Let’s take an overall look at Link Prospector plus a couple of cool tips I found when using it and finish with a review of pros and cons.

General Overview

Link Prospector is a link building research tool designed to find and return lists of potential partner sites. Built for speed, the tool can return a huge amount of data link builders can sift through to find link building opportunities. The tool has a clean and simple interface and has the ability to export what it finds.

There are two help videos on the site as well. Before you launch the tool you will need a complete list of keywords and an idea of the type of sites you want to prospect for.

Getting Started Running The Tool

After selecting a name for my campaign, I picked the type of sites I wanted the tool to search for. There are 14 categories to choose from:

I wanted to find pages to host link embedded content and find new directories so I set my search for:  Directories, Reviews, Topical Blogs and Guest Posting.  Each campaign took about 20-30 minutes to generate.

When it was done, my panel looked like this:

As you can see, the tool returned over 2100 URL prospects for me to review under Guest Posting, each page hosts the term “memory foam mattress” and “guest posting” or similar terms. With each test returning at least 2000 results, Link Prospector gives you a lot of link building possibilities to sift through.

You can use the Excluded Domains feature and eliminate certain URL’s from being returned if you feel there is no chance to secure links from these sites or feel they won’t provide any competitive review advantage.

Keywords

Once you pick the type of sites you want to prospect for, the next step is adding the keyword.

For each report generated, I selected up to five keywords and had the option to narrow my search field through additional perimeters such as geographical regions and date range:

In this test (which is Test #2) I looked for UK specific sites hosting the word ”payday” and its variations and asked the tool to search on the first 1000 results. In hindsight, asking the tool to go that deep on a term like “payday” wasn’t an effective use of time, the results were poor past the 150 mark.

This is not a reflection of the tool but of the SERPS for that particular term. In general, after running all my tests I found asking the tool to return 100 – 200 results yielded the best pages.

Cool tip:  I discovered using the tilde character (~) in front of a single term would increase the amount and variety of data returned. I recommend you use this advance search operator with your primary keyword when running terms. In some cases, it returned pages and sites I had never heard of which means there’s a good chance your competitors haven’t either.

When your reports are ready (it takes about 30 minutes for each to run) you are taken to a list of prospects. By default, they are sorted by LTS (Link Target Score) which is a metric created by Link Prospector to help discover pages that give you a “higher likelihood of being a converting prospect”.

You can also sort the pages by PageRank and TLD’s:

Next to each result is a number in parenthesis (I’ve circled it in red in the image above), this represents the number of pages on the domain hosting my keywords.

You can click on the number and drill down to see each page:

Being able to see the pages hosting your terms is extremely helpful; it allows you to see how the sites are using and promoting content. The campaign manager also allows you to export your data to an Excel file which can be saved to your computer and used or downloaded into Buzzstream.

This drill-down option is why I don’t like to exclude domains in the research stage. Even knowing I won’t get a link from a site returned in the report doesn’t mean there is a marketing angle to ignore, because someone already got a link from them or the page wouldn’t be listed!

This does add to your review time so again, if you know for a fact there is nothing to be gained from certain sites, exclude them and save yourself some time.

Cool tip:  In every search I ran, Link Prospector returned YouTube pages hosting my keywords. With video being a huge part of Universal Search results on both Bing and Google, having an instant library of topical videos is helpful.

Bookmark the videos returned and start running a competitive analysis on them. Who’s linking to them? Who’s commenting on them? Where else are they being shown? Here is where searching on the top 150 results can be helpful, you’ll get the cream of the crop video’s in one handy location.

Education & Help

There is a seven minute video on the homepage of Link Prospector that takes you through each step of the tool. There is also a four minute video on the keyword selection page that is a must watch before listing your terms.

You have to listen closely to pick up the tips but basically, Link Prospector recommends you list single keywords in additional to multi-keyword strings for maximum results.

Pick your keywords well and the tool will bring back a lot of good results.  If after watching the video you still have questions, Garrett recommends emailing him directly for support:  garrett AT citationlabs.com.

Pros & Cons

When it comes to link building, there are many ways to acquire links. No matter what you do or which vertical you’re in, in order to rank well you need quality pages hosting your links.

That’s where using a tool like Link Prospector can help, it will research and analyze a large amount of data before listing potential link partners. It cuts your search time down considerably.

While it cuts your search time down, it does little for your review time and you need to know up front you’ll spend a lot of time picking through the results for sites to link with. If you run a lot of terms and go deep, you’ll have a tremendous amount of content to wade through, just look how many prospects came back in my sample tests.

Results past the 150 mark were so-so to lousy, I wouldn’t go deeper but it’s up to you. Again, Link Prospector is not at fault for what is being returned, it brings back what it finds when searching. If the engines have garbage results, so does the tool. If a webpage uses a term conversationally and out of context, it doesn’t “understand” that and returns the page anyway.

You’ll have the same results if you search by hand, it will just take hours longer and won’t come in a neat and exportable package. Here is where using the best keywords and the tilde (~) will help tremendously by returning a wider array of results. Sadly, I had to stumble on this little tidbit to try it out, it was not included in the main help video.

The main help video, which is over seven minutes long and done in one shot, should come with a timed tabled of contents and a transcription accessible from every page and point in the campaign. For now it doesn’t, so if you want to review the main help video while working, you have to log out to see it or pull up a second tab and start over.

The site lacks a FAQ section (this would help with specific points) or a section explaining advanced search operators. It also lacks a detailed explanation for the LTS (Link Target Score), there is one but I had to email Garrett for the information.

Understanding what LTS is and knowing how to use it would be a big help when reviewing results. Even though LTS analyzes pages based on criteria set by Link Prospector, having this information and knowing how sites are scored would go a long way to helping qualify pages during the review process.

Link Prospector is a good research tool for the serious link builder, you will definitely find a lot of potential link partners when using it. Take advantage of the free trial before you begin, it will help you get used to the large amounts of data the tool produces and help you plan a way to use it. I recommend you play both videos several times before launching your first campaign and have Garrett’s email handy as you work.

Scott Fasser, Director of Customer Experience at Optify and I shared a number of B2B linking tactics and then hosted a lively Q&A session. We ran out of time and couldn’t answer everything submitted, so Scott and I decided to split the remaining questions and answer them here.

Q.  Is submitting press releases as a method for link building efficient? Will submitting too many press releases hurt your SEO?

Scott:  Press releases, if submitted properly, are an effective way to build short term links and  to syndicate news and content. The search engines use different indexes like news, local, etc. which have different lifespans. The news index has one of the shortest because they cycle so often.

So, you can’t just shoot out one news release and expect success. Having a plan for syndicating on a regular basis – no less than monthly is the best strategy.

Optimizing the release for the focus keywords and submitted with the right service is a good strategy – especially when combined with an on-going  PR effort to build excitement for news and participate in reviews, stories and roundups.

Q.  In terms of micro sites or blogs, it is better to have them on a unique URL linking back into your main site or as a root in your main site?

Scott:   Microsites and blogs are distinct and serve different purposes. A micro site can contain a blog as part of the strategy and tend to be driven by specific campaigns. There should definitely be links back to the main site from a microsite.

There should also  be a blog on the main site that provides content for longer tail phrases, interactivity opportunity through commenting/sharing and internal links.

Debra:  Regardless why you set up a blog or microsite, keep in mind they will only be SEO effective if worked like any other site. You need content, social signals and inbound links pointing to the blog/microsite in order for it to pass link popularity and/or traffic to your main site.

If you can promote these micro sites and blogs, great! But if you can’t, even if you use a site like Squidoo as your microsite base, be prepared to receive little algorithmic influence. You can’t pass along what you don’t have.

Q.  How effective are link exchanges? Does Google penalize you for engaging in them?

Scott: Link exchanges are helpful if it is a very relevant content on the pages that are exchanging links. Partners, customers, industry associations are all examples of where  a link exchange makes sense.

Participating in a large scale or questionable link exchange program should not be pursued as those types of situations – non-relevant content essentially – can cause some penalties.

Debra:  If your customers are using mobile devices to access your site, they’re looking at other sites too. Increase exposure of your brand by adding/swapping your company link with influential blogrolls in your niche. These links aren’t heavy hitters algorithmically but because they are text links, they will be seen online and via mobile.

Q.  Now that we have a list of prospective links, what are the most effective outreach methods?

Debra:  No matter what industry you are in or what type of link you’re after, establishing a point of commonality between you and your target increases your chances of getting a link.

Once you identify a list of sites you’d like to secure links from, figure out what you have in common with the site owner/company.  Do you both know the same people, worked at the same company or went to the same college?

Have you both blogged for a certain site, been a Foursquare mayor or been active on an industry forum?

You’re going to have to do a little homework here, we play a game in the office I call the Six Degrees of SEO Bacon which I patterned after the Kevin Bacon game to find a hook we can use. Spend time looking at the owners About page, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter bio’s for a clue or three you can use in an initial email to show a point of commonality.

Go beyound the usual flatter-them-for-a-link spiel, in todays’ jaded online world your email needs to say more than “you have a great site” to get the link.

