1.  Wikipedia

How many times have you found a promising keyword only to discover a Wikipedia page ranking first in Google? The prospect of having to outrank Wikipedia used to be daunting, but after discovering this technique, it’s more of a bittersweet occurrence.

If you wanted to rank organically for the expensive keyword [structured settlement], you may notice the following Wikipedia page ranking first in Google for the keyword:

 This tool will allow you to find the traffic volume for any Wikipedia page over the last 90 days. The resulting data can help you determine, whether it is worth the effort, to try and outrank the Wikipedia page.

2.  Government Website Keyword Data

If it’s not a Wikipedia page that’s outranking me, it’s invariably a government website. As a tax payer, you effectively own a share in your government’s websites. Governments are coming under more pressure to improve transparency and, as a result, are making vast amounts of data available to the public.

Would you not be interested in knowing the keywords, referring sites, and most popular pages of a website that you help to fund?

The UK government already shares the data for one of the UK’s most popular website, DirectGov:

• Keywords
• Referring Sites
• Most Popular Pages

It’s quite interesting to sneak a peek behind the curtain and see the keywords which this popular website is ranking for, but on a more practical level, the data can be used for:

1. Targeting keywords in your niche
2. Checking the accuracy of keyword tools
3. Creating content or a mini site based on the most popular pages
4. Using the referral data for link building opportunities

If a government is not publicly sharing data for a particular website, you may be able to use Freedom of Information legislation to request it. It usually involves just sending an email to the site administrator. I have used Freedom of Information legislation to request keyword and referral data from the following UK websites:

• Justice.gov.uk
• Office of National Statistics 
• Department of Work and Pensions
• Home Office
• Inland Revenue
• Department of Transport

The resulting information contained a goldmine of keyword data for the legal, finance and auto niches.

3.  Most Popular Posts Of [Insert Year]

At the end of the year, many websites, including Search Engine Land, highlight their most popular posts. To find posts that have proved popular in your niche, you can use Google and a query such as:

[your niche]+most popular posts of 2012+traffic

If you were in the legal niche and looking for new keyword and content ideas, you could use a query such as:

If you click on the highlighted post, the author mentions that during the year, they wrote 50 articles and had over 100,000 visitors. Using the Pareto principle (the 80/20 rule), we can estimate that the 10 articles listed received around 80,000 visitors.

If I were working as an SEO for a law firm, I would see this as a great opportunity to create some ‘how to’ content on topics such as:

1. How to look up criminal records
2. How to conduct a background check
3. How much does it cost to find a person

You could also do back link analysis to see which of these posts received links and then perform outreach to the sites that linked to your competitor after you have created even better content.

4.  [Keyword] + 2013

Google’s Keyword tool only provides historical keyword data. It does not account for what people will be searching for in the future.

You can pre-empt which keywords will be popular in the forthcoming year by using your Google analytics data from the previous year. By searching for [2012], it is possible to find year-specific keywords, which you can target for the coming year before these search terms are reflected in the keyword tool:

This will give you a head start on the competition, allowing you to be one of the first sites to have content and links for these soon-to-be popular keywords. Your content will also have more chance of acquiring links, as people who are searching for your time-relevant content, will be more likely to reference it.

If your site did not rank for any year-specific keywords, an alternative method would be to use your AdWords data or target your most popular keywords adding the [year] parameter. For example, if one of your popular keywords was [tax return], you could target [tax return 2014].

Tip: I have used the above technique, together with buying the exact match domain for the keyword, such as [keyword2014.com], to create some very high traffic mini sites.

The tools and techniques listed above are not a replacement for other keyword tools. They help to give a clearer picture and a head start on your competition. Let me know about any creative keyword tools or hacks you use in the comments.

Find the brown M&Ms

Some rock backs such as Van Halen, are these days, almost as famous for their outrageous demands as they are for their music.

The most famous is their requirement for a bowl of M&Ms to be in their dressing room; with all the brown ones removed. Failure to comply with this seemingly outrageous request was grounds for immediate cancellation of the concert.

However, what may at first seem like a stereotypical rock star demand was actually an inspired strategic test to ensure that the contract had been read in full.

The presence of a brown free bowl of M&Ms provided confirmation that the promoter had paid attention to the details of the contract, especially the important safety and technical specifications.

