Talking of being lazy - I'm always looking for ways to jumpstart linkbuilding campaigns and cut corners, and if my knowledge of the human race is accurate then the rest of you are too. This is backed up by Rand's recent post on which parts of SEO everyone finds hardest. The vast majority of you said external link acquisition is the hardest for you.
That's why today I'm presenting a get-rich-quick linkbuilding tactic which actually works across virtually any niche. Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, it's not. Here's how it's done. Oh, and by the way, it's 100% whitehat :-)
The basic principle is this:
Find pages or sites which used to offer a service and no longer do
As soon as I had this idea I did a Google search for no longer available and I spotted ranking 4th the BBC Antiques page, which is the pagerank 6 antiques page on the BBC site.....WHICH NO LONGER OFFERS ANY ANTIQUES CONTENT. When I saw this page I knew instantly that this idea was going to be killer and would find me a LOT of quality links.
Before I detail how to find pages like this, let me explain how you use them for linkbuilding (if it isn't immediately obvious!). There are two basic ways you can use these pages for linkbuilding if you have a site which is in the same niche:
- Contact the owner of the page/site and request that they add a link to your (still live and active site!) from their page which no longer offers the service. It's a win for the site owner as they provide a useful page to any of their users who find the page and it's a win for you because, well, did you see my comment about the page being PR6?
- Do a link analysis on the page to find all those sites who think they're linking to a useful page and contact them saying "Hi, I notice you link to the BBC antiques page. I'm not sure if you're aware but they stopped offering this service. I was wondering if you'd like to link to my antiques site instead as this is a lively and active web 2.0 antiques site with social voting and wardrobes." Wondering how effective this is? Well that BBC page has 1044 links (not to mention the other pages in that folder).
For finding sites which no longer offer a service or have expired:
- "service no longer available"
- "service no longer available" [keyword]
- "service no longer available" inurl:.ac.uk (or inurl:.edu for all you foreigners)
- "no longer available [keyphrase]"
- "site no longer available"
- "site no longer available" [keyphrase]
- "site has been taken down"
- "site has been taken down" [keyphrase]
- "no longer offer [keyword]"
- "no longer sell [keyword]"
- "stopped selling [keyword]"
- "stopped offering [keyword]"
Anyway - you get the idea. It's not hard to follow this methodology to produce a whole bunch more queries and niches to look in to find your own links.
It's worth noting that there are a lot of similarities between this tactic and the practice of buying sites for SEO. This method is more time consuming but cheaper and doesn't come with the risks associated with buying sites. Still, the methodologies for finding the sites can be quite similar and a lot has already been said on that topic by such luminaries as Shoemoney, Aaron Wall & QuadsZilla, so be sure to check out that info. Also, see Tamar's recap of the SMX Advanced session for more solid tips.
By the way - anyone who's a PRO member should head on over and read this pro tip which contains power tips, examples of sites I've found, and how to apply this thinking to blogs. If you're not a PRO member, what are you waiting for?
I love the post and its an awesome way to really build up strong backlinks, from weathered pages.
I am going to share something similar - Geocities - (remember those?) I use to hunt links from Geocities sites that are no longer active - with the parent domain at PR 9 and top 100 pages at above PR 5...
The only problem is often webmasters are difficult to deal with, or hard to locate for such pages...
Geocities...now there's a blast from the past! I think I built my first Geocities site in the mid-90's using Claris Home Page and/or Adobe Page Mill.
Great tip!
Great tip Tom... so great that it inspired me to create a badge just for this type of post. Sounds like you have a series of posts after all!
Lmao - you caused much amusement in the office with that one Stephen :-)
I've done some re-decorating...
Stephen, I love the badge! I want to make buttons! :D
Good point Gillian - if there ever becomes an SEO industry qualification, on completion you should get a badge just like that to show off your whitehat prowess!
Someone should watch Google Trends to see the huge rush in searches for "site no longer available", and watch the online community give out a collective WTF?
Do the searches, and this post comes up as #1 in Google!
Great job and info! WOW...few words to explain your tactical link creativity.
Excellent creative approach.
Manual link building is, well, manual. But this at least helps to improve the odds a little.
I'd also recommend using the intitle: operator on your target product/service keyword. Chances are, the title hasn't been changed, just a message on the page. Finding pages with the target term in the title will be even stronger, more likely to rank on their own (thereby sending you indirect traffic if you are getting a link on the page), and send a stronger signal about your page that is being linked to.
