I find link prospecting to be one of the most time-consuming and challenging parts of link building. In order to build and maintain a natural link profile for your website, your prospecting activity needs to cover a wide range of opportunities and generate the right targets and leads for your project/campaign. So prospecting is usually pretty easy to start off with - run a few Google searches and you've got yourself a set of content-rich websites within your target industry. However, once you’ve gone through this initial list, you realise the challenge that you're faced with.
Here are some of the things we do at GPMD to generate a broader set of quality prospects. Using these practices, we're able to identify a huge selection of relevant, high quality blogs and industry websites within different sectors.
Tip 1: Advanced search queries
Advanced search queries are our starting point. They’re quick, easy to use and they are great for finding opportunities for guest blogging, collaboration projects, sponsorship etc.
Examples of advanced search queries:
Inurl Search (Dental inurl:blog / Dental blog inurl:.co.uk)
These search queries will filter websites with your preferred domain extension or search term within its URL. The above examples will return dental blogs and dental blogs based in the UK.
Exact Phrase Search (Dental “Guest post” / Dental “Write for us”)
These queries (using speech marks to find the exact text) are ideal for finding websites that are either looking for guest bloggers or accept guest blog posts. The above examples will return dental websites that accept guest posts and dental websites that are looking for writers.
Intitle Search (Dental Intitle:Guest Post – Dental Intitle: Advertise)
Searching for specific content within the title helps to filter the pages that are most relevant and also find opportunities by searching for advertising or guest posting opportunities. The above examples will return dental websites that accept guest posts and dental websites with advertising opportunities.
Wildcard Search (Dental “Guest *” blog)
Using the wildcard (*) filters results that contain the exact words within your query and an additional word in the position of the wildcard. The above query will return dental blogs that feature “guest post”, “guest writer”, “guest blog” etc within their content or title (with the second word in place of the wildcard).
Using more than one of these strings within the same search will help to further refine the results and provide very specific prospects for you to use to build links.
Example of a query that could be used for finding guest blogging opportunities for a dental website.
Tip 2: Use Twitter tools to find niche bloggers
Building relationships on Twitter is a great way of generating opportunities. By regularly talking to bloggers within your industry, you’re developing an outreach that could be utilised for product launches, obtaining reviews, guest blogging and much more.
Follower Wonk:
Follower Wonk is a great tool that allows you to search through Twitter bios, helping you to identify targets for building relationships or just approaching for link-building.
Example: If you're looking to obtain links from dental blogs, you could search for dental blog, dentist blog, dentistry blog and so on. You can then filter the results and order by the available metrics to help find the most suitable people.
Topsy:
Topsy is a very useful tool that lets you search the social web (including blogs). You could search for your brand, niche keyword or web address, find the people who're talking about you or your industry and then get in touch (and hopefully get a link from their blog). You could also search for guest blogging opportunities using things like 'guest blog dentistry' and then approach the website owner/blogger.
These are just a couple of examples, there are literally thousands more tools that can help you find link building opportunities.
Tip 3: Look at blogroll and directory links
When you find a really good blog that you would like a link from, don't just contact them and wait for a reply! You should be looking for a links page or a blogroll to find other similar bloggers that could also provide a good link to your website. It is important to remember that not all good blogs are optimised for search, making a lot of them really hard to find – unless you use these kinds of techniques.
Also, when you're looking down at your competitors' links from directories like spammylinkdirectory.com (not a real website), you could be finding a few new opportunities. Chances are that you've already looked through your competitors' links, but you might find different websites that you haven't analysed within these directories, some of which may have some good ideas/links that you could emulate for your website.
Tip 4: Reverse image search
I often hear people moaning about how some blog or website has used one of their images in a post or article – without realising that this is a great opportunity to obtain a really good link! If you come across another website using your image, send them a polite email, compliment their content and website, and just ask if they can add a link to your website as the source of the image. This link-building technique is natural and free – which is why optimising your images and making them freely available is a great way of generating these opportunities. You can search for your web address in Google's new-look image search feature or tineye.com, both will help you to find where your images are being used.