I have applied the principles of the ‘brown M&M technique’ to help me find higher quality contractors, save time, and to build links.

I don’t suggest using this technique with the sole intention of acquiring links, instead, use it as an accompaniment to the development of your website.

Testimonials – Links Turned On Their Head

Leaving testimonials and asking stakeholders to include a link back to your site is an effective SEO technique that has been used successfully for many years.

Usually, testimonials are requested after the completion of a job, contract or transaction. I have taken this technique and turned it on its head, asking for a testimonial up front as a way to filter out designers, programmers and writers, in a similar way to the brown M&M technique.

An Example:

Like many website owners, I use Elance and Odesk to find contractors at competitive prices. These websites act as a marketplace for businesses and contractors to connect. Within hours of posting a job, you usually have dozens of potential employees responding to your post.

Having many applicants for a job may sound appealing. However, I have found that filtering through such a range of potential contractors makes it hard to find the best candidate for the job.

I noticed that many of the contractors applying for jobs were using copied and pasted cover letters. It appeared that these contractors were using a shotgun approach to applications, applying for as many jobs as possible without taking the time to craft individual cover letters for individual projects.

Anecdotally, I found the contractors that used this shotgun technique to be below standard and I needed a way to sift out the contractors that I suspected of applying to every job. While thinking about this, it occurred to me, why not use the brown M&M technique to filter out those contractors that were sub standard?

How To Apply The Brown M&M Technique In The Virtual World

To ensure that my project briefs had been read in full, I employed a technique of asking contractors who submitted proposals to include the answer to a simple question at the start of their cover letter, for example:

•  What is 2+3?

If anyone failed to answer the question I would decline their application because it showed that either their attention to detail was lacking or they were using a copy and pasted cover letter.

This technique worked well and helped to separate the wheat from the chaff in terms of quality contractors. Despite this, I was still receiving a lot of quality applications at low prices; many of which I would happily employ. I needed another way to help me choose between them.

Building Links Using Testimonials

I often think in terms of SEO and I wondered if I could filter applicants and acquire a link at the same time. It struck me, why not ask some additional pre-screening questions?

This list included questions such as:

1. Do you or your company have a website?
2. If yes, what is the URL of your website?
3. Does your website have a page where it lists partners, suppliers or reviews from clients?
4. If we build a working relationship, can we be included on this page?

By using this technique, you are filtering potential applications, saving time and maximizing the return on investment of hiring them.

This technique could be expanded or customized. For example, if you are thinking of hiring a writer, why not ask if they write for other websites and if they do, would it be possible to link to your website where applicable.

How Much Is A Link Worth?

The value of a link depends on the authority and the quality of the webpage on which it is found; the higher the authority of the webpage, the more the link will be worth. Links on partner or testimonial pages often stand the test of time much better than links from blogs or articles as these pages are pushed down the hierarchy of the site.

I have often found the value of a link acquired using this technique is worth more than the price I pay the contractor for their work. Links like these also have the added benefit that they will not be easily replicated by your competitors.

The Bigger Picture

If you are looking for a designer, don’t sacrifice quality for a contractor who might give you a link on a higher PageRank page. This does not make sense. This technique is best used when you have many quality contractors who are charging a similar price. This technique can be used as a deciding vote on otherwise similar proposals.

Websites often tack on SEO as an additional business strategy when it should be integrated into everything they do. This technique shows that SEO should be a holistic approach to your business development and not an additional strategy.

Photo  from mischiru . Used under Creative Commons license.

The range of data sets available is enormous, with 16 nations currently spear heading open data initiatives, and countless private organisations publishing data online – the US alone has published more than 400,000 data sets. This free data presents an opportunity for anyone with a creative mind to produce something of real interest and, in return, acquire quality inbound links to their website.

Furthermore, both the US and UK governments actively encourage their data to be used to create web based apps. These apps can be submitted to http://data.gov.uk or http://www.data.gov and many are rewarded with an authoritative link.

This article will look at how you can use public data to produce something of value and how to attract links by marketing your creation effectively.

Sources Of Public Data

There are a number of organizations and institutions that offer free data including governments, universities and non-profits.

International data is available from both the IMF and the World Bank, each providing online portals containing thousands of free data sets. Country specific data can be found through a number of sites. Currently, the majority are US based, with the most extensive data sets found on websites including: USA.gov, FedSats.gov, American Fact Finder and SeachSystem.net.

