Here it is: 30 Link Builders Discuss Backlink Analysis For Campaign Design

We didn’t anticipate getting back 20,000 words worthy of getting turned into a $329 link building ebook ;) Because of the word volume we decided to turn it into 3 separate articles, and our wheels really started turning on how we could design future group interviews more effectively (fewer questions for example :).

Also, our gentle editors requested we, er, rein in our “links of thanks.”

As a way of anchoring our thanks to text, we put up this list of contributors to the backlink group interview.

>> Roger Montti – MartiniBuster
“Now here is the question that webmasters aren’t considering. Is it possible to rank a site according to the relevancy cloud that a site belongs in? If it’s possible to extract meaning from the clouds of “meaning” a site belongs to, then it’s possible that a relevant site with low to zero PR regains importance as part of a link building project. This is something I refer to as determining the link clique.”

>> Jeremy Bencken – Websimple, an Austin-based SEO firm
“A better strategy is to ask, “what audiences are organically linking to my competitors and how can I use those ideas to generate my own focused link building campaigns?” What other adjacent markets might also be interested in my site’s story? The key is finding inspiration, ideas, and improving upon inbound linking trends you discover from competitors.”

>> David Lewallen – International SEO
“I also like to see if their business partners are linking to them and in what fashion. I check to see if there are links going to 404 pages, broken or missing pages.”

>> Ryan Clark – LinkBuildr.com
“Let’s say someone ranking in the top 5 for your target keyword has 500 links, 75 of them are of medium to high quality. I can tell from that just what kind of links I’ll need to catch up to them and take over. If you’re specing things out for a client then you’ll also be able to have a sense of the cost for them. It’s really hard to measure a cost with ranking success from a link building campaign. A competitor’s backlink profile might reveal that they’ve paid to be in Business.com and the Yahoo Directory. Little tips like that can start to put a dollar value on your campaign costs which helps keep things in perspective.”

>> Shaun Anderson – Hobo Web SEO Company
“I’ll carry out some simple backlink research at the beginning of any project to identify any obvious link hubs in the vertical, and/or any obvious quality link sources, or to just examine the types of link opportunities available in this sector.”

>> Eric Enge – president of Stone Temple Consulting, an SEO consultancy outside of Boston.
“One component that people often overlook, is that it is not just about the authority and trust that a domain has, but it is also about the page which the link can be found on. The classic example is a student page on a major university web site. The student does not speak for the university, and it is not likely that the search engines credit much of the domain’s authority or trust in such a page.”

>> Brian Gilley – SocialSEO: advanced link building
“The most informative backlink data we’ve used over the past few years is looking at how deep and diversified the backlink profile is for any given competitor’s website.”

>> Jennifer Van Iderstyne – SEO reporting & Consulting
“Sometimes, when you’ve hit a wall brainstorming new ideas, a back link analysis can provide inspiration.”

>> Paul Teitelman – SEO Toronto
“…if a client had very few backlinks, you know that you need to take your time and only use the absolute safest link building practices with lots of anchor text variation. On the other hand, if the client has a massive amount of backlinks with lots of link and anchor variation already then it’s a completely different story.”

>> Melanie Nathan – Edmonton SEO company specializing in link building for small to medium sized businesses
“Knowing the sheer number of links my clients have vs. what their top competitors have, helps me determine how far I’ll have to climb to get them to (and beyond) that level. And knowing the quality of their links and what they’re heavily targeting helps me determine how fast I’ll be able to get them there.”

>> Brian Chappell – Owns a link development firm called Adapt Marketing where he is able to drive increased organic rankings for clients via social media marketing initiatives. In his spare time he runs lead generation projects in various online verticals.
“Links to me tell a story, so its very important to understand the age, location and anchor text of a sites links.”

>> Michael Gray – Graywolf SEO Blog
“You should always address any on site issues first, such as canonical, site architecture, page templates, but backlinks are the first step when you start looking at offsite SEO.”

>> Wil Reynolds – SEO company
“Anchor text distribution for the top 10-20 sites vs. my site for a given keyword, this will let you know if you are in a dogfight for anchor text links.”

>> Tom Demers – Tom Demers is the Director of Marketing with WordStream: An Internet Marketing Software Company. You can follow Tom Demers on Twitter, or stop by the WordStream Internet Marketing Blog, where he’s a frequent contributor.
“On an ongoing basis, I’ll periodically audit a client’s backlink profile, and I’ll frequently look at backlink profiles of competitors or interesting sites to mine them for links I can either get or generate a link building idea from.”