Tip 5: Use PPC advertising to find advertising opportunities
Running a short-term, low cost PPC campaign is a great way to find link building opportunities. Once your PPC ad is live on lots of related blogs, you can contact the blogger, mention your advert and suggest that you look at other options.
I would recommend complimenting the blog content and asking to submit a few guest posts about your experience within your industry. Then, once you have obtained a number of links, simply turn off the adwords campaign.
Tip 6: Use BuzzStream
I started using BuzzStream (a link-building CRM tool) around three months ago, with the intention of streamlining my link building process, and it has saved me a huge amount of time! BuzzStream does actually have a feature designed to identify link prospects, but I haven't really used it, I am more interested in the BuzzMarker and the BuzzBox.
The BuzzMarker is placed on your bookmark toolbar and it pulls in a huge amount of data with one simple click. This data includes whois information, social media accounts, contact details and even data from key SEO metrics (including SEOmoz data). All of this is then available within the CRM system itself and can be added too or edited at any point.
You can also BCC the BuzzBox email address into emails that you're sending to prospects, which will then automatically add the emails into the CRM.
Tip 7: Ask questions
Once you have built a relationship (or link) with a blogger or industry professional, why don't you ask them which blogs and news websites they follow? This is a great way of identifying websites that you may not have reached or found otherwise and it will take very little time. If the blogger is a friend of connection of the person who recommended it, you then also have an angle to start contact with.
Tip 8: Use what's already out there
Competitor Analysis:
Looking at the links that your competitors have will provide opportunities and inspiration, but there is a limit to the number of links that you can get. Once you have found new opportunities from your competitors, why don't you look at their links, and then links going to their links and so on? If you're looking at relevant websites, chances are they will have some good links that you can look to emulate.
Old linkbait:
If you're looking to implement an idea or even just get some quick links, looking at what has been done before is a really good place to start.
For example, if you're looking to write a list of the top 50 most influential bloggers in your industry, have a look at those who are featured on the list and check if they link back to the website. If they do link back, they could be an easy win. Also, as your version will be the latest one, it's probably worth contacting the people linking to the previous version and asking them to link to your new release.
Tip 9: Utilise existing relationships
If you're involved within your industry, chances are that you know people that have contacts that have blogs. Well, now is the time to pull in that favour and get the introduction.
If you know people, or know people that know people, make sure you take advantage of the situation, as I can guarantee that your competitors will be doing it.
These links are simple, natural and are difficult for competitors to copy.
Welcome to Youmoz Paul. Short term PPC is a great strategy for keyword research but I'd never thought to use it for link building by tracking the network appearances. That's an awesome idea!
I'd also go for a tool like Linkdex, Open Site Explorer or Majestic to get a set of competitor links that you can copy.
Industry events are a good tool as well. You can usually get in as a member of the 'press' (write a blog post about it after) and then speak to people on the stands about the client to try and build up those mentions.
One more tip is to look for industry newspapers or magazines (we use The Writers Handbook to find these). They're amazingly high quality links, and having a piece in them is good press too. Think like a PR.
Thanks Mike!
Will have a look at 'The Industry Handbook', sounds like a good resource!
Paul
@ Koozai
Any soft copy of that Writer's handbook ?
Great roundup of ideas. The Reverse Image Search trick is a nice one. Just started getting into Buzzstream very recently- I hadn't realised before just how awesome it is. :)
Thanks Tom!!
I'm BuzzStream's biggest fan! It has saved me so much time over the last few months!
Paul
With BuzzStream I think Follower Wonk is also quite useful ...
If you want to promote your products or services (like we provide manual social bookmarking) than you need to use different sources and different modes. And if you want to promote through twitter than I think Follower Wonk is simply a boon.
Hats off to you Paul for awesome collection. Saved this post.
This is truly a great post! So glad it got promoted to the main blog. You have so many great ideas in this post that are actionable. I can just hand this off to my SEO Teams and say "run with it" without much more direction.