Q.  If you host infographics on third party sites, how to you get the links to your site?

Debra:  There are three ways you could do this, (1) include an author bio, (2) include a sponsor or courtesy  link or (3) include cut and paste instructions at the end of the infographic.

A terrific example of a third party site providing a courtesy link can be found here on Mashable and in the image below.

This particular graphic was created by Mat Siltala from Dream Systems Media for Pinnable Business. Mashable linked to Pinnable Business in the body of the post preceding the infographic and gave them a courtesy link at the end of the article so double bonus here.

Mashable rocks and is the exception rather than the rule on linking out from content areas, most media sites won’t so you’ll need to ask for a sponsor link or provide copy and paste instructions for the graphic.

Q.  To me, reviews seem more like a B2C item. Can you talk more about how they’re relevant for B2B?”

Debra:   In my presentation, I suggested reviews were a powerful and effective link building tactic for B2B sites. Companies selling B2B have a more difficult time attracting links (IMO) because of internal and and competitive hurdles.

Not only do they have to convince competitors to link to them but often they have to convince management to let them ask. Since the search engines don’t make allowances for what kind of industry you’re in, B2B sites can be doubly challenged with  getting links and social signals to their pages.

In the past, I’ve had success using product and service reviews as a way to attract B2B links, I find they make linking out less threatening and provide lead generation leverage. A great example of this concept is dpReview.com, a blog devoted to digital camera reviews.  It is owned by Amazon.

If you review every piece of hardware, software or service in your niche, you will build a reputation as a neutral subject authority which in turn will attract links. Companies and prospects will subscribe to your RSS feeds, follow you on Twitter and comment if you use a blog.

You can also include reviews from industry thought leaders on your review site, eventually they’ll come a-calling for a guest post when they see what you’re pushing. Guest posting leads to more inbound links, tweets and other forms of social media and the best part is, your guest authors will be helping you do it. Win!

Think of it as becoming the Wikipedia of your industry. People have no trouble linking to Wikipedia because it doesn’t threaten their bottom line and it provides tangible information.

They also link because in many cases, its the only neutral informational source out there. The only thing I recommend doing differently is including video and podcast reviews to help with universal search placement. The more your site is seen and found, the better.

Of course you can take the concept and substitute news and education for reviews but in my case, I’ve found reviews most effective.

Q.  One of our competitors has a lot of paid links – is this ever worthwhile? I thought Google assigns a penalty for this.

Debra:  They do and lately, they’ve been assigning a lot of them. Is it worthwhile to use paid links? You’ll find a wide range of opinions on this, for me the question begs another – “can you afford the consequences if caught“?

If yes, then the decision is yours but if there is any hesitancy, it might be a good idea to stop and think before you run out and pay for links.

Pages rank the way they do (in large part) because of their backlinks. A common tactical suggestion is to aquire the same links as your well ranked competitor. It’s good advice but should you grab the same links if you aren’t sure they’ve been editorially given?

I don’t advocate rising to a level of mediocrity just because the guy ahead of you has, the links you see may not be the only reason a page is ranking well.

You don’t need the same link, you need a better one, use the competitors backlink profile as a guide, not a blueprint. Look at everything they have and most importantly – what they don’t have –  and then go secure your own.

Always keep in mind it’s not what you do that makes a difference, it’s where. When you are doing competitive analysis, look less at the links you’re finding and more on the pages hosting them.

The anchor text, the page and the history behind it are sending the bulk of the ranking weight. Find a better page. Or find a similar page, negotiate your way to an editorial link and then socialize the heck out of it. Imitation may be a sincere form of flattery but in this situation, being totally unique wins.

Regardless if you call it a penalty, a slap or being ignored, if Google thinks you’re using paid links, they think you’re using paid links and that’s when things start happening.

You may see a:

Dip in rankings or

Disappear from the SERPS, or

Remain the same but get a Google love note

That last one has been happening a lot lately, it means you’re hearing what Google thinks about your backlinks. “Thinks” is a nice way of saying Google assumes you have paid and unnatural links pointing at your pages and they’re letting you know they know.

The flip side to getting a note is not getting one, in which case you’re left to wonder why your pages are falling or gone from the SERPS. The ”why” is harder to figure without a note but in the end, the remedy for either situation is the same – more content, more signals, more links.

If you need some help getting started, try using my Linking Blueprint series, it outlines a number of effective and proven link building tactics you use. The best way to regain your rankings is to regroup, rebuild and promote!

For an encore of the webcast, please visit http://searchmarketingnow.com/proper-and-effective-link-building-9735

Until next time, good linking!

In 2010, they added Link Builder in response to consumer demand and to help their keyword customers with their link building efforts. Based in London, the Wordtracker staff is an international bunch, hailing from England, France, Italy, India, Australia and Ireland. To prove this,  CMO Ken McGaffin jokingly pointed out:

I’m an Irishman, living in Scotland, working in London for an English company that does most of its business in the US.

In addition to its tools, Wordtracker has a popular SEO blog and a number of free instructional videos. Let’s take a look at some of the key elements behind Link Builder.

Getting Started

If you’ve read my previous link building tool reviews, you’ll know I am a stickler for detailed “how-to” instructions. I think it’s important these resources be well written and available in multiple formats so webmasters spend minimal time learning and more time linking.

In this regard, Wordtracker gets an A+. The video and written tutorials are the best I’ve seen so far and do an outstanding job explaining how each part of the tool works. I spent a total of 30 minutes watching the videos and reading tutorials, I found I only had to refer back to them one time during my test run, they are very well done.

Another plus for Wordtracker is the way it returns everything in real-time. You don’t have to wait days for data to accumulate or set up a profile manager, results come back almost immediately and in great depth. You have multiple choices in the way you can filter and categorize the data and there is a spreadsheet export function.

Like all linking tools I’ve reviewed, the key to this tool’s success is in the number and scope of keywords and competitive URL’s you use. The more, the better — so don’t skimp or overlook any of your keyword terms.

Start With A Keyword

You can begin your data collection by asking the tool to search on keywords or the URL’s of competitors. I picked the keywords “memory foam mattress” to begin my project.

I inserted my keyword phrase (1.) “memory foam mattress”, selected the country I wanted to target my results from (2.), added the name of my site so the report would show who was linking to my domain (3.) and set up a new file (4.)

Here’s what came back after a 90 second wait:

Over 20,000 results were returned as potential prospects, what you see highlighted in pink are links using the nofollow attribute. The results were seperated by “Strategies” (left column) or link type, this helps categorize the large amount of information returned and allows for further filtering.

I decided to select “News media” since it had the largest number of potential prospects (2774) and is one of my favorite categories to work in. I set the Filter option to return links using the term “mattress” in the anchor so I’d have a more focused set of results to work with.

In the first ten results returned for “News Media”, only one was a news outlet reporting on mattresses. Eight of the results were directories (see image above) and one result was comment spam using the term “mattresses” as a username.

The downside here is a lack of true media results, but on the other hand, I knew there were some solid directory leads returned in the run.

Still, I wasn’t thrilled with the listings and wondered if this was more a result of my keyword term being “non-newsy” or if the tool had a bug. So I ran a second phrase, “political candidates” which is definitely a more news worthy term and let the tool go.

I was right, the mattress term just doesn’t generate media mentions while the second politcal term does.

While the features and operations of this tool are solid, the fact it can only run a single term at a time makes it time consuming to use. If you’re running hundreds of terms or have multiple sites, I’m not sure this tool is for you.

On the other hand, if you’re a small business or have a dedicated linking staff and break your terms and/or sites out by single phrase, only being able to run one term at a time might not be an issue. The laser focus this tool forces you to have will help you run a targeted linking campaign and become well aquainted with your search engine results.

Contact View

Hands down, the best feature in this toolset is the Contacts View option, it pulls contact information off a webpage and organizes it in one spot.

After you’ve run your keywords and collected a list of prospects, save them to a “Targeted” list and engage the “Find contact data” option for each link.

The Link Builder tool then spiders each of the saved prospects by visiting the “About Us” and “Contact” pages on each site and pulling email, telephone, plus any Twitter and Facebook links it finds.

Once you’ve made contact with the site, you can record your actions in the Status box and have a record of what you’ve done and how the webmaster has responded.

If for some reason the Wordtracker spider can’t pull information off the About and Contact pages, there are live links in the account box you can click and pull the information from.

There is a little quirk with this option I would not have known about had I not read the tutorials. The Contact View option takes some time, while it runs you see a busy signal as the data loads. If it goes on too long, refresh the page and the results will display.

Again, if I hadn’t read the help section I could have become frustrated and wasted time contacting Support about this issue. Even worse, if I was using the tool in the trial or first 30 days, I may have cancelled my subscription thinking the tool had a bug. Take the time to read the tutorials carefully before you begin, they really do help.

Strategies

Link Builder offers a detailed written outline of tactics you can consider using, they correspond with the Strategy categories the tool pulls data to:

The strategy guide offers step-by-step instructions how to use the tool’s special features to build links. If you’re stumped for tactics or just want to venture into a new area to build links, this guide will help you get there. In addition to the Strategy guide, Link Builder has a library of link building articles you can peruse for ideas and insights.

