Tools
Let’s be real, manual link building is tough.
It’s usually a pain for three main reasons:
- It eats up tons of time and manpower.
- You gotta actually know SEO to do it right.
- SEO rules change, like, every other month.
Seriously, even with the fanciest link building tools, you still need someone (or a whole team) dedicated to it if you want to see any real results like 5-10 quality backlinks a week.
That means hunting down websites, finding contact info, writing personalized emails, picking the right anchor text for your link insertion, tracking everything in a Google sheet, writing guest posts, monitoring your backlink profile… the list goes on and on.
Basically, backlink building is a huge time suck, and if you want to do it at any kind of scale, you’ll need at least one person focused on it.
More if you can afford it.
Now, let’s dive deeper into each step and how an automated link building tool can help.
Link Prospecting
Regardless of the link building strategy you choose, the first step of any campaign is to find link opportunities – prospects.
As an example, let’s first look for some guest posting opportunities manually – and then see how Respona automates it.
You can do so by finding “Write for us” pages in Google.

Notice the “intitle:” before “write for us” in the search string?
This is a Google search operator – adding it returns ONLY pages that have “Write for us” in the title.
After it, paste the general keyword you want to write about. In our case it’s “SEO”.
From here, click through the sites and check their SEO metrics to make sure they’re valuable opportunities and not junk link farms.
There are free authority and traffic checkers available – but they all offer limited data.
To properly vet each link building opportunity and see how much traffic they’re getting, you’ll need a backlink analysis tool like Ahrefs (its Link Explorer specifically), Semrush, or Moz Llink Explorer.
You can also use these to find broken link building opportunities.

So far it seems pretty simple, right?
Sure, if your goal is to land one or two guest posts.
Keep in mind that you have to do this for EVERY single one of your link opportunities.
And, if you consider that the average reply rate for a cold email is only around 10% (half of which will be negative), even for a small link building campaign you’ll need to send upwards of a hundred emails.
Hours and hours of work – and this is just the first step.
So, how does Respona automate the link building process?
First of all, it has a search engine of its own.

It’s based on Google, and is completely automated.
It can run multiple search queries at the same time, and add relevant results to your campaign on auto-pilot.
Additionally, if you use a campaign template, it will suggest relevant keywords to target, and, in the case of guest posting, auto-apply all of the most common variations of a “Write for us” page title, like “Contributor guidelines”, “Submit an article”, and so on.
Next, instead of manually checking every single site’s metrics, you can set Respona to ONLY pull results that fit your criteria:

You can even make the search recurring.
In that case, Respona will re-run the search automatically on your selected time interval, and add any new websites that may have popped up in the meantime.
So all you really have to do is give it a few target keywords and hit “launch” once your results are found.

Finding Contacts
If you’ve ever tried to hunt down an email, you already know how tedious it is to check through websites’ footers, Contact Us pages, and LinkedIn accounts only to find absolutely nothing.
Or, if you’re lucky, you’ll get their generic “[email protected]”.
Now imagine doing this for hundreds of link opportunities.
It’s not just tedious, it’s straight up physically impossible to do in any reasonable amount of time.
That’s where Respona’s email finder comes in.

It does all of the heavy lifting for you – and is entirely customizable to your needs.
If you use one of Respona’s campaign templates, it will even be pre-configured for you.
So, for example, for a guest posting campaign, it will automatically find the content managers, editors, and so on.
You can tell it who to look for in the “Job titles” field.
And, if you’re only looking for people with a specific seniority level (such as the Head of Content), you can use the Seniority field to specify it.
To keep your deliverability high, the email finder also gives you the option to skip catch-all domains – or domains that can’t be fully verified.
And to maximize your results, it can also include generic contact emails – although it’s usually better to go straight to the relevant decision-maker’s inbox instead.
Personalization
Now, personalization used to be something that could only be partly automated.
I’m referring to variables like “first_name”, or “website_title”.
While they do help speed things up, you still have to come up with unique personalizations to make your pitches truly stand out.
Which is precisely why we released AI variables for our tool – to take things one step further.

By default, Respona comes with two AI variables – the Icebreaker, and a “P.S”.
However, you’re more than welcome to create your own.
The AI can “read” the content on your prospect’s page and come up with unique personalizations for every single link opportunity, automatically.
And, of course, you can feed it instructions and examples of previous personalizations to make it sound like you – and not like just another version of GPT.

Don’t worry – you can always proofread the outcomes and make manual corrections where necessary.
Sending & Follow-Ups
Doing this stuff manually is a total nightmare.
Think about it: you’d have to copy and paste hundreds of emails, send them one by one, and then try to remember who you’ve followed up with and when.
It’s a huge waste of time that you could be using for way more important things.
Plus, it’s super easy to mess things up – typos, sending the wrong email to the wrong person, forgetting to follow up altogether…
It’s just a recipe for chaos.

Respona automates the whole sending and follow-up process.
You can schedule your emails to go out at the best times to actually get noticed, either sending them all at once or spreading them out throughout the day.
And, of course, the follow-up delays are entirely customizable too.
Email Health Checks
Email health is exceptionally easy to forget about until it’s a huge problem: email health.
ESPs rarely provide you with any sort of insight on your email health until it’s too late.
If your emails are getting marked as spam or bouncing because of bad addresses, your sender reputation takes a hit – and you’re none the wiser until the account is suspended for spam.

Respona helps avoid this by automatically checking your email health every week.
It looks for things like problems with your DNS setup (which can destroy deliverability), whether you’ve been put on any major blacklists, and running a Spam Assassin check.
By keeping an eye on these things, Respona helps you make sure your emails are actually reaching people’s inboxes and gives you a heads-up if anything needs fixing.
Link building cheat sheet
Now Over to You
In conclusion, link building automation is the way to go – without a tool like Respona you’re essentially lost in the dark.
Don’t hesitate to start your 14-day free trial to see Respona in action.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Is automated link building spammy?
Not necessarily.
Link building automation tools assist with tasks like outreach and follow-up, but ethical link building efforts still require personalized communication and valuable content.
Using automation for mass, irrelevant link placement is considered spam.
Can automated link building hurt my SEO?
Yes, if used improperly.
Over-reliance on automated tools for low quality backlink schemes can trigger penalties from search engines.
Focus on quality over quantity, even with automation.
What tasks can be automated in link building?
Key tasks include link prospect research, contact finding, personalized link building outreach email sending and follow-ups, backlink profile analysis, and performance tracking.
Automation streamlines these processes, saving time and effort.
Do I still need human input with automated link building?
Absolutely.
Automation tools enhance efficiency, but human oversight is crucial for strategy development, content creation, relationship building, and ensuring ethical practices.
What’s the difference between automated link building and buying links?
Automated link building involves outreach and content creation to earn links, while buying links directly pays for placements.
Buying links is against search engine guidelines and can result in penalties.