Citation Labs review
Last updated: March 2022
- Find outreach prospects
- Excellent time saver
- Affordable credit-based payment system
What is Citation Labs?
Citation Labs is actually a specialist link building agency which “helps businesses build brand, trust, buzz, relationships and links that drive targeted traffic to their websites.”
As well as working on link building and content marketing campaigns, Citation Labs also offer their suite of tools for all SEOs to use.
Their tool set includes their famous Link Prospector as well as their Broken Link Builder, Co-Citation Tool, Contact Finder and Zipsprout.
What does Citation Labs do?
The five tools that Citation Labs provide all focus on slightly different aspects of the link building puzzle.
Link Prospector
This is the ‘main’ Citation Labs tool and helps to find new outreach opportunities.
Citation Labs use their own algorithm to analyse possible link prospects and order them by priority – meaning you can focus on the most promising outreach targets right away.
All you need to do is input your target keyword and the Link Prospector will formulate a list of targets for you – which you can then filter to find the following:
- Guest post opportunities
- Links pages
- Content promotors
- Reviewers
- Giveaway opportunities
- Sponsorship opportunities
Watch the video below for more of an idea of how Link Prospector works:
Broken Link Builder
As you’ve probably already guessed, this tool helps you find links that point to ‘dead’ 404 pages.
This information can be invaluable, as you can get in touch directly with webmasters who have previously linked to a piece of content and persuade them to change the dead link to your (better) piece of content.
The Citation Labs Broken Link Builder tool is a great way to save time and resources finding broken link building opportunities as it fully automates the discovery process.
Here’s the video on how it works:
Co-Citation Tool
This useful – and free – tool will identify websites that already link to other websites related to yours.
The thinking behind this is that if a website already links to several other sites like yours, then they are probably quite likely to also link to your content – providing of course that it is high quality and relevant.
Watch the video:
Contact Finder
Another potentially great time-saving tool, the Contact Finder will find the contact details of any website you input.
The Contact Finder isn’t available to use just yet – so watch this space for more news.
Zipsprout
This tool is for location-based campaigns and specialises in finding link prospects in a particular zip code/post code.
Who needs Citation Labs’ tools?
Anyone who spends a lot of time on link building will find the Citation Labs tool set incredibly value.
The biggest benefit is the sheer amount of time the tools will save you, as the automated processes mean you can focus on the important stuff like building relationships with your outreach prospects – rather than spending most of your time finding them!
How much does Citation Labs tools cost?
The Link Prospector tool has four different payment levels:
- Pay as you go - $5 per credit
- Consultant - $47 per month
- Agency - $127 per month
- Enterprise - $497 per month
Link Prospector works on a credit basis – so every report you run costs a credit. The higher the account level you have, the more credits you have e.g. Consultant gives you 20 credits per month, and Enterprise gives you 500 credits per month.
Whatever your account level, you can top up your credits if you run out during the month – rather than being forced to commit to a higher level.
However, the cost of credits are different depending on your account level. Extra credits for Enterprise customers will cost $0.99, whereas for Pay as you go customers they cost $5.
Packages for the Broken Link Builder start at just $67 per month.
Good points about Citation Labs
First of all, these tools are made by link building experts for link builders – and are used by the Citation Labs agency on a day-to-day basis.
This means you know you are using effective and well-tested link building tools that are well-maintained.
Also, by successfully automating large parts of the menial link building tasks, the Citation Labs tool set is great for helping you focus your resources on actually outreaching and building relationships with other webmasters.
The credit system is another good selling point, as it allows customers to top-up their account whenever they need to – rather than being forced into paying for a more expensive account level.
Bad points about Citation Labs
In terms of how they achieve what the set out to do, it’s hard to find fault with the Citation Labs tools.
Each one does what it promises very well – nothing more, nothing less.
There are cheaper link building tools out there, but very few of them will manage as much of the process as Citation Labs does.
Summary
If you find yourself continuously bogged down with trawling the web for link prospects, then both the Link Prospector and Broken Link Builder tools will free up your time immensely.
For that reason alone Citation Labs tools are well worth a try – whether you are a freelance, agency or in-house SEO.
- Find outreach prospects
- Excellent time saver
- Affordable credit-based payment system
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About the Author
Luke Glassford is an SEO expert with over 15 years’ experience.
During his time working in SEO, Luke has set-up an SEO agency, worked as an in-house SEO for a major national company and managed his own successful SEO consultancy - using a lot of different SEO tools along the way!