Closing Comments

Like a lot of link building tools, Link Builder has its pluses and minuses. I like how the tool automatically highlights links using the nofollow attribute and I love the organization and functionality of Contacts View.

Link Builder is aesthetically pleasing, easy to use and has links to the help section on every page.

For many, this simple tool would be all they need to build links, a contact database and monitor competitors. While the simplicity is good for some, I can see the lack of programming, social media information and analyzing factors a hindrance for others.

The tool does not analyze quality, display PageRank or any other type of authority measure outside of ranking. Granted, knowing where a page ranks is the ultimate authority measure but having additional factors to look at is helpful. Ditto for having social media signals included, with these signals (supposedly) being written into the algorithms this SEO information is crucial for all webmasters large and small.

Link Builder does not offer the option to search on a term and utility phrase because of the way it sorts data.

For example, if I wanted to build a list of sites using the term “running shoes” and “add URL”, I would need to purchase a seperate tool as this function is not included in Link Builder. Having pages returned hosting the term “running shoes” is good, and separating those pages by topical category is helpful, but I still have to wade through thousands of results to determine how I can use them. If I know a page has a submission area on it, my search time is cut in half.

Another drawback as I see it pertains to its lack of programmability. Each time you want to use Link Builder you have to manually run it, there are no scheduling options or presets. Having instant results is great, but being able to generate a list of prospects in my sleep would be better.

If time is not an issue, you are new to SEO or you are a single site/small business owner with minimal social media interactions, Link Builder is an affordable tool option. I recommend signing up for the seven day trial and using all the features before buying a membership.

Next up in our tool review series:  Ontolo Internet Marketing Tools

The current Ontolo toolset is owned by partners Ben Wills and Andy Davidoff and has been a work in progress since 2008. The tool is designed to find link prospects based on topic, link types and phrases you provide. It pulls prospects from the search results, analyzes, filters and then places what it finds in a customized database.

Ben Wills explains the process like this:

Here’s an example of how Ontolo works:  If one of your prospecting phrases is “red shoes” and you’re looking for sites/blogs offering guest posts, we might search for “red shoes guest post” (without quotes)  or “red shoes guest author” (without quotes).  When the tool finds sites/blogs offering guest posting, it pulls the top results into your database, crawls each prospect and collects certain data on that link prospect (PageRank, SEOmoz scores, outbound links, etc).

It then filters the data and arranges it in your customized database so when you log in, you can ask the tool to pull the “guest post” opportunities and start reaching out to those webmasters.  There might be 200 opportunities, but with Ontolo, in just a couple of seconds, you’ll find the top sites that will give you the most link value from that guest post.

In a nutshell, Ontolo finds sites you can contact for links. The type of sites depends on how you configure the tool and the keywords you give it. Only want pages showing a certain level of PageRank or with a certain number of out links? No problem, just set Ontolo for what you want and watch the results come in.

I asked Ben where the name “Ontolo” came from, he chuckled and said:

“we sort of made it up, it’s a shortened version of the word ontology or ontological.  An easy way of explaining an ontology is that it looks at one thing and attempts to understand it’s relationship to another thing within a specific context.  It’s a thinking process that’s fundamental to a lot of our own personal thinking, but we also saw it as a great way to look at link, marketing and business relationships.”

Ontolo offers multiple pricing levels and comes with a 14 day free trial. The Competitive Backlink Tool, the Link Monitor and the SERP Dominator tools are free with registration, the rest part of the paid service. Let’s run through the tool and look at a number of the key elements.

Getting Started

The first and most important thing you need to do when using Ontolo is configure the Campaign Manager with your keywords, filters and preferences.

The Campaign Manager is the brains behind the operation, setting it up correctly is vital if you want a list of quality sites to prospect for links.  The better information you put into it, the better the data it returns.

Discover Prospects – Query Generator V2

The Query Generator V2 tool generates a list of link building queries based on Asset, Opportunity or Campaign type. This tool rocks and is the best part of the Ontolo toolset in my opinion.

If you look at the screen shot below, the data listed under “Query” is what the tool returned when I asked it to search on my keywords (memory foam mattress) and listed “content for placement” as my Asset Type.

The list of results are sites the tool found when it searched on my keyword phrase plus various content placement terms such as “submit a blog post” or “become a contributor”.

Webmasters looking for fresh content will often add these phrases to their sites hoping to attract new writers, so I have a good chance of finding a relevant source to host my links.

Keep in mind, the tool does not reach out and contact the site or create your content, but it does eliminate the time-consuming process of prospecting for sources.

TIP:  The sources the Query Generator V2 tool returns are varied but a large number are blogs. Use the blogs you find for additional links by asking to be placed on the blogrolls of the sites you write for.

Review Prospects

All of the information Ontolo finds it sends to your database where it sits until you sift, filter and sort by a number of terms and types.

You can filter the results several ways, the tool uses advanced search operators to find keywords and links within your database. The results are listed in a spreadsheet and available for download or you can work right off the spreadsheet since the links are live.

In the screenshot above, I set filters to return sites using the keyword  ”mattress”  from “Blogroll” results and set filters so the sites would have a PageRank range of 2 – 9 and a certain domain authority.

My goal here was to find active blogrolls to add our blog link to. The results returned were disappointing at best, the Onoto query tool seems to have searched by page segmentation in this case and not category.

Here’s what I mean:

Notice the word “mattress” does appear in sidebar navigation but under categories such as “Recent Post” and “Tags”, not under blogrolls.

In the top 14 results returned, only one was a true blogroll, the rest looked like the screen shots above. This option was not helpful and extremely time consuming to net only one lead. Ditto for results when filters were set to “Donation Links” and “Sponsored Links”.

Where the blogroll, donation and sponsored link options were a bust, filtering for Article Directories was a boon! The tool listed a very long list of article directories and sites with article submission categories. The latter is an important point to note, blogs and websites offering article submission areas are another great content hosting source.

Two things to keep in mind when filtering results: first, filling out the Campaign Manager with all your keyword terms helps return good leads and information to be filtered. Skip keywords and you have less content to pull leads from.

Second, working leads from Donation and Sponsored Links results should be used as a last resort, spending time propecting for these types of links will do little to improve your link popularity.

I do not feel that way about Blogroll links however, since they have potential to drive targeted traffic, pass link popularity and build brand, I feel they are worth the time and effort to secure. I hope Ontolo can find a way to improve the Blogroll filtering option so more true results are returned.

Competitor Backlinks

The Competitor Tool scours the backlinks of sites you are watching and lists their backlinks. When you watch a competitors backlinks, you can cherry pick the best and secure the same or figure out their link marketing plan and find better! (This tool is free with registration)

TIP:  It is no longer enough to get the same links as your competitors, you also need to get their social media signals. Find out who they’re following and tweeting, look at their Facebook and Google+ pages and start following and wooing the people they interact with. Hopefully, you’ll increase your followers and signals by doing so.

Monitor Your Best Links

I’m often asked if I know of a monitoring tool that reports back when a link is changed, removed or breaks. Now I have an answer!

The Ontolo monitoring tool checks your links and sends an email when it finds a broken or change in the link you placed on someone else’s site. This is handy if you are swapping links or have negotiated for placement. (This tool is free with registration)

Closing Comments

Overall I liked the Ontolo tool, the options it offers to search and filter information are some of the best I’ve seen. As I mentioned earlier, I think the Query Generator V2 tool is the Ontolo star, it alone could keep a link builder busy for six months.

However, the best parts of Ontolo also hurt it. I’m an experienced link builder so I “got” Ontolo right away but I have to wonder if someone new to the industry would grasp the concepts and benefits behind the tool without spending valuable time in a learning curve.

The “How To” tutorials are lacking at best and with no video tutorials available, a newbie or less experienced webmaster will spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to use the tool to their advantage.

Another side effect of using Ontolo was data overload. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the tool returned so much information I was a little overwhelmed initially.

Once I learned how to use the Campaign Manager and how to filter results using the options provided as well as the rating key, I was able to filter my way to an organized campaign. Again, better tutorials and video guides would help here.

Set goals and budget time to go through your leads every day, don’t let the amount of information Ontolo returns overwhelm you! It can all be filtered and saved in a database until you’re ready to use it.

Prioritze your time by looking at what will give you the greatest link return. Spending time on the information returned for “Donation” and “Sponsored” links will do less for you algorithmically than the leads returned under “Article Directories” and “Blogs”. Be link smart here and you will see the benefits.

Keep in mind while Ontolo provides you with sites to contact, it doesn’t do the actual outreach. Have a link builder in place and working as the data is made available, keep the momentum going. Keep refining your database and use it for promotions other than link building. (Think contests, new product launches, press release distribution, etc).

To close, I recommend signing up for the 14 free trial before purchasing Ontolo, ask for help during the trial through their help desk.

If you decide to buy a subscription, I encourage you to take a lot of time filling out the Campaign Manager, don’t skip a step or leave out keywords for any reason, the more information you put in, the better the data coming out.

And with Ontolo, it will come out!