Similar to this is to search for keywords (without the "no longer" focus) that are related and complementary to what you have to offer. In this case, you may find sites that don't offer what you are offering and are not competitors. Or those who, like this technique focuses on, no longer offer it.
Great post Tom! I think you've shaken off any lingering blackhat reputation.
Also, Tom's not bluffing that the ProTip is worthwhile; particularly if you have a poker site (hint hint...)
I never bluff. Anyone who's played poker with me will know this.
Um. Yeah.
You don't bluff? You should, it's incredibly effective in the right situations.
Very cool - I guess it's a much easier 'sell' to the linking site - as you're kind of doing them a favour in telling them that one of their outbound links is redundant.
Thumbs up :)
Kinda like looking for an apartment by reading the obituaries, eh?
Good stuff. Thanks!
This is so good it almost makes up for the time you Rick-rolled me. Almost.
I love the way your pro tip says "allowed me to find this page". Allowed *who* to find that page?
Hmmmm. Anyway - I'm not taking credit for the idea which is all yours and as I twittered, I think this is possibly the best post you've written ;)
Sorry should have cited my sources a little better! Still, everyone thinks we're the same person anyway :-)
*revelation: Will Critchlow & Tom Critchlow are two different persons.*
Really? I never noticed that!
Don't believe a word of it
The real one (can't remember which) created a fake profile on SEOmoz years ago, and the joke just got out of hand.
wait... you're not? CRAP! :)
I run an antiques site. I'm sooo on this!
Awesome! Let me know how the linkbuilding goes, I knew there'd be a use for that link for someone in the moz community :-)
Thanks for all the comments and thumbs guys - glad to know you're appreciating the post!
For those of you not having much success with the tip - hope you can find something eventually. It took me a fair amount of digging to come up with relevant ones for our clients but the pages I found in the end were definitely worth it.
I was searching within a very small, niche market (pet related). I'm SURE this will work wonders for other industries and I'll be testing it out on some more popular terms with greater demand.
Thanks again for sharing! As rickgalan stated, this is an insider tip a lot of SEOs would have kept under wraps. ;)
Great Post in the world of Link Building..... Super Sweet and Saavy techniques..... Any SEO Noobs should Bow and Pray to this article of Link Love getting...... Very Useful
Dubs
Ideas like this are exaclty why any Director should approve the Pro mebership fee for all of their SEO staff. Now just make it so I can pay for it with PayPal and you've got another 4 Pro Membership subscriptions headed your way.
For those of you non-creative types, don't waste your time trying to think outside of the box, just keep mozing. It'll be more productive for you.Now I'm off to find downed widgets to move in on!Good Stuff,BT
I didn't read all the comments - you know an oldish post is really good if that becomes unfeasible:I wanted to say that this idea is as whitehat as it gets IMO: cleaning up the internet's broken links by asking people to review and make a choice about whether to add your link instead: some people will say "thanks for letting me know, I'll fix that but I won't add your link because of X." I have found links with this method and done a quick revamp of some of my content before going after them to make sure that I have the best chance of getting it.
Brilliant tip! I know I am reiterating what everyone else is saying, but the concept is too good not to praise :)
That's a genuinely brilliant tip, Tom. thanks for taking the time to share.
very cool. I rarely find innovative tips like this on link building. For me personally, it is something I have always struggled with... finding fresh link building ideas.
stoked on this idea. Thanks again.
Tom, stop taking my ideas :-D
Kidding. But really, I did just pitch something like this idea to my boss on Friday. It's an absolutley awesome idea and tactic. Thanks for sharing. :)
Thanks for the post, can't wait to try and apply it to my sites!
Seems like everytime I am having problems with a particular aspect of SEO, there is a article addressing it in simple terms recently posted here.
Great idea. I'll try.
very good post, link Building is a important elemnt to each and every Website. i am not sure this blackhat, however,thanks for you sharing tom.
I am gonna try this "IDEA" ......SMART PLOY
Nice tip...but I'm wondering if anyone has had any success in their niche? Haven't had any luck in mine so far. Perhaps, as a loose definition, let's say success is obtaining a link from more than one site with PR of 5 or above.
Anyone?
This is really grey-hat!
Jack https://seoapplied.blogspot.com
Nice post Tom!
What tool do you use to mine the backlinks?