One thing I really love about these types of links are that they diversify a backlink portfoliio quickly. I always say that too much of one type of link building is foolish, but when you add this method of link building in, you've got built in diversification.
Thanks mate - Glad you like the tips :)
I'm really excited that the post has been promoted, didn't expect it at all!
How is buzzstream different from raventools or market samurai? Very good outline for link building and I think you did a awesome job.
I always use twitter to find bloggers. :) Sometimes when I contact them I give them free seo advice and let them know who I am and what I want from them.
I've never used Marked Samurai, but I find it much better than comparative features within Raven.
BuzzStream is a really good CRM system that allows you to keep all of the details you would want for link prospects in one place. Also the BuzzMarker (a toolbar button) pulls in loads of details (whois info, contact details, social media accounts, SEO metrics etc) at the push of a button - great tool!
I think they have a free trial - would definitely recommend trying it out.
I will. I always found that my link efforts get slowed down when I use raven tools plugin to monitor my links.. its always faster for me to just have a excel spread sheet open.. but I am going to the website now and signing up for a trial now. it may be my missing tool.
And I challenge you as well. Market Samurai is freaking AWESOME. I Love LOVE lOVE it.
Joseph thumbs up to you for giving SEO advice to the people.
Yes Market Samurai is simply awesome though these days this one is bit slow.
Which features of Market Samurai do you like most ?
Great post Paul! I am newer into full time SEO than many of the people I work with that have been involved heavily and learning for years. Of the many articles and posts I have read in the past year, I sure enjoyed this one a lot and would rate it up at the top of my list.
Two methods I am happy to have learned today are the reverse image search as well as the Wildcard Search (Dental “Guest *” blog) query. I am familiar with some of the other ones you mentioned, but this query in particular I have not tried yet and have never heard of. I look forward to using these. Thanks for the post!!
Thanks! Glad you got ideas from my post :)
Some nice new ideas here :)
I've used TinEye before to look for dupe images, clever idea to use it for image attribution links.
Another way to find possible attributions from images is by examining your incoming links for hotlinked images from other sites. An additional link can be great in these cases, but the trick is weighing the risk of having the site just drop your hotlinked image in favour of something they aren't being asked to give credit for. Even though sites hotlinking your images is robbery of your bandwidth, it is still a link. You should be able to tell by the feeling of a site whether the owner will be happy to credit your site for the image.
*For educational purposes only*
If you really don't link how your image is being used, you can always rename your version of the image and your href and get "creative" with which image takes the place of the previous one ;)
Thanks for expanding on reverse image searching!
I've never thought to change the URL of a hotlink to prevent someone from using it - great idea!
Not that I've ever done anything like that!
*Whistles innocently*...
Recursively utilizing blogrolls/links pages is a great technique for discovering more potential links that I have been using lately... It's easy to simply look at your competitor's links and try to go after them as if that's the end of it, but many of those links will have their own lists of links, and those will each have their own lists - they can be endless launching pads into whole new sets of worlds!
Of course, many of those links, doubtlessly exchanged between friendly SEOs, will not be high-quality (and I don't just mean from a PR perspective, but from a this-site-just-doesn't-look-like-very-good-content perspective), but you can zoom around dozens of links and parse out the quality ones that you want to go after. Start commenting on blog posts, building relationships with those webmasters, and try to figure out how to get on their rolls!
I've got some great links from going through blogrolls - simple but effective.
Great advice.
Searching for WordPress blogs with the 'Top Commentators' plugin works well too - if you're one of the most frequent commenters on the blog, you get a dofollow link in the sidebar. Usually restricted to 5 or 10 links, and resets at the beginning of the year so you have a chance to catch up if it's a popular blog.
Paul -
This is great stuff man and like you said - actionable!
I love the idea of the reverse image search. That one seems really fruitful!
One other operator that I have used extensively in the past was the Related: search. That one proved very useful to me when I was in-house to find targeted, relevant sites. Combined with the Moz SERP overlay, we killed it!
Cheers!
Cheers John!