Recently, the UK Government has also created a website which provides a one-stop-shop for data from their various governmental departments, and more countries are poised to follow suit in the near future.

Tableau Public provides a comprehensive list of hundreds of free datasets which are updated monthly. In a fitting example of their business model, they have also compiled these data sources graphically, ranked by data quality, relevance, ease of download and compatibility with their excellent data visualisation software:

Data Catalogue from Tableau Public

Tip: The UK and other governments have “freedom of information” legislation. If you can’t find the specific data you are looking for within the sets made publicly available, you can make a written request for the information.

For example, why not use the Freedom of Information Act to ask the UK Government about their PPC spending and write an article or create an infographic around this? I guarantee links will flow if you do!

Ideas For Using Publicly Available Data

Most of the websites mentioned above present their data in a raw format which is usually of little value to the reader and almost impossible to gain insight from.

There is a huge opportunity here to unravel the raw data into visually striking information that is powerful, easily digested and succinct. It is also an opportunity to create something that will be shared and more importantly, create inbound links.

How to most effectively achieve this is dependent on your imagination and creativity, but some ideas could include:

The scope for using public data is huge, and the potential rewards are great. Below are a number of websites that have successfully used public data to create useful, eye-catching apps:

• A Tool to Find  On time Flights
• A Crime Quiz
• A Dashboard of Council Spending
• A Chart of Fuel Prices
• A  Widget providing Country Travel Advice

All of the above pages received links from their respective .gov websites. The ‘on time flight tool’ even received a link from Whitehouse.gov.

Your creation must look professional for maximum impact and viral potential. If you have an in-house team of designers and programmers you could request that they create something of similar quality to the examples above. Alternatively, you can use Elance or Odesk and outsource the creation of your idea.

Tip: Try to think of an idea that can be cross-marketed. For example, an interactive chart which highlights the tax on gas could be of interest to both car enthusiasts and tax related websites/publications.

Marketing Your Idea

Marketing is essential to maximise the exposure of your design. This does not have to be expensive or wildly creative, as a huge amount can be achieved with four simple, but effective, methods:

A.  On Page Coding

From an on-page perspective, you can ask your developer to embed a code beneath any charts, images or infographics that you create. This will allow other websites to feature the images with a link back to your site. See the example below:

This HTML will allow other websites to link back to your site easily

Y can also include social widgets which make it easier for people to share, recommend and +1 your creation – increasing the chances of it going viral.

B.  Notify Data Sources

The owner of the dataset will usually be very interested in any tool created using their data. Contacting them and making them aware of your creation will often result in an inbound link just as both data.gov and data.gov.uk link back to any apps on their sites.

Not only will this provide a high quality link but it could also create interest and traffic to your tool. Journalists and other publications researching similar data may learn about and investigate your creation through these links, potentially further increasing exposure and links from these third parties.

Using advance search queries in Google, you can find galleries and sites that specialise in featuring infographics and other interesting data. Tableau Software has a Gallery of links to websites that have used their software to visualise data and Killer Infographics allows you to submit infographics that you create.

Tip: If you are using an external company or contractor, ask them to feature your design on their website or within their portfolio. This is another easy way to gain backlinks.

C.  Issue a Press Release

A press release is a great way to let major newspapers and publications know about your creation and any significant research findings you have found from the data. If your press release is unique and contains interesting analysis, newspapers and online publications may use some, or all, of the article and link back to your site.

D.  Outreach To Related Blogs

In addition to the press, you can also contact blogs that have related themes to the data you used. For example, if you created an interactive map of property prices, you could contact real estate and finance blogs informing them of what you created and any key findings.

If your website does not receive many visitors, one piece of advice that Vince Blackham recommends is trading your viral content for a link. In allowing another, high traffic, site to publish your content, you will ensure much higher exposure, and in turn, create a greater flow of traffic and PageRank back towards your pages, providing exposure to your brand and content.

This may seem counter intuitive but this technique could gain more exposure for your content compared to featuring it yourself, helping your site in the long-term.

There is so much free data out there, it’s just a matter of using your imagination and creativity to identify ways it can be used and visualised. If you know of other free data sources or have created apps using public data, lets us know in the comments below – I’d love to hear about them.

Image used under ‘Fair Use’