Raven Tools, founded in 2007, has a 20-person staff  based in the country music capital of the world, Nashville, Tenn. Raven’s development team of eight is hard at work finalizing three new features set to launch between now and mid-November; vice president of marketing Taylor Pratt hinted one of them will be a major change to the social media monitoring tool.

There are three types of tools in the Raven tool set: SEO tools,  social media tools and advertising tools. With the exception of the 30-day trial, memberships purchased give you an unlimited number of websites to use the tools on and can be incorporated into your Google Analytics account.

My review will focus on tools under the SEO and social media categories you can use to build links.

Link Manager

What it does: Link Manager, a management and database tool, lets you save pages/links you’re interested in and assign tags for follow-up.

How many times have you come across a page, thought it might have link building potential and then promptly forget about it when the next shiny page came along? I do it all the time, so I was happy to see the research capabilities behind the Link Manager.

There are multiple filters and options to select; you can also create PDF reports and export spreadsheets using the data in the Link Manager.

One of the best features of this tool are the change-to-link notifications it provides. If a link you’re following changes in some way (anchors change, link is removed, etc.) you’re notified. That is a great little feature if you’re into swapping links or need a consistent way to check on links you’ve placed on partner sites.

Another great feature is the ability to assign links and tags to a single individual for follow-up. For those of us with linking staffs, this makes reporting and accountability easier, which helps keep a project moving.

Above each tool is a help button (circled in red above), which provides step-by-step written instruction on how to use the tool and the mechanics behind each. While Raven does a great job showing you how to use the tool, they don’t tell you how it can be incorporated into your link building or make tactical recommendations.

When I questioned Pratt about this, he explained Raven’s position by saying they were “reluctant to tell people how to link” and preferred to offer the tools and not the advice on what to do with them.

While I understand his position, I also understand that not everyone using these tools will be experienced in SEO. Suggesting tactics or providing a how-to manual for a variety of techniques would cut learning times in half and help webmasters incorporate the use of the tool in their marketing efforts.

Site Finder

What it does: Site Finder will list and rank domains linking to the top ten Google results for a particular keyword phrase. Site Finder also uses a number of ranking factors to “determine how valuable a link from one of the returned domains would be to your site.”

I was excited to read the descriptions on this tool; anything that helps identify quality pages is a good thing. Half the battle in link building is finding good sources to secure links from, so having a tool that targets good sites is golden.

Each of the pages listed under the Domain column (far left) host an anchor text link using the term “memory foam mattress.”

The first result showing in the Domain column is from Squidoo. When clicked, it shows four anchor text links (Connections) on Squidoo using “memory foam mattress.” I’ve highlighted the anchor text link from the Squidoo result, which points to a page ranking in the top ten on Google for the term Memory Foam Mattress.

To see all four results (Connections), click the URLs in the Domain column.

Two things with the Site Finder I find less than helpful:

1) I can’t figure out how to see the results from the Backlinks column. The results here are the total number of known links from the domain to the top ten organic Google results. This is different from the Connections results; Connections highlights the use of my keyword phrase, whereas the Backlink results return all links.

Why is it important to see all my back links? It’s always a good idea to see the whole picture instead of pieces when developing a link marketing plan. If your competitors are using image links, or getting media mentions or seeing a spike in social media, you need to know so you can countermarket.

2) Raven needs to update its Help page behind the Site Finder; the screen shot explaining the tool is old and does not have the Connections column displayed. Here’s a screenshot from the Site Finder Q&A; notice there is no Connections column to tie into the written definitions:

Backlink Explorer

What it does:  By extracting data from MajesticSEO, Backlink Explorer produces up to 50,000 backlinks for a single URL.

This is a very basic backlink checking tool; it returns anchors used and shows whether the link is an image or using the nofollow attribute. It can download via CSV export and has a couple of filter options. Unfortunately, results shown are not hyperlinked so you can’t click to review a result, but you can import links to the Link Manager for follow-up.

Forum Search

What it does: Using forum search engine Omgili, the Forum Search tool returns forums and discussion boards using your keywords.

Raven’s Forum tool returns results in an easy-to-read format; the results in the Title column are live, so you can click to the forum and register if you want to respond or become part of the community. It’s a great way to find new forums you might not know about.

Unfortuntely, there is no export function for the data you find, and you can’t download or assign the results to an account manager for follow-up.

TIP: Need a seasoned writer? Looking for new blogs to post on? Moderators on forums are usually experienced writers who have blogs; check them out the next time you need a writer or a blog to post on.

Before I close, I wanted to mention a new customizable ranking report, called CustomRank, that Raven will eventually incorporate into its tool set. If you’d like a live demonstration of the Raven tool set, catch Jon Henshaw, Taylor Pratt and the rest of Raven’s marketing team at PubCon Vegas in November.

Until next time, good linking!

SEOmoz PRO

SEOmoz PRO is a set of  ”software, tools and resources to maximize your search engine optimization.”

Buying a membership to SEOmoz PRO gets you “campaign-based web apps, dozens of SEO tools, webinars and full access to Open SiteExplorer“.

There’s a free 30 day trial and three paid packages to pick from: PRO, PRO Plus and PRO Elite. I’m using the PRO option for this review.

There are four tool categories in the PRO set:

1. Link Building & Competitive Analysis
2. Keyword Research & Ranking
3. On-Page Optimization
4. Social Media Monitoring

I’m going to focus on two of the four and look at the Link Building/Competitive Analysis and Social Media Monitoring tools. But before we jump into the research tools, I want to point out a couple of handy items found on the Dashboard each member gets with their membership.

The Dashboard

A customized Dashboard is assigned to every paid member, it provides easy access to your campaign reports, news, and a helpful Q&A and SEO Resources sections:

The Q&A section allows you to ask unlimited questions about any aspect of SEOmoz PRO or SEO in general and get timely answers from the SEOmoz staff. I searched through the Q&A extensively and found many of the answers provided were more informative than the instructions around the tools!

The Q&A has great search options making it easy to find information on almost any subject related to the tool set or SEO. You can even set it to send an email when someone asks a related question or brings up a subject you’re interested in.

The SEO Resources area is divided into eight categories, each offers practical solutions to help jump start your SEO and link building efforts.

Three of the categories stand out: PRO Perks, Link Directories and Social Media Directory.

PRO Perks is a list of exclusive online discounts available only to PRO members. For example, members receive 20% off  social media tool KnowEm and $50 off all Mail Chimp plans. Both are good discounts and good companies to work with.

Link Directories and the Social Media Directory are lists of directory and social media sites you can submit links to. SEOmoz includes a caveat with the resources they list:

In many cases, acquiring a link from these resources is not an easy process – you may need to send an email and convince an infrequent editor or submit to very stringent criteria (or pay), but this is to be expected. If the links were easy to earn, they would certainly be much less valuable.

Webmasters frequently look for ways to secure a handful of links while they focus on developing link marketing plans. Using the directory lists will help with this, its an easy way to jump start your link building with “better” directories and market your site using social media.

Getting Started: Research Tool Center

Before you can use any of the Research Tools or start comparing back links, you need to set up a campaign. This can be done from the Dashboard by following the prompts under “Start A New Campaign”.

Once your data has been pulled and analyzed, you’ll be able to go to the Research Tools center and use most of the tools and services listed.

I’m going to focus on the Open Site Explorer, Competitive Link Research Tool and the Link Acquisition Assistant since these three tools have been exclusively designed to help with your link building.

Open Site Explorer (v3)

In the Research Tools section, there are seven active tools and two services offered; of them, the back link analysis tool Open Site Explorer is the link building star.

Open Site Explorer (OSE) pulls data from a huge collection of web pages (51 billion pages, 9.2 trillion links at this writing) courtesy of the SEOmoz Linkscape crawler.

OSE is a third generation Linkscape but with upgraded features and a sleeker look:

Currently in its third version, the tool offers four domain measurements and four social media counts on every URL it analyzes. The four domain measurements are an important part of OSE and the PRO tool set overall,so it’s important to understand what they are and how they are used.

The four domain measurements are:

• Page Authority. Predicts a page’s ranking potential in the search engines based on an algorithmic combination of all link metrics.
• Domain Authority. Predicts a domain’s ranking potential in the search engines based on an algorithmic combination of all link metrics.
• Linking Root Domains. Number of unique root domains (e.g. *.example.com) containing at least one linking page to an URL/domain
• Total Links. All links to a page including internal, external, followed and nofollowed.

The two measurements to watch are Page Authority and Domain Authority, the higher your numbers, the better. I exchanged emails with SEOmoz CEO Rand Fishkin several times as I reviewed the tool, I needed to understand some of the dynamics behind Page and Domain Authority and how they related to the much hyped mozRank and mozTrust.

Here’s what Rand said about the importance of Page Authority (PA) and Domain Authority (DA):  (Note: I have Rand’s permission to reprint our conversations)

Rand Fishkin: We’ve been trying for a couple years to push PA + DA more heavily; you can certainly sense that in our posts on the topic. That said, I recognize that mozTrust and mozRank are used by lots of folks, but hopefully if they read more of our material (or just try using a varied set of metrics), they’ll see/realize that PA/DA are a better option for most things. mozRank is still quite useful to compare against PageRank…. mozTrustis something we hope to keep iterating and improving on.