>> Ken Lyons – Ken Lyons is the Marketing Manager at WordStream, a provider of keyword research tools for researching and grouping keywords. He also does consulting work, focusing on SEO in Boston.
“when I see spammy, low value sites outranking mine in the SERPs, I get giddy because I know if I rummage through their garbage link profiles, I’ll find gold. It’s evident that there’s some juicy link pushing them ahead of me. I just need to roll up my sleeves and find it.”

>> Wiep Knol – linkbuilding
“In general, you can tell if a website has been building links by their anchor text portfolio.”

>> Gab Goldenberg – Professional SEO Services
“I perform backlink analysis when I need to have an idea how challenging and time-intensive it’ll be to rank a prospective client. This also gives me an idea as to whether I should even take them on or whether their needs are beyond what I can provide.”

>> Christoph Cemper – SEO Tools
“Each datapoint is valuable – we look at over 40 different parameters for each link! the most popular that you want to check for each link are obviously Domain Age, Backlinks to the page, Juice/Rankings for the page, if/when it was last changed, when the page was created, etc.”

>> David Harry – SEODojo + Reliable SEO
“Many times, unless one specializes in a market, it isn’t obvious which routes to take with link building. I find that the process of reverse engineering during the competitive analysis can help find approaches we may not have had in mind originally. This has a huge affect. Where are they strong? Where are they weak? How balanced is the profile? Much of this affects the actual campaign to be implemented.”

>> Arnie Kuenn – Link Building Services
“Sometime we discover a whole method of obtaining links, not just a list of domains and pages to target in our link building efforts. For example, did the competition have an angle to attract .edu links? Did they distribute any free products or tools to attract links?”

>> Ann Smarty – My Blog Guest – for Guest Posting
“The best thing about the backlink research is that it inspires me: this way I can see which direction I can go, how creative I can get and which site types will work best.”

>> Dixon Jones – SEO TOOLS – MajesticSEO – Intenet Marketing Consulants
“The analysis helps to quantify and demonstrate the scale of the task at hand. In some instances, the website in question is underdeveloped by a massive factor compared to their competitors. This usually reflects relative differences in brand building on and offline in the past – but if a local paper hopes to compete with the BBC, they had better reframe their objectives to think around local terms, for example.”

>> Debra Mastaler – Link Buiding Services
“Any information found is strategically used in our decision making process. We don’t necessarily use the same link sources in our linking efforts but knowing where and how a competitor links helps us plan a smarter strategy.”

>> Julie Joyce – LinkFish Media
“Basically, I feel like a bit of a link analysis hippie. I see the general pattern, get an idea about the overall aspects of the backlinks without needing to tie it down into discrete bits.”

>> Dennis Hettema – http://hette.ma
“This generally depends on the project but on average I would say quarterly. I used them to benchmark my competition and figure out interesting new routes to links.”

>> Elias Kai – www.google-kai.com
“When: On monthly or quarterly basis Why: checking competitive footage – geo ip – unique providers – authority sources”

>> Bill Hartzer – Vizion Interactive
“I’d rather have 100 links on 80 different domains than 1100 links on 20 different domain names. A good mix of all types of links is helpful, as well, not just directory links or blog comments or article links or press release links, but a good mix of all of those. Even having some nofollow links may play into it, as well.”

>> Eric Ward – Link Marketing Expert
“I can tell who is using what tactics, and whether or not they are going to work short and long term. Call it live link forensics. The ability to see who is on the right path, and who is about to blow up.”

>> Ken McGaffin – Wordtracker
“I’ll do formal analysis when I start on a new project. I’ll look in-depth at each of the major players. I want to assess what their linking strategies are and how well they’re implementing them. As well as that, I’ll be looking for influential blogs and the people behind them, community sites, news and information sites and particularly journalists who are writing about the topic I’m promoting.”

>> Aaron Wall – SEOBook
If you try to compete head on with limited resources that makes winning harder, but if you find an area where the competition is weak or you have a strong competitive advantage you give yourself a much better chance to succeed. Most of the backlink analysis I do is just an overview look at the market using SEO for Firefox.

When you know and can adequately express a URL’s linkability, you can make clear demonstrations for linkability-increasing changes. In cases of large-scale link building efforts you can better identify and work towards a “good-enough” linkability for a large number of target URLs. Finally, meaningful linkability metrics could help link building tool creators… Wouldn’t it be nice to paste in a URL and have that page’s linkability measured for you? ;)

Well, until that tool’s created, this article will help you calculate the linkability of the URLs you plan to build links to. Here’s what you’ll find:

>> Just a Tad Bit More on Link Building and “Linkability”
>> Preparing for Linkability Assessment
>> 5 Subjective Linkability Metrics: By-Hand Analysis
>> 4 Inbound Link Trends and Patterns
>> 6 Objective, Large-Scale Linkability Metrics: Machine Analysis
>> Linkability Analysis Tools
>> More Linkability Resources

>> Just a Tad Bit More on Link Building and “Linkability”
We view link building as having two distinct stages. The first stage is when you build and/or optimize links to your most important URLs, from all the proven link opportunities that currently exist (all the linkers to URLs ranking for your terms). The second stage is when you begin creating and distributing highly linkable content that targets the most important linkers within your keyword space, while continuing to monitor for emerging link opportunities.