Thanks :-)
I mainily use the Yahoo link queries, either directly or through link diagnosis. Works like a dream for everyday use. For more detailed queries some internal tools which I can't tell you about :-p
ooohh - sounds top secret :-P
Wow, didn't know that when domains change hands it get's reset to ZERO??? Any other pages on this around anyone please?
ive read that yeah if it is really obvious that google resets the domain value to zero. can't remember exactly where i read that but i think matt cutts mentioned it
EDIT:
https://www.seo.com/blog/google/matt-cutts-does-domain-roundtable/
that refers to expired domains but I'm sure I read that they try and do it to domains that change hands (ie new whois info etc)
This post made me think about other ways you can harness incomplete or obsolete websites. If you want to find more than just link bait...maybe a couple new projects, just search "under construction" or "site under construction". Solicit your services and see what happens.
Wow - I read first entry here & loved. Thumbs up - Your idea to find expired pages rock.
Just 1 qq Is directory submission is effective these days ?
-Sunny
thanks for sharing this tip, i went off and made some searches for two of my clients to see whether i could find something valuable, i made about 10 searches and couldnt help feeling a very cheeky about it... anyway i didnt come up with anything worth spending time in the niche areas i searched, but i can see the point in doing this... cheers
Am I naive to ask this "so what if my site has nothing to do with 'antiques'? Does relevancy not matter?
Great to see an article like this , does anyone use trackbacks ?? Totally backwards from what we marketers and seo's from the mid to late 90’s learned about linking to or even mentioning competition on our sales page. But there in lies the difference, all we had back then were sales pages, no content, no free information, nothing but pitch. Nowadays its quite a different story, web 2.0 demands we flip everything we know about linking upside down and do the exact opposite of what we learned starting out. To this day it is weird to me to link to competitors or people I overlap with considerably. But I do willingly and with 99% glee, because it brings 35% of my first time visitors back to my site according to my stats.... great post
Tom,
Great post. I didn't read through all the comments, but can/did you provide any info about results in terms of numbers? I.E. for every 10 sites you contact you succeed with 1?
Great Tips in this article! That's actually too Cool for Black Hat School!
Actually very clever way to find EXTREMELY valuable links!
A simple win-win SEO tactic for both sides.
Thank you for this excellent idea, I'm just starting out learning to build links and this will get me off to a great start, I hope.
Great tips. I read this few weeks back and now came again to read it again
I read this post a while back, loved it, and am now going to try the tactic in earnest. Will let you know how it goes.
Great tips Tom but i was not able to find such websites for my domain
Great post! Suffering some frustrations too...but fighting onward :)
Viva!
I know this post is a little crusty at this point, but reading through I see a bunch of people had difficulty with this link acquisition strategy. Has it worked for anyone here? I would be interested to hear of your experiences...
Wow great post .... good tactic, I love it!
Its really avery good technique.Thanks buddy
Waoow. I have found this article very useful. Thank you so much for providing such a valueable poece of information. keep it Up!
Great thoughts -
[quote] Contact the owner of the page/site and request that they add a link to your (still live and active site!) from their page which no longer offers the service[/quote]
I did think of one thing though if the site is no longer operating, then one would think they would not want to link to you - I mean most "dead" sites I find are just that - dead - non active, no one home ?
A brilliant tactic. Thanks for sharing, I'm going to get started on it today! I have the perfect site in mind. Cheers!
I heart this post.
I'm off to find defunct sites for a few services we will fit into.
Ta!
Absolutely a great tip! That's the kind of thing SEOs usually keep to themselves. :)
That's just the way the 'moz rolls :-)
This is very good. Thank you and congratulations. Should create solid links. It's success will depend a lot on what you are "selling", but still BAD ASS TIP
Thanks Tom. Will start working on this idea and see how it goes. In your opinion Tom, what would you considered to be productive on a link buiding campaign? Let's say you hired a link builder and he reports on a week 2 related, PR6 links with few links on that page. Would you say that's productive? How to meassure that? Thanks again.
Def. a good idea. Thanks Tom!
I wonder if this would work with older news article pages too.
Excellent post!!
Cool article!
I will be using this for my financial services client.
Alex
Fantastic idea. i think we've all been and looked at competitor backlinks and emailled all those but this is a really cool idea.
I will be putting this in to practice later today :-) thanks Tom
Good tips, There are many companies that has a website just for
information.
This is an awesome post. I'm always looking for new inventive ways to build links and get out of the redundancy and routine of it all. This is definately a technique that I feel will not only be valuable, but probably also more successful that some efforts.