Bold mine to emphasize points. I also asked Rand who wrote the mozRank patent filed April 2010 which includes the concept of mozTrust:

Rand Fishkin:  Nick Gerner and Ben Hendrickson coded the algorithms. The three of us (myself included) worked on the design of these algorithms, but honestly, they’re extremely close to Google’s “PageRank” algo and Yahoo!’s “TrustRank” algo. We changed a few things to be updated to what we believed the engines had changed since writing the original papers, but otherwise they are exceptionally similar.

I did not go through Google and Yahoo’s patents and compare them to what the SEOmoz team wrote, but suffice it to say, if the names are as close as they are, then I am sure the algorithms are also exceptionally similar.

• PageRank  —-> mozRank
• TrustRank —-> mozTrust

Rand mentioned SEOmoz commissioned SEOByTheSea owner Bill Slawski to develop the list of seed sites mozTrust uses in its algorithm. I asked him if he could talk about the seed set and the sites within it, and here’s what he could share:

Debra:  What type of sites are on the list?  Government?  Educational?  Brands?

Rand:  All of the above –  I’m certainly happy to share a few samples,  e.g. Nasa.gov, Si.edu, Newzealand.govt.nz, etc.   We focused on geographic diversity and editorial integrity – meaning sites that we felt relatively confident had little to no outbound links placed by non-editors. We didn’t consider age, dmoz inclusion or ranking for any particular keywords.

Given the size and scope of the Web, I’m wondering how big a list is being used and how much influence mozTrust is playing in determining PA and DA as a result.

So why am I am taking time to share these conversations and talk about the value behind Page/Domain Authority versus mozRank/Trust? For clarity mainly.

It seems a lot of people are blogging about mozRank becoming the new PageRank, I’ve even noticed PageRank and mozRank scores being used to show value on sites for sale.

Keep in mind what the mozRank metric is patterned after;  it, like PageRank, should not be a solo metric you use to make business decisions.

While I understand the terms “PageRank and “mozRank” are easy to understand and universally suggest a page carries some kind of “importance” (or not), if you are interested in accumulating quality links and ranking well, it is better to focus on Page Authority and Domain Authority versus mozRank.

Page/Domain Authority represent SEOmoz’s best ranking predictions and uses mozRank and mozTrust in their calculations.  Just like PageRank is one component of Google’s algorithm, mozRank is one part of  the Page/Domain Authority mix.

In the end, getting links from pages with high PA and DA scores will do more for your SEO efforts than those with high PageRank and mozRank scores alone. Even the SEOmoz engineers agree PageRank is green pixie dust so it might be a good idea to not place too much emphasis on using the mozRank metric over others.

The social media scores are a simple a collection of counts, they show how many likes, shares, G+1′s  and tweets a domain receives.

These social media “counts” are not factored into the Authority scores. The information may be simple, but it’s good to know given the emphasis placed on social media signals these days.

Open Site Explorer has six options for displaying back link data:

• Inbound Links. This options show the Title and URL of the pages linking to you. You can filter results to show followed and unfollowed links as well as those using 301 redirects. When I compared reporting accuracy between OSE and Yahoo! Site Explorer plus a third commercial tool, I found all three sites reported almost/close to/within acceptable ranges the same back links so OSE appears to be fairly accurate here.
• Top Pages. Best pages on the domain according to Page Authority.
• Linking Domains. Shows root domains linking to you.
• Anchor Text. Analyzes the anchor text phrases used in inbound links.
• Compare Link Metrics. Looks at things like mozRank, Followed/not links, total links, etc.  Great feature here is the ability to compare up to five domains instantly.
• Advanced Reporting. Create spreadsheets using advanced filters.

Each tab allows you to down and export data as a CSV (spreadsheet) file, nice if you want to leisurely review data or share with a group of employees/people.

Open Site Explorer’s Compare Link Metrics option and the Competitive Domain Analysis (CDA) tool (found under your Campaign Manager) look very similar but are different, one measures page level metrics, the other domain. The CDA tool allows you to export data to a PDF and links to the PRO User Guide which I found extremely helpful and a terrific information source.

The PRO User Guide walks you through every part of the Competitive Domain Analysis (CDA) tool and explains why and how it will help with your link building.

The content in the Guide is, hands down, the most descriptive and useful “how to” information in the PRO toolset. Scattered throughout are helpful tips such as this one:

It’s also the only “how to” guide I could find; Open Site Explorer would benefit greatly by placing  links to the guide on its analysis tabs and/or creating guides for each tab topic. People would benefit from seeing how the options can be used and save time learning how each can be used.

How Does This Information Help Secure Quality Links?

Keep in mind OSE and all it’s options can be used to analyze your back links and those of your competitors. The tools provide a listing of where your competitors are linking and then evaluates the algorithmic weight of those pages and domains.

The higher they’re weighted, the more link popularity they pass which makes them a viable link building candidate you can pursue.

I don’t advise getting all of your links from the exact same places (pages/sites) but knowing the types of sites linking to your competitors will help you find better links and develop stronger partnerships.

Competitive Link Research Tool

Another research tool found in the Link Building and Competitive Analysis Tools area is the Competitive Link  Research Tool.  This tool identifies authority sites your competitors are getting links from but you are not.

From the SEOMozblog:

What we do is take your site, and up to five related sites (maybe competitors).  From those we find all the links the related sites have, and find the common ones.  From that we create a check-list.  These are the big important sites your industry is engaging with, but you aren’t.

I compared my test site (which sells memory foam mattresses) to a national brand, an exact match mattress domain and Wikipedia’s memory foam mattress page. (All three sites in top five on Google.)

Here’s what I got back:

The results were disappointing at best. Based on the description, I expected to be given “big important sites” but what I got were seven small spammy-looking blogs (red lined) plus six brands, two of which were duplicates. The Feedburner result was no help which left four sites to cultivate.

The last colum in the chart, “Linking Pages” shows the page hosting my competitors link but doesn’t tell me which competitor, I have to click and manually look at each page to figure out who was getting the link.

I really like the concept behind the tool but the execution, time involved to research results plus the lack of CSV download, would keep me from using it.

 Link Acquisition Assistant

The Link Acquisition Assistant generates large lists of sites to add your links to. Using up to five keywords, your location, brand name, two competitors, industry designation and topic of your website, the tool will generate lists of sites by category.

The eight categories are:  General Directories (example below), blogs, brand mentions, industry directories, local directories, relevant social media sites, news/press releases, and the competition.

The upside to using this tool is the volume of topical, industry and local links you will acquire. The downside is the amount of time you’ll have to spend manually clicking each link and culling the information returned to find the best sites to link to.

Again, no export function here so you can spread the results out and look at them or assign them to an employee to handle.

Consider hiring an intern for this project or breaking it into sections and a little every day. While it’s time consuming and cumbersome, this type of linking is an inexpensive way to build links.

Social Media Monitoring Tools

There are two tools in this category, Social Media Monitoring and the Blogscape tool. Since monitoring your social media mentions and mining social media sites for linking leads is a viable way to develop a list of partner sites, I was excited to see these two tools.

After reading the descriptions, I decided to test the first one since it used a broad range of social media sites.

The Social Media Monitoring tool brings back blogs, static sites, article directories, and RSS feeds using the keyword phrases you ask it to search for.

It’s also supposed to bring back links to content found on Reddit, Digg, Delicious and Twitter but so far (the tool is still considered a prototype) it only brings back tweets.

Like the two previous tools (Link Acquisition and Competitive Link Research are also prototypes) the Social Media Monitoring tool is clunky and difficult to use. When I searched on the word “sleep”, 140,000 results were individually returned (gray box).

There is no export function for the data collected so if I wanted to see the blog/site/directory page hosting my terms, I had to click each result separately.

You can filter the results by time, mozRank, relevance, and duplicates which will eliminate a number of results but again, once you have them, you have to manually click and look at each. There’s also no way to check-off a site/tweet you’ve seen before or have the ability to save one to view later.

The tool doesn’t seem to be returning Digg, Delicious or Reddit results for any term I searched, so I’m assuming this element will be added later.

Each term/phrase had 1500 tweets returned, the results were hyperlinked so you can see each Tweet individually, but there is no way to export this information or any other on this tool. Also, there is no save option for the report, if you click away from the page for any reason, you have to start over.

Again, I really like the concept behind the tool but it would take an inordinate amount of time to go through the results in it’s current form unless you are using very long-tail terms.

Wrap Up

Of all the link building tools I looked at and reviewed in SEOmoz PRO, the Open Site Explorer was the best. With its clean interface and above average filtering options, the OSE is a good back link analysis tool for the serious link builder.

That’s it for me, until next time, good linking!

The review is not an endorsement by Search Engine Land or myself, it’s simply an outline to help you understand how the tool can be used. The test sites I’m using are all willing participants, I have permission from their owners to review and publish what I find in their back links.

Each tool owner agreed to give me, at no charge, a full membership for 60 days to use at my convenience. Representatives from the tool companies will be available to answer questions so please leave your feedback in the comments below. Now, on to the review!