I haven't thought to use that before, will give it a try :)
Absolutley brilliant post. Just given me a few more ideas rather than just concentrating on open site explorer. Will check the methods out over the weekend. Thanks
Thanks! Excellent, hope you get some good links :)
Awseome post Paul BOOKMARKED!
:-)
Really liked reading about the reverse image search. Thanks, and very nice post Paul!
Thanks mate - definitely worth a try, especially with large sites that have lots of images.
Nice post Paul.Tineye.com is a great little tool. Thanks.
Thanks Rich, hope it gets you some good links!
A lot of useful facts explained on very simple way. Hope that Paul will not stop on this post. This post definitelly refresh my memory and confirmed how link building can be easy&fun if you are familiar with basic facts presented in this post.
Thanks! :)
Paul -
Great information. Sometimes we get so into the new tools and internet do-dads, we forget that some simple google searches can yeild great results. :)
Thanks buddy - I agree completely.
Excellent article, very thorough and concise. Hope to read more articles from you soon! Will be using some of these techniques!
Thanks
Thanks for sharing great tips here Paul... I really appreciate it... This could really help me a lot... I hope you could also share more on your next posts... Can't wait...
Thanks! Already planning my next post :)
I'm always happy having more tools to try out and play with... and especially pertaining to link building since so far that seems to be one of my weaker skills. Thanks for the tools and tips.
Hadn't heard of TinEye - very interesting! We've gotten some milage out of pictures we host on our site. If you have an article or page getting traffic, IMO you should make sure it has at least a few different pictures of the topic on it. Not just for obvious reasons, but so that people who may not want to link to your opinion on the subject may still think of your site as, "the one with a bunch of pictures" and link to you out of laziness.
Thanks. I agree, one of my clients has got some great links from doing good, compelling blog posts with eye-catching images and bloggrs then using those images.
Ugh, you're right. Link building is so time-consuming...but can be so rewarding. These tools are great for making the task not seem so daunting. I agree with dohertyjf, that reverse image search is awesome, and you've hit the nail on the head on how to turn it into a link prospect. Great stuff!
Thanks :) I have found some of these techniques to be more effective than some of the campaigns I've done.
Really like the reverse image search idea. Never considered that before. Thanks.
Thanks - I have had got some good links using this in the past, it's a good technique. Glad the article helped :)
Here is what we do for searching forum and blogs in our niche -
To search forums -
Powered by vBulletin or SMF or phbb + your keyword
To search blogs -
site:.com inurl:blog “post a comment” -”comments closed” -”you must be logged in” “Add your keyword”
The PPC strategy is pretty smart. Thanks for the tip.
Thanks buddy :)
Brilliant ideas!!!
Thank you :)
Currently reviewing Raven. Will try Buzzstream as well and see if it will work me. Thank you for sharing!
It's a really good tool, definitely work looking at.
Thanks :)
Very nice ideas Paul. I've found that sometimes when we reach out some bloggers are only interested if they will get paid. We didn't have to do this yet but I was wondering what you do in these situations, what would you recommend?
I do tend to face this quite a lot, but there are a number of ways around it.
1. Build a relationship before asking for a link - communicating on Twitter, commenting on their blog, providing assistance in some way or even just sending a few nice emails will help you to form a relationship with the blogger. In the past I have got some great links by building relationships, whether it's through submitting guest articles, website reviews or even mentions within blog posts (without asking). Often, good links are worth the time it takes to build the relationship and you're developing your 'blogger outreach' at the same time.
2. Product reviews - Asking a blogger to review one of your products on their website is a natural, white-hat way of getting some great editorial links. Although there is still a cost involved, it is likely to be substantially less than paid links, and it's safer.
3. Ego-bait - as an alternative to contacting the blogger straight out asking for links (be it indirectly), you could always try something a bit more creative. If you do a bit of research and identify what you consider to be the top 10 or 20 bloggers within a niche, you can then contact the bloggers and ask them if they mind that they have been featured within the list (making them aware). If you do a long list and you've justified your reasoning behind their inclusions, there is a good chance that at least a few of the bloggers will mention it on their blog. If they don't, you've at least got a better chance of building a relationship in the future.