A URL’s linkability primarily exists in comparison to its competing URLs – those URLs with a demonstrated ability to rank. You determine your URLs’ competing URLs based on the pages ranking 1-10 (or 1-20, 1-30, 1-100 etc…) for the terms you want your URL to rank for. We contend that you can extract meaningful, actionable linkability measurements based on comparisons of these ranking pages, and by comparing the pages that link directly to them. Note that linkability’s key metrics will shift from keyword to keyword, industry to industry, even between geographic locations. This means that general “linkability guidelines” may not help you to home in on what truly impacts linkability for your keywords.

Finally, it may not be the inbound links to a ranking URL that contribute the most to its rankings.

>> Preparing for Linkability Assessment
Begin by selecting the URLs on your site that you want to have higher rankings. These pages should be your most valuable pages – the pages that have consistently contributed to your revenues. Most valuable URLs often include pages such as paid search landing pages, pages that convert visitors into prospects or customers, pages that rank on the second or third page of search engines for your target terms, pages that answer common community questions, pages that already have links and referral traffic, etc… This article goes deeper into choosing which URLs to build links to.

Once you have your list of target URLs, establish the target 3-6(ish) keywords for each one. These URLs and keyword groupings become your reference points for all the remaining measurements and comparisons. Remember – don’t try to establish the linkability of your entire site. It’s only important (especially at first) to look at the linkability of the URLs that could contribute the most value to your organization if they had higher rankings.

We’ve written extensively on link prospecting here >>

>> Subjective Linkability Metrics: By-Hand Analysis
Your most important tool for measuring a URL’s linkability comes from Yahoo – the per-page inbound link count. SEOBook’s SEO Toolbar and SEO for Firefox best present this data and make it easily exportable. Though we lean as much as possible towards automated methods of analysis, there always comes a time when you have to put your eyeballs to the pixels and analyze things yourself. Remember, in all of this you’re looking for patterns amongst ranking pages similar to yours that have earned inbound links.

1) Look and Feel
Do your competing URLs with inbound links have a consistent or particular look and feel? Some markets favor dingy, dated layouts and design – this indicates that the site has a history and that the site owners are not overly-concerned with impressing their visitors. Other markets see design that’s a year old and instantly click away. People who choose to link into the pages you’re competing with are an important part of your marketplace. If inbound linkers clearly favor a particular look and feel then consider making some adjustments.

2) Content Structure and Organization
Is your content structured for easy consumption? Do you notice any structural trends on the pages that have earned the most inbound links? H1 tags, short paragraphs, pull quotes – these types of structural enhancements, so long as they serve the viewer – may impact linkability in your space.

3) Authority of Content
Do your competing URLs contain clear demonstrations of authority? This could be outlinks to related content, quotes from experts (including site owner), badges/awards that show industry participation, a client list and more… See if the highly-linked competing URLs, in aggregate, make it clear to visitors that the page’s creator has authoritative knowledge.

4) Depth and Thoroughness of Content
This is more than word count – how completely does the copy on the page discuss the topic? Are there multiple bullet points and an almost laborious thoroughness that ensures that no one leaves the page uneducated? If the ranking pages your URL competes against look more like Wikipedia pages than sales pages you should consider revising and possibly expanding your content.

5) Existence/Quality of Conversation
Do your competing URLs contain conversation threads, customer reviews or even a rating system? This amount or even the tone or quality of conversation on your target URL could affect your page’s linkability.

>> Seeking Inbound Link Trends and Patterns
Are there trends within the patterns of inbound links? Here are a number of items to investigate that could shed some light into why certain pages have more linkability than others.

1) Links From Particular Site Types
Perhaps a particular competing URL has earned several links from forums… If your marketplace includes a large number of active forums then it’s time for you to understand why forum members choose to link to some URLs and not others. Maybe a competing URL has a number of links from FaceBook or Twitter… or even Wikipedia. Understanding what made this URL attractive to participants at these sites will help you to improve your URL’s linkability. Perhaps you’ll find that a particular shopping site links directly to competing URLs – it may help your rankings to provide this site with a feed.

2) Inbound Link Text Patterns
Are there patterns within the link text to your competing URLs? If so, does the link text match how you describe the products or services on your page? Perhaps there’s a segment of potential linkers who don’t feel “targeted” by your URL’s copy because you’re not speaking their language.