Link Research Tools By CEMPER.com

In 2003,Christoph Cemper and his staff opened CEMPER.com, a full service SEO company based  in beautiful Vienna Austria. Link Research Tools was launched in 2009 and is offered in both English and German.

I worked with Sebastian Moser, Cemper.com’s Director of IT Services who gave me full access to their tool and patiently answered all my questions. Thanks Sebastian and Christoph for agreeing to participate and for all of your help!

Dank Sebastian und Christoph für all Ihre Hilfe:)

The Set Up

The Link Research Tool (LRT)  is made up of ten individual tools, all can be used to find link building opportunities as well as monitor your competition. Each tool has a written and video tutorial behind it, there’s also a Help and Feedback link on each page in the event you need information not provided onsite.

I strongly recommend watching the videos before using the tools, they’re helpful and will cut your learning time in half. I was given an unlimited SuperHero account which is the premier (most expensive) package LRT offers, it allowed me to use everything and rebrand PDF reports with my logo.

LRT provides a sign up page for your API information, if a particular tool calls for an API key, they can be accessed with a single click. Again, this is a huge time saver I recommend using if you have SEOMoz, Sistrix or SEMRush API tools.

SEOMoz provides a free 30 day API key via LRT, the other two do not. If you don’t have accounts at SEMRush or Sistrix and don’t want to register at SEOMoz, LRT will still work. According to Sebastian, they pull from 21 link sources. He did admit to using Yahoo! (for now) but could not, for competitive reasons, name the other 20 sources.

With ten individual tools in the LRT toolset, there’s something for everyone. While there is overlap between some of the tools because of the metrics used, you can take a complete tour of what’s offered and select a pricing option that fits your marketing budget. Let’s take a look at a number of the tools within the Link Research Tool (LRT) set.

Competitive Landscape Analyzer

The Competitive Landscape Analyzer allows you to compare multiple URL’s using pre-selected metrics ( anchor text, theme, page loading speed, number of retweets, etc) for selected keyword phrases.

There are multiple ways to use the data returned, I found these three most helpful:

1.  The tool reports the unique number of pages hosting links to a site/page. Search behind your competitors and take a look at who’s linking to them, if you find  good partner sites, work to secure  links from these pages. If they won’t link to you, get links from the pages linking to them.

2.  You can see the anchor text used to link to a page/site, if your competitors are using keyword phrases in their anchors and ranking ahead of you, they may have figured out what’s converting and/or have figured out how to tweak a term to rank. If they’re outranking you in both Google and Bing,  it might be a good idea to spend time researching and testing new anchors.

3.  I really liked the retweet/G+1/Facebook Likes metrics the tool allows you to select, being able to see the number of social media mentions a page is getting can be very helpful in developing your social media plan.

TIP: The reporting form can be tweaked to list the pages with the highest number of (Twitter) retweets.

Visit those pages and follow all the people who retweeted that content. Or use tools like Export.ly and Buzzom to help find and manage large amounts of Twitter data.

Make a point to follow people who retweet your content or that of your competitor, a percentage will follow back. Be sure to showcase your archived as well as new content when retweeting as a way to stimulate new followers.

Backlink Profiler

Depending on selected criteria, this tool analyzes individual links and their strengths. It shows which of your back links are using the nofollow attribute and calculates the number and percentage of times an anchor is used.

I loved the pie charts and graph options, they were a nice break from spreadsheets!

This tool also offers an unique, proprietary metric known as the CEMPER Juice™ Indicator, which tells you the “juicyness of a page in detail”.

Here’s the outline they provide to explain the various features of the metric:

I had a difficult time understanding the “Juice” component behind this metric based on what I read and heard in the video tutorial, so I emailed Sebastian for clarification.

In a nutshell, “Juice”  is a ranking component CEMPER.COM has integrated into the proprietary algorithm powering their tools, it determines the weight and quality factors of a page hosting your link. “Juice”  answers the question: “does the page hosting your link rank well for a specific term?”

The algorithm makes a distinction between the page ranking well, being indexed and being cached and this distinction is what produces the “juicyness” factor. So basically, “juicy” pages are those ranking well for specific keyword terms.

For example, the Backlink Profiler crawls links pointing to a domain/page and calculates the “Juice” score based on how that anchor text phrase ranks.

High ranking pages are “juicy” and display a high numerical number (up to 25)  plus the word  ”Juice”. Other pages, based on their criteria, are returned  DEAD, DUPE, JUICED, etc. (see outline above)

While I agree it’s helpful to identify high ranking pages hosting keyword rich anchor text links and understand calling the term “Juice” sounds better than “anchor text rank checker”, that’s basically what it is.

I get that the term “Juice” and “juicy” are fun and help make the Link Research Tool set unique but I doubt anyone new to SEO will understand the strategy behind this important metric after reading the descriptions or watching the video tutorial. When I brought this point up, Sebastian agreed and mentioned they were working on upgrading their copy points.

Link Juice Thief

This tool reports outgoing links from a specific URL or multiple URL’s. The tactical implementation behind this option is simple: identify your competitors outbound links and work to secure links from the sites they are linking to.

For example, if Competitor A links to Site B, you can work to get a link directly from Site B and benefit indirectly from the flow of link popularity from Competitor A. Is this tactic worth pursuing? Depends on the amount of time you have and the quality behind sites A and B.

TIP:   I wouldn’t make this a priority, but if you’re looking to diversify your link portfolio, this is a good tactic.

Missing Links Tool

The Missing Link Tool compares your back links against your competitors and returns a list of domains where they (your competitors) have links but you don’t.  (Sweet!)

There isn’t much more to explain here, but I wanted to point out the Competing Pages option which is circled in red below. This is a handy feature and allows you to search by keyword phrase for competitors URL’s and add them to the list of sites to compare.

It will take up to ten (10) additional sites per report and exports the data to spreadsheets for easy review.

TIP:  When searching for URL’s to use with this tool, plug all of your primary, secondary (long-tail) and geographic keywords in the box. Then, expand your search by using category terms plus your keywords.

For example:

• memory foam mattresses
• memory foam beds
• memory foam mattress Virginia
• memory foam mattress blog

Category terms can be blog, news, video, image, forum, directory, travel, camping, etc. The idea here is to stretch your terms and tap into as many different types of sites and platforms as you can hosting terminology and content similar to yours. We tend to focus on a set circle of competitors when we use link comparison tools, this exercise will help you discover many new URL’s to spy on.

Link Juice Recovery Tool

This recovery tool will find dead pages on your domain (or someone else’s) and checks those pages for inbound links.

It happens all the time, your site gets bigger and pages go missing  (return a 404) when you update or redesign. This tool will find those lost pages and list their inbound links.

Contact the webmasters linking to you and ask if they’ll point a link to a new page on your site. Or, redirect the page to another on your site. The first option is preferable but be prepared to lose some links, webmasters are busy people and don’t/can’t always honor your request.

TIP:  Sweeten the change of link request with an incentive.

TIP: Run the tool using your top competitors URL’s. Find their broken pages with inbound links and offer your content as a replacement.

The SERP Research Tool

The SERP Research Tool reminds me of a Swiss Army Knife, it’s all purpose and can be used for a ton of different tactics! This tool has many functions, but the two I like best are the ability to search by type of site (general results, discussion, forum and Q&A) and the ability to change the data without having to rerun a new report.

For example, if I was looking for a list of discussion sites using three of my keywords, and each site had to have at least 10 inbound links plus an active Twitter account, I can set and run the program to return a list of sites matching my criteria.

If I wanted to change the Twitter criteria to Facebook,  I simply click the Facebook column and the data will display. The best use for this tool can be found in my next tip…

TIP:   Once you’ve  exhausted your keywords, search on the URL of your competitors and/or any site ranking well for your keywords. The tool will bring back the sites/pages hosting the URL which in turn shows where they’re linking and who’s talking/writing about them. This single snapshot of competitive URL’s can be a goldmine and used for more than link building.

General Comments

Link Research Tools offers to store your reports but there are limitations on the length of time. Pull your results into your computer so you don’t lose anything.

LRT has a “Link Alerts” option, I have several going so I didn’t implement this one but I did review and liked the “dropped links”  feature. Link Alerts keeps track of links they find and if those links are dropped, it will report the drop to you.

This can be helpful in keeping track of reciprocal links and temporary link promotions. It’s also great as a secondary link tactic, if you find a link has disappeared and you want to keep it, contact the webmaster and ask why it was dropped. You may be able to get it back or negotiate for a better link!

Take advantage of the Feedback feature LRT offers, the staff is friendly and will answer any question you have.

Become familiar with the “Hotlist” feature included with most of the tools. You can save an URL into the Hotlist  whenever you find something interesting and go back to it when you have time.

I used it when I found people “borrowing” my content without permission; when I was done with my testing, I went back to the list and exported the URL’s for follow-up. The Hotlist feature is a handy way to save URL’s without stopping your work flow.

The Link Research Tool set has something for everyone, with ten tools available you can stay busy for weeks!  Take time to watch the videos and read the tutorials, understand fully what each can do before you start running reports.