4. Create a resource - if you can create a resource that features information or data that isn't available else where, you can contact bloggers and ask if they would be willing to talk about your findings. You could also improve on existing data/information and contact the people linking to this.
Hope this helps - feel free to ask more questions :)
Thanks for sharing, these are great ideas. We use some of them as well. Another way we found can work depending on the blogger is to offer something in exchange. What to offer will vary depending on the situation but for example you can offer to mention them on your blog in exchange.
Is there a community forum for BuzzStream? Seems like a cool tool but I'm having a hard time figuring it out.
Thanks a ton for the post btw!
I don't think there's a forum, but the customer service guys are really good and they've helped me a lot via Skype in the past.
Thanks :)
Great stuff Paul I would call it a must-bookmark-kind-of post this is!
I am using Raven tool from last few months and I figure out that I may be good to find contact details for link prospects but as far as keeping record and related stuff I prefer excel (I don’t mind if you call me an Old School)
The great idea which I never tried is get link prospects through PPC campaign… you really twist me there…
Thank you very much for such an amazing round up!
Thanks, I still like Raven Tools but BuzzStream has just made link building/relationship management a lot easier.
I'll check it out :)
I like these tips. A lot of them are outside of the box. It's so easy to get caught up in the habit of only using Google to find link prospects. This was a great primer on some other means of prospecting. Great article!
Thanks - glad you like them :)
Great article! Good work!
Great tips, lots of things that I did not use yet! I do use advance Google searches. Might be better to do the following though.
Instead of: Dental blog inurl:.co.uk
use: Dental blog site:.co.uk
inurl:.co.uk, can also return the following: [somesitename].com/tag/httpwww-becourse-co-uk/
which is not something you are looking for right? As you are searching for .co.uk sites and not .com sites.
Fantastic Post Paul and very insightful. nice work!
Thanks - glad to hear the tips were of use :)
Thanks mate :)
Due to a long weekend conference I've only just manged to read this - great read and one I have no doubt I will be returning to. Thanks for your input, this has expanding what I already do for Link Building and that's what I like about this sort of blog post - willing to share tips and information with others, that can surely only serve to make the SEO industry better and more robust! Have a great week!
Thanks mate, glad you liked the post :)
OMG! this post is just terrific with creatives and simple ideas on linkbuilding. franckly people don't need to be expert to use these tips. This post help me to expand current linkbuilding ideas. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks mate :)
I appreciate these creative ideas for linkbuilding. Buzzstream looks interesting for link prospect management. I usually use Excel which does the job pretty well. I tried RavenTools for link prospect management but it seems cumbersome to work with.
Thanks! I use raven too and I'm not too keen on it, buzz stream is much more efficient and effective.
I've started using the google image search instead of tineye nowadays, you can upload images or enter a URL just like tineye, but obviously it has the advantage of googles huge image index. When you're on the google images search page just click on the small camera icon in the search bar.
This is definitely one of the best research guide for SEO... Thanks!
Thank you :)
I like the concept of using twitter url...Thanks for share such useful research....
No problem, glad you liked it :)
Thanks Paul for sharing this informative post. Advanced search queries are quite effective and useful in finding the data relevant to your search and getting connected to your Industry.
Thanks, glad you like it :)
Enjoyed the post and am putting it into action, but I'm afraid I'm much better at prospecting than I am deciding which sites are worth my time.
I've been using the examine competitors links tip, for instance, but most of my competitors top links are to some questionable spammy sources.
So I'm tempted to copy them because they are obviously ranking successfully with these easy to get links (directory submissions mostly).
But everything seomoz has taught me says don't do it. Take the high road. Build links differently than your competitors and you'll win out in the long run! Will I win out in the long run? Google? anyone?
To be honest I would say that it differs for every keyword, I've built good, high quality links to a website and have found it really difficult to compete with spammers in the past, but have also outranked websites with 100 times the amount of links I have after getting a few really good links.