3) Most Valuable Link Pages Pointing to Small Cluster of URLs
Some link prospect pages provide more value than others. You can identify these Most Valuable Links because they come from pages with high PageRank, high inbound link count, high traffic values, and high organic rankings of their own. If the most valuable linking pages target a small cluster of your competing URLs, it’s up to you to understand what these competing pages did to earn those important links.

4) Context Framing Inbound Link to the Competing URL
How does the inlinking page describe the link? What is the surrounding link text? If there are any adjectives, these may provide clues regarding linkability. The title of the page may also provide some insight into why your competing URL received a link.

>> Objective, Large-Scale Linkability Metrics: Machine Analysis
Here are a number of objective – i.e. machine-readable – metrics to help determine possible factors that impact a URL’s linkability within a given set of inbound links. In all cases below we’re looking for trends amongst the competing URLs that have inbound links (not overall domain links, just page links).

1) Target Keyword Density of Competing URLs
Is there any relationship between keyword density and whether or not it earns links? While it’s long been established that keyword density has little if anything to do with relevance, by comparing the keyword density of your top 20 competing URLs that have links you may uncover some opportunities for improvement… especially in title tags and H1 tags, which aid visitors by making clear declarations of a page’s subject. Further, it could be that overly-dense pages receive fewer links because they are “over-optimized…” it may be that you should ratchet back your keyword usage and focus more on the visitor.

2) Number of Words on the Page
It may be that the URLs that you’re competing with have more words on the page than yours. And then again possibly they have less. If there’s a trend – one way or the other – for the competing pages with links then you might want to add or reduce the amount of valuable information on the page. If you look across the top 30 URLs for 5 closely-related target keywords, the number of words on competing pages could become a meaningful linkability metric.

3) Embedded Media on the Page
Is there a linkability trend that favors images, video, podcasts or other embedded media? For some keywords, linking sites could favor those with more extensive, non-textual content. If this is the case for the competing URLs that earned links you should consider making changes to your target URLs.

4) Type of Site/Type of Page
Is the competing URL part of a social media site? Is it a blog post from a competitor, or even a press release? If you find that inbound linkers favor certain types of sites or types of pages for a given keyword group then you might consider attacking these keywords with different content.

5) Usage of Salesy, Purchase Inducing Words
If you brainstorm out a list of sales-related terms you can cross check the text of ranking pages to see how tolerant linkers are towards being pitched. This can be a quick test to see if you should target a keyword group with product/service sales copy or informational, how-to copy.

6) Length of Sentences, Length of Words, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level
Do inbound linkers seem to have a preference for brevity? If so, you may find that the copy on your target URL is too loquacious or even pedantic for your linking audience. Then again, maybe you’re too concise. Looking at averages could shed some light on what linkers in this particular keyword space tend to prefer.

>> Linkability Analysis Tools
Keyword Density Analyzer Tool
KEYWORD DENSITY & PROMINENCE 2.5
Word Count Tool
Writing Sample Analyzer
SEOBook’s SEO Toolbar
SEO for Firefox

>> More Linkability Resources
Linkability – Why do some sites have it while others don’t?
Linking Strategy Part II: Maximising your Linkability
A Site without Linkability is a Site Destined for Failure
Link Ability – The Life Blood of A Website

Thanks to the nod from Jeff Quip and kind editorial guidance and image selections by Ruud Hein, we’re pleased to present to you: 17 Ways to Accelerate Links to Your Link Bait (and Other Highly Linkable Content)

With thanks to Brian Chappell for the introduction!

The article enables link builders to more quickly qualify link prospects, and comes with a downloadable link prospect qualification worksheet that’s preprogrammed to measure a link prospect’s relevance, value and potentiality.

We’re proud to join the link building contributors at Search Engine Land.

This article identifies seven different types of URLs that would make excellent targets for a link building campaign… It also encourages marketers to consider thinking in terms of URL-level link building campaigns. We even recommend that you structure your work (spread sheets, keywords, tracking, notes, internal knowledge holders etc…) per URL for maximum results.

These strategy tips augment the process outlined in the Link Building Guide >>

1) URLs that Function as Paid Search Landing Pages
You already organically optimize your paid search landing pages for their target keywords, right? Since your paid search team honed these pages to razor-sharp instruments of mass conversion it’s now time to increase their organic search traffic for their proven keywords.

Link Opportunities to Watch For:

-Product lists/product recommendations/product comparisons that mention your product but don’t link
-Product lists/product recommendations/product comparisons that don’t mention your product
-Factually inaccurate assessments of the product/service on your URL
-Raving adulation of specific product/service
-Build links to your highest organically ranking paid search landing pages first

Who to Tap Internally for Input or Guided Link Acquisition:
Product managers, top sales people for the product/service, product developers, and in some cases the CEO could all be