Awesome post! I have been struggling to find some new ways to build links and this provided the perfect solution. Keep providing great content!
Tom:
It is so simple and so genius. Excellent post sir! Excited to try it out on some of our new clients and see what I can glean from it. Thanks for the great tips!
I just thought that as soon as Google finds out about this, they will start discounting links like the ones you mentioned...
I strongly disagree - I think this is exactly the kind of link that Google WANTS you to build. The links are all editorial and on topic from sites in your niche.
What wouldn't Google like about them?
It pains me to do it, but I agree with Tom - these are relevant links from sites that are probably eager to link to you. Plus, from a user perspective, you're taking a resource that's broken or defunct and replacing it with something useful.
I second here - these are quality links and not SPAM.. You are encouraging old content to be replaced by new, more relevant content - and is beneficial from a users point of view as well, and great for search engines because then they dont need to worry about "dead" pages, because they are now back in use...
Thanks guys for making that clear, I see the concept. I have a question:
In your opinion, what would you considered to be productive on a link buiding campaign? Let's say you hired a link builder and he reports on a week 2 related, PR6 links with few links on that page. Would you say that's productive? How to meassure link building productivity in terms of quantity and quality? Thanks again.
I agree with Tom_C, Dr. Pete and rishil. This process saves the search engines the trouble of having to identify and potentially remove the dead pages.
The search user also benefits greatly from being referred to newer and potentially better content. This also reflects well on the search engines, as it lessens the potential to inconvenience search users with results that are no longer useful and/or accurate. It's a win-win.
Great post Tom. Cheers.
The BBC Antiques page?
That's probably about the worst example you could have found...
There's more chance of hell freezing over than the BBC responding to link request emails...
LOL.
I found a BBC page from 2005 that asked for people to send in details of organisations to be listed on that page... Name of organisation, a two-line summary, telephone number, and web address. I sent in the details, and three days later they deleted the whole page from their site. The information they *did* have was all good, and now it isn't there at all.
D'oh!!
I think you may have missed the point of my post.
While with some of these pages you can contact them directly and ask them to add a link on their page to your website in practice that's only one half of it (though look in the pro tip where I list a BBC page which actively ASKS you to send in related sites so they can link to them).
The real point of my post is that you don't need to contact the owner of the dead page - as that quite often is fruitless but instead you look at all the people who LINK to the dead page and ask THEM to amend their links or add a link to your site. This gives you so many more opportunities for link requests and you only need low conversion rate to make this very effective.
Well Tom, I never thought I'd say it but I actually found something you wrote useful - although now all I can think about is David Dickinson - agh!
Well that explains the "'out of business' web design" search visit we got a couple of days ago.
I'll be trying this out ASAP...what a great tip!
This is a great advice Tom, infact "Roger Montti" explained this in 2007 pubcon conference. He also said about looking for "site is closed", "site down temporarily", etc...
Brilliant! Love it.
I'm off to work, finding no longer available sites.
Thanks for sharing, Tom, and thanks for notifying on Twitter, Rishi. A neccessary reminder of what I should be reading - youmoz.
Great advice Tom :)
Brilliant post! Great if they allow you to post a link, however, what if the site owner wants you to pay for that link? Isn't that considered then a blackhat technique?
Won't believe it until I see it :)
Ok, kidding, sounds like a great idea but I definitely should try it first.
Let me know how you get on Ann - would love to hear your thoughts. The key is in designing the intelligent google queries :-)
Greatt article...
but ahhh let me review my website :)
Hmm nice idea. This could work in any niche, that's the beauty of it!How about a more cheesy link building tactic?You register a domain with the same text as your competion with .co.uk or equivilant because they have .com. Then you contact all the inbound links to the .com site and tell them to change the link to point to .co.uk (where the new site resides...except it doesn't!)Only joking!
Great minds think alike - check out my blackhat tip from the SEOmoz give it up wbf :-)
yeah i thought i'd heard this idea before.
What a cunning idea...though my initial excitement has been dulled slightly by spending 30 minutes trying every variation and relevant keyword I could think off without any pot of gold suddenly appearing on my desk.
I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has success using this technique though.
Suffering some of the same frustrations...not giving up yet! :)
Had much of the same frustrations on our end....but there's a lot out there to sift through. Have found luck with similar searches in the past.
Have switched over to concentrating on organizations that conduct 'research' in relevant arena's for link-building
What do you mean?