I would say keep going after the good links and the rankings will come - your links are also a lot more sustainable than your questionable competitors' ones and one algo change could always take them out completely.
Glad you liked the article :)
Very comprehensive post Paul.
Great work!
-Mike
Thanks, glad you liked it :)
Great post. I have bookmarked. Finding link opportunities is sooo time consuming...like the 'advanced search' - that I will be trying.
Thanks - glad you liked the post.
Out of curiosity, how do you feel about Link Builder from word tracker? Do you not like it, or is it just the main competitor of seomoz? I typically use it and find it to be pretty decent, though I have not tried seomoz yet
I haven't actually used this tool, I will be sure to check it out though. Would always recommend SEOmoz though! :)
That was the right thing to say Paul, don't want the 'shock treatment' from Roger ;-)
Definitely not haha :)
Hi Paul, great post. Apologies it's taken me so long to read and respond, I went away when it was first published and I've only just gotten back today!
Some great tips... the image one in particular is great. It makes sense to ask for a link if an image has not been credited properly, but to actually seek them out is something I hadn't considered before. Great advice.
Thanks mate - glad you found it useful :)
Hope you had a good holiday!
Link buidling is time consuming, but it's also a great opportunity to build personal connections. I notice a lot of these tips have an element of that to it, and those connections can lead to neat opportunities above and beyond links.
Thanks for a great post. There are two three things in here I hadn't thought to try that I'm looking forward to implementing.
Thank you, hope you get some great links :)
Thanks for the great post!! It gave me some great ideas for expanding my current linkbuilding efforts!
Glad you found it uself :)
Nice Paul, really long and informative blog. Thanks. I have looked at reverse image feature in Google but not for getting a link. Isn't better to but your logo or brand name in your image like in an infographic, so if they do use it you get some mention.
I agree that watermarking or branding images can be good for exposure, but often they're removed. It's more pratical for infographics and other major imagery, but not always as much for smaller images. Plus, a text (preferably anchored) attribute passes link-juice along with the props.
Thanks :)
Thanks - and nice tip to improve the filtering of results for UK domain extensions :)
Exceptionally explansive article.
I'll go actioning a few of your examples later tonight.
Cheers
Thanks - glad you found it useful :)
Excellent tips, I would be putting all this into practice very soon.
Bookmarked.
Great article . I came to know the value of link building by this article. I was impressed with Reverse Image Search tool. I was a great tool . Thank you
Thanks - glad you find the tips useful.
Such a useful article, its really helped me understanding the importance of link building and keyword research. :)
Great article i ll try the advanced search queries! Thanx
Thanks! The queries are great for finding good blogs/websites that aren't as well optimised as some of the others.
Hi Paul,
Very helpful article. The tool suggestions were great. I am just now starting implementing more images on some of my pages. Lisa Barone at outspoken media just did a nice post on images. Your article is a great next step for me. Thank you.
Thanks! Glad you found it useful :)
thanks paul such a really very useful and impressive tips to make necessary actions with these . .!
Thanks :)
There are dozens of option here I'd never seen that serve to help better evaluate our site as followerwonk that helps to analyze the status of our website in social networks and sensational buzzstream.
Thanks - buzzstream is an awesome tool! :)
Many thanks - Follower Wonk is just what I am after at the moment. Even the free version does the job for me.
No problem - It's a really good tool that is great for finding new prospects.
Indeed - looks like it has directly led to a sale from one of my sites already.
Great post!
What tools do you use to streamline the process? i.e. after you have done your searches, what's the step after that? How do you copy all the results and order them?
wonderful
you are can use keyword + "powered by ip.board" find forum and comment backlink
thanks for the post, this is one thing im working on improving... so this guide will really help.
Great post!
There are a lot of cool tricks in here I hadn't thought of. Thanks!
Thanks, I'm bookmarking this article
One o
Great post Mr. Rogers. I hadn't heard of tineye.com before so thanks for sharing.