Before I Close…

Two things before I sign off. We have tool reviews scheduled through May 2012 and do not plan to add more at this time. However, we may reopen the review program in the spring of 2012, so if you have a tool devoted exclusively to link building and would like to be considered for the tool review program, please drop me a note.

Until next time, good linking!

Conversely, if I have a question or want to bounce a theory off someone, I’ll head to one of the forums and ask. They’re a tremendous informational resource and social outlet for people passionate about SEO.

Once you spend time on the different forums, you’ll  notice topic trends and similar questions pop up regularly. I thought it might be fun to pull three of the more commonly asked link building questions from two popular SEO forums and ask each of the Link Week columnists to weigh in with an answer.

Question One

From Webmaster World:  How Would You Spend $100 On Promoting A Blog?

Julie Joyce:

• Set up a Twitter account for the author to use to connect with like-minded people and promote each post. Since we’re talking about a personal blog, I would not recommend creating a separate Twitter account if the author already uses Twitter. Free

• Use Crowdbooster for Twitter analytics in order to track what you tweet. Free

• Use Followerwonk to find new people to talk to who share your interests. Free

• Add socialization buttons to each post to make it easy for people to promote your posts for you. Free

• Spend $50 on an Amazon gift card. Create a contest wherein the entry is composed of bloggers writing a post critiquing one of your posts, offering feedback and an alternative point of view, including a link back to your post. This helps establish deep linking. Ask for Twitter retweets. $50

• Offer $50 for a charity donation of the winner’s choice for blog posts written that discuss the charity and why he or she wants the donation to go there, naturally with a link to the blog. Ask for Twitter retweets. $50

• Submit blog to any free directory you can find. Free

• Comment on other blogs when it’s relevant, and don’t be afraid to alert bloggers to posts that are similar to ones they’ve written. Free

• Set up Google alerts for your name, your blog name/URL, and relevant topics. If anything bad happens, handle it ASAP. If someone compliments you or mentions you, thank them. If you see someone mentioning your blog without linking to it, ask for a link to be added.  Free

Eric Ward

If the blog is brand new about a local political issue and written by a citizen journalist, I’m going to spend that $100 differently than if the blog is written by Oprah Winfrey. Is the blog part of a larger site or a standalone? Is it in a competitive vertical, like diet and weight loss, or about building your own blimp out of duct tape?

Kidding aside, these are important things to consider whether spending $100 or $100,000. You spend it where it will help you accomplish what you wanted it to.

Ross Hudgens:

This money should be spent paying a WordPress developer to set up strong marketing calls-to-action at the end of each blog posts. I believe every post should have 5 current marketing calls to action (CTA); any more. and you’re just being excessive and any less and you’re missing out on potential ROI.

Those 5 CTAs should be a call for a RSS subscription, a Tweet-This-Post CTA, a Facebook Like button, a Stumbleupon button, and a “Follow Me” request. These are the five current marketing channels that provide the most impact.

Instead of “promoting” anything, it’s better to set up these “Static Marketing” type implementations to maximize return of every piece of content you push out from now until forever. Any other money spent will only create a “once-off” type boost, while your goal should always be sustainability. Most aren’t capable of doing this in an aesthetic manner (or at all) themselves, so it’s best to have a WordPress developer do it or at least take care of those pieces you can’t figure out yourself.

Debra Mastaler:

I’d use the money to develop an e-book using my past posts as content. I’d spend some of the money to create a killer book cover, some to create a pitch letter to targeted media and the balance on paying someone to blast a launch email to my customers, media and influential bloggers.

The e-book would be placed on my site with an Attribution-NoDerivs license, social media buttons and a “link to this” call to action. I’d also add a link to the e-book in my forum profiles and to the author bio of any article I’ve written in the past and dropped into directories or content aggregators.

Question Two

From HighRankings Forum: If I Get 4000 New Inbound Links, What Will This Do To Us?

Eric Ward, @ericward:

If a site launches in response to a disaster, like GulfOilSpill.org, then 4,000 links is to be expected and is totally natural. But if you have a two year old bingo site with 121 links and you suddenly add 4000 new links in a very short period of time, chances are your bingo site will go bye-bye. It’s not likely to have been natural.

The common thread to these questions is in recognizing that every site requires a unique linking strategy or blueprint, and the more identical those linking blueprints are, the less helpful they will be. Every linking strategy blueprint I create for a client is unique, and is based on the site’s features, intent, and objectives. While 4000 new links could take one site to #1, it might take another site right to the penalty box.

Ross Hudgens,  @rosshudgens:

I see this as totally fine. It’s likely that very few of these even have any links pointing to them and if so, they’re probably from pure sources. As long as the anchor text is the domain name, I doubt this will have much impact on that website’s rankings in either direction.

Julie Joyce, @JulieJoyce:

After reading the original context of the question, I would say that nothing bad would happen because the links should be recognized as sitewide links that are completely relevant. However, I always worry about link spikes and link growth charts, and this would cause a spike, albeit one that could be explained, but spikes worry me.

If this was a situation where someone was asking whether getting 4000 unique links all at one time would hurt them, I’d say that it would be a red flag to me unless they had the potential to keep it going on a regular basis, and who the heck can do that? However, I’d still say that no, it won’t hurt you most likely.

Debra Mastaler, @debramastaler:

I think you should be more concerned with where the links are coming from and what they say than the quantity. If you suddenly have 4000 links pointing to your website from a handful of sites and all use the same anchors? That screams manipulation to a bot or human reviewer. But if 4000 links are coming from a wide range of sites, even if they say the same or close to the same thing, that’s viral promotion.

I’ve had old blog posts suddenly attract a lot of links after a well known media site references it. I didn’t do any promotion, add content or ask for a link, a well known site simply pointed to the post and others followed suit.

Best case scenario? Launch your campaigns slowly, over time and use a number of keyword anchors in your links. Your pages are optimized for more than one phrase, use all of them!

Question Three

From Webmaster World:  What Is News Worthy Content?

Ross Hudgens:

Newsworthy content is anything your target market would immediately copy and paste to share with their friends in that same market. News companies think like this in general – “What can we talk about appeals to the widest market?”.

The answer to that question is the #1 news story for that day, whether or not they’re actually right. Your SEO strategy as it comes to creating newsworthy content should follow this same thought process.

Julie Joyce:

Newsworthy content is a few things to me:

1. Something I previously knew nothing or very little about. 2. Something that is completely opposite of what I currently think. 3. Something that tells me how to address an issue. 4. Something that makes me feel like I understand what is going on whether in my industry or the world itself. 5. Something that enlightens me.

Eric Ward:

It depends on the reader’s interests. If you are writing about the effect of lawnmower noise on the nesting habits of the Tufted Tit Mouse (it’s a bird), then that may not be news to me, but it’s news to folks in the aviary community. A Britney Spears wardrobe malfunction? Who cares, right? Well, her few million Twitter followers care, even if you don’t.

Newsworthiness is in the eyes of the person consuming the news. Then again, one could argue that newsworthy content is whatever the Google News index crawls.

Debra Mastaler:

I think newsworthy content is anything that motives people to read or listen. You don’t need to be a large business to garner media or client attention, you just need to be smart about what you’re broadcasting and when.

The “when” factor is an issue a lot of people overlook, trying to compete for news during the middle of the week or when there’s a major international crisis going on might not be the best use of resources. Take note of when there’s slow news cycles and target your press releases or content launches for these periods.

TIP:  Keep in mind the media loves facts and figures they can quote. Consider issuing press releases to announce  survey results, white papers, year-end reports and that  new e-book you’re writing.

And there you have it, four linkers answering three questions. I think it’s fascinating to see how each of us responds, we’re all active link builders and yet we each approach our craft a little differently.

That “difference” and sharing of quality information is why I love the forums, knowledge is power. Find a forum you’re comfortable with and get involved, you’ll benefit by doing so.

Until next time, good linking!

• Part 1 - A Link Building Blueprint: The Foundation
• Part 2 – Utility Linking
• Part 3 – Proven Ways to Use Content to Attract Links

Our blueprint has, up to this point, outlined multiple tactics, provided how-to examples and source sites to draw links from. It’s a solid starting point for building links, so what are you waiting for? If you answer “the time” – I feel your pain.

Link building is the most time intensive part of the SEO process and one that never ends. It’s also one of the most important parts of the program, so a better question at this point might be  “Am I ready to build links?”

This isn’t a question to entertain lightly, screw up the initial linking program and you can set yourself back months from a ranking and marketing perspective. No matter how you answer, there are a handful of items you should consider before moving forward. Let’s look at the process of getting started and talk about pitfalls to avoid so your time and efforts pay off.

Getting Started

Over the weekend, my daughter Mary Katherine and I started painting the fence around our property, we live on five acres so there’s a lot to do. Mary Katherine loves to paint and was enthusiastic about the project until she heard we had to scrape, sand and repair any broken boards before we could start painting. Her enthuiasm waned as the morning wore on, she was gung-ho for the “fun” part (painting) but wasn’t interested in the mundane and laborious prep work needed beforehand. I lost her by lunch time and am now finishing the job myself.

