Link Development Tool Shortcuts For Firefox

A few weeks back I did a post on my blog about creating Firefox quick search bookmarks. I was surprised at how well received it was, though I think people were most pleased with the fact that I had created a download of a very small selection of the large list of SEO related Firefox quick searches that I use.

If you’ve ever seen me do a site review, you’d know I appear lost without my laptop, which contains all of my quick searches. Since the small list of general SEO ones I previously published was well received, I figured I would create a download of some of the ones I find to be great tools in my link development efforts. I can’t give them all away, but anyone who spends a lot of time doing link development should find these pretty useful. So, grab the original shortlist of general SEO Firefox quick search bookmarks (some of which are used in link dev) and then grab this expanded list of link development Firefox quick search bookmarks (to download either file, right click and save as).

The following is a listing of the searches contained within the link development specific download:

• Google Link Search: I don’t think this one needs explaining, except to remind newer SEOs that this listing is far from complete, as admitted by Google, and only shows a small sampling of your inbound links. Also don’t assume that because you see a specific backlink when doing a link: command that it means it carries any weight.
• MSN Link from Domain Search: Shows you a listing of sites that a specific URL is linking to. For example, you can see what sites Search Engine Land is linking to with this command.
• Google News Search: Allows you to search Google news specifically, which I’ve found handy when trying to identify and organize the Linkerati in a specific niche.
• Google News Site Search: Allows you to quickly identify if a publication is listed within Google News as a source of news content. To me, this is one potential signal of the quality of and value in obtaining a link from a specific site.
• Digg Popularity of a Website: Does a Digg search for any stories that have been submitted from a specific URL, buried or not buried, front page or non-front page, to show you the success or non-success of a site’s social media attempts. This can also help you identify which competitors truly are competitors in the social media space and which competitors seem to be ignoring it so that you can fill the voids they leave by not paying attention. A much better way to see the Digg popularity of your website than fad widget sites like Diggularity.
• PRWeb Search: Searches all press releases at PRWeb.com. I use this search to identify the companies and websites that are seeking publicity within a site’s niche and to get ideas for the content that will allow us to develop some killer links based upon new discoveries within an industry.
• YouTube Search Ordered by View Count: Self explanatory as far as what it does in regards to finding YouTube videos. This helps us identify competitors that are developing views well surrounding our topic area, allowing us to not only learn from their success, but to also take a look at the sites that have linked to their videos on YouTube. This gives us a more specific listing of “Video Linkerati” to contact when we have a big push on a video.
• Yahoo Answers Open Questions: This will search Yahoo Answers for open questions containing your search terms. Regardless of nofollow links, Yahoo Answers is a traffic driver in a lot of categories and we find being active in those categories helps us develop branding and visibility that leads to traffic and outside links.
• Yahoo Search to See if a Site Is Linking to You: Does a quick search to see if a specific domain is linking to your website. It’s useful in helping you not repeatedly contact the same sites, especially if you bought a website and don’t have records of previous link development efforts.
• Ye Old Digg Mining: Does a Digg search to find stories that reached front page without being buried on a specific topic, listing the oldest first. This can often help you come up with some great topics for killer content (I will not use the overused but often misunderstood word “linkbait”). If you think Cosmo hasn’t been repeating the same stories for decades upon decades, you’re very wrong. They simply take the same topics and attack them from fresh angles.

Lastly, one I couldn’t include the code for because you first need to create a custom search engine with Google (you can see an example of an SEO related one in action here): Searching Your Custom Search. I like to set up custom search engines for my niche– only putting in the high quality sites I’ve developed relationships with and/or hope to develop relationships with so that when we’re searching for something to link to on a specific topic (and thus, creating a quality outbound link), we can simply search the sites we know to be the best of the niche to do so (don’t forget to include your own). This has worked best for us the bigger our industry or niche is.