I'd appreciate help with Link Building Research & Management Tools

[pbhatt]

I was on the free trial for Raven when the AdWords API was removed, so I decided to wait on subscribing long-term until I looked into how this would affect the link research. It appears that the link building side of Raven tools won't really be impacted by the loss of this API, is this correct? I want to move from Excel spreadsheets full of link building research and management tables into one tool, and I think Raven is the most recommended tool for this. I don't necessarily need the PPC side of it.

I heard multiple people talk about AHREFS during an SES conference that I recently attended, so I want to learn more about that too. What more can AHREFS provide if I already use OpenSiteExplorer and Raven tools? Do you find yourself using all of these tools every month, or does it make sense to only pay to get the data AHREFS provides a couple times a year?

Thanks for your help!

[CoreyNorthcutt]

First, to cover your question of OSE vs. AHREFS, this comparison of the big 3 link data providers is phenominal:

http://www.seobook.com/comparing-backlink-data-providers

To give you the TL;DR question of why you'd use AHREFS instead of Open Site Explorer, or Raven (which uses Majestic and OSE data last I'd checked)- they're each still hugely incomplete, and tend to give you data that differs in different ways.

If you're looking for link building management tools,  as you also mentioned, you might also like BuzzStream (it's what our agency uses).  It's basically 37signal's HiRise cut and paste, then rebuilt for link building instead of sales.  Still, it doesn't solve for everything, but is a great value for all it does, and no SEO software I've ever used seems to solve more than 5% of the puzzle, max (which is unfortunate, but true).

[pbhatt]

Thanks for the link and TL:DR! Would you say BuzzStream is better than Raven for managing link building tasks, such as researching a competitors links, saving them and then assigning them to people on my team? Or is it more for managing contacts & communication with site owners?

I want to avoid exporting a competitor's backlink report from OSE and having to re-enter it into a tool to then manage outreach tasks. That's why Raven is appealing. Is there an easy way to import into BuzzStream?

[CoreyNorthcutt]

Well, we tried both, and ultimately liked BuzzStream better for what we needed, but both exceed in different areas.  It seems best at it's smooth organization of all of the relationships and integration with gmail.  The discovery tools do work, but if you're serious about your link building, it should be just one tool of many in your link prospecting arsenal.

I have to say that there isn't a tool to pull in a competitors' OSE backlinks and create a series of BuzzStream tasks (that I know of), but that does sound like it would be really useful.