Besides wanting to share how I spend my weekends, my little analogy mirrors the link building process. Most people want to jump in feet first and start linking without doing the prep work. You don’t have to do the prep work on the more basic linking or at all for that matter, but without it, you risk missing a lot of good information and may create more work for yourself in the end.

I’ve outlined the prep questions and pre-campaign steps I use when launching a link marketing campaign; they’ve served me well through the years and can hopefully do the same for you. Here they are:

Prep Questions

1. Are all the pages on my site, especially those I plan to link into:

• Working? Free of broken links, images etc?
• Have contact information displayed on the site?
• Have email capture options?
• Updated content?
• Does the page correspond topically to the keyword in the anchor?
• Is the page hosting the keyword term in the Title?

2. Am I using a wide variation of keyword terms as anchors?

• Have you written out all variations of the anchor text phrase/link so you don’t “overuse” one phrase and neglect others?

3. Do I have a strong internal linking structure?

• If more than twice removed from the home page, is there some cross linking to the home/category pages?
• Can a bot accessing the page I’m linking into, find it’s way further into my site?

Hopefully, you’re answering yes to this first round of questions.

Making sure the site is in good working order is a must, using an anchor text link and linking into broken pages or those not optimized for the term minimizes the effect of your inbound link. You can take full advantage of all the SEO elements you’ve built around each page when you can control the anchor text link and where it points.

Tactical Checklist

Another set of helpful prep questions centers on the type of linking you’ll do:

4. Do you have a credit card or PayPal account open and available?  (Most of the directories accept PayPal but there’s still a few who don’t so have a major credit card ready)

5. Do you have a track-able email account set up for any profiles you need to open?

6. Do you have a large stable of well-written content to offer?  (If you stumble on a guest posting opportunity, you need to be able to offer unique content immediately and get the spot before someone else does)

7. Do you have at link mining tool available? SEOBook tools, Linkscape, Raven Tools – etc, you’ll need to use one of these (or something similar) to explore back links and generate reports.

• Have you taken a test run with your link tool?  Know all it’s features?

8. Do you have access to a storage facility other than your computer?

• DropBox is currently my new best friend – I recommend this  (note: I am not affiliated with this product) or another service like it.
• Don’t store all your linking data in one source, always plan for a backup. I’ve learned the hard way :(

9. Have you identified list sources, forums, and highly visible bloggers in your niche? If you plan to drop link filled articles on content sites, you’ll want to promote them through these types of platforms. Know in advance who you’re targeting, set up accounts in the forums, start commenting on target blogs and pay for mailing lists.

10. Have you found a press release submission service and know their rates/rules?

11. Does your website have a Twitter account set up?

• Does your Twitter handle easily identify who you are (use the name of the site) or targeted keywords?
• Did you provide an informative/fun bio on your Twitter account that includes the URL to your site?
• Do you have a retweet service lined up? Know how to use it?

TIP: no matter where you drop content, tweet the location URL and encourage retweets (RT)

12. Are you visible on Facebook, MySpace or a niche social media site?

TIP: Use GoToWeb2.0 to find a social media platforms in your niche and get involved with them.

TIP: Be sure to add your blog to the Networked Blog category on Facebook for additional exposure.

13.  Do you have an alert service or three in place focused on your:

• Keywords
• Company name
• Name of all your competitors
• Phrases like “news” plus your keywords/company etc

The best way to keep up with what’s happening  in your niche and take advantage of opportunities as they present themselves  is to have information come to you. Google Alerts is fine but don’t depend on one, use several.

Ultimate Prep Point

I consider the first 13 items here basic housekeeping, they’re all points you should take care of before you start the linking process. However, the next two questions are the most important part of your pre-work and crucial to your success.

14. Have you asked your customers/demographic what turns them on?

Don’t be fooled by the casual nature of the question, it’s absolutely the most important piece of information you have to answer before you spend the first dime on linking tactics.

I see a lot of SEO’s throw infographics, white papers and  articles into cyberspace and wonder why they fail. The content might be good but if it wasn’t targeted to the right group or at the right time? FAIL.

Don’t break the cardinal rule of link marketing:

~ know the emotional motivation of your target audience ~

15. Have you issue a survey to your customer base to:

• Find out what they’re reading
• Find out where they’re going
• Find out what they want
• Find out who they like
• Find out who they’re talking about

I recommend running a customer survey once or twice a year, depending on the size of the business and the mailing list. You’d be surprised at how much helpful information you’ll glean from people if you simply ask.

16. If you’re running sites or blogs targeting a broad audience and have no ‘customers’ to send a survey to, use sites like Forrester Research and eMarketer to help you target trends and demographics.

Once you know what your audience likes/wants, developing a link marketing campaign gets much easier.

To close, I hope my prep points and pre-steps help in your linking endeavors, like I said, they’ve worked for me over the years and I really can’t work without them. Linking  is hard even when doing the basics, but when you start getting into the more aggressive strategies? It can be brutal which is why I make sure I’m well prepared before launching the first tactic.

It’s not just linking, it’s marketing! Until next time – good linking!

There are many ways to generate links using content, you’re probably familiar with article writing, guest blogging, link bait, white papers etc. All of these content tactics are fine and still work, but since they’re talked about frequently, I won’t go into the basic mechanics behind each.

Instead, let’s take a look at a handful of tips and twists you can use with these foundational tactics to generate additional links.

Use What You Have

If you have a company blog and/or are writing articles and distributing them to places like article directories and how-to sites, you’ve already produced a lot of usable content. Here’s a couple of ways to reuse that content and attract links.

Re-use old blog posts

If your site has been online for awhile, chances are you have a blog to go with it. Pull posts with high comment and traffic counts, group by topic and rewrite each as a longer, more robust article. Be sure to point links embedded in the article to internal pages of your site optimized for these terms. Distribute this new content through the article directories.

Re-use old articles

If you have a lot of content in the article directories or in the resource center on your site, pull the articles and rewrite down into small, 200 – 250 word “posts” and use to create a newsletter. Add elements such as:

• Product Q&A. Less fluff, more facts is best.
• Cartoon humor. If you can’t find one written for your industry, create one here.
• Industry announcements. Tap into your association or trade journal news stream.
• Article submission. Accept industry articles from businesses in your niche.  This will help round out your newsletter, attract links and become a viable source of information for your industry.

After the first newsletter has been published and added to your site, issue a press release announcing its creation and include a link to the registration area. Email your customer base before issuing the press release, let them have a sneak peek at your new offering.

Tip:  Search for sources to add/advertise your newsletter. Instead of using phrases such as  “add url” or “submit site”, use  “fan base” terms to locate like-minded groups. For example:

• “fan club” + your keyword(s)
• “association” + your keyword
• “circle” + your keyword
• “league” +  your keyword

Our goal here is to find fresh sources to host our newsletter link and tap into an industry fan base. People tend to link to sources hosting what they write, be proactive in finding guest writers from “fan” type  locations and ask them to contribute to your newsletter.

New Twist To Old Content

It really doesn’t matter what type of link building you do, but it does matter where you do it. You can have the most outrageous, well written, visually pleasing infographic in the universe but if it’s sitting on an algorithmically crappy, low-traffic web page, it’s not going to help you rank or make money. For link embedded content to be most effective, it needs to sit on solid sources.

It can be hard to find sources in some markets and when this happens, I step back and look at how I can use what’s already out there. I focus on finding industry forums and content already written using my keywords. When I’ve found both, here’s what I do:

Use content hubs

Go to a content hub (article directory, white paper repository or industry news site) of your choice and make a list of all the content written on your subject. It doesn’t matter who wrote it, just be sure the keywords in the article match/are close to yours. Use a tool such as Article Checker to see who’s hosting the original article. Offer your new content to the same sources.

Use forums

There is a forum for everything, from baking bread to zoology protocols;  if there’s more than ten people interested in a topic, there’s a forum. Tap into their collective power by getting involved and becoming familiar with the various threads.

Most forums offer a “marketplace” or “for sale” section where members can drop promotional information and offers on behalf of their company. These sections are great locations to drop information on your newsletter or sell an ebook.

You can post an excerpt from your book and link directly to your sales pages. Take a look at the ebook for sale on the bread forum on the right!

A friendly comment here regarding forums…

Over the years, I’ve been involved in many, both in and outside the SEO community. The topics may change but the overall sense of community doesn’t, so don’t take advantage here and treat them like an advertising platform. Get involved and be a good neighbor before offering your content commercially.

Tip: Substitute “discussion lists” for forums and look for  groups dedicated to talking and writing about your subjects.

Tip: Every time you create new content and upload it to a web page, tweet the title of the article, your company name and the URL of the page it sits on. It doesn’t matter if the article isn’t on your site, tweet it and if you have a Facebook page, add it there too.

Key Takeaways

With the search engines frowning on “content farms” and artificial blog networks, finding and using untapped sources is crucial for link marketing success. Good content drives traffic, builds brand and hosts keyword anchor text, three important components for an online business to rank well and attract quality traffic.

Spend time and resources in finding and partnering with key sites in your online community, and it will go a long way to making your site an authority in your industry. Until next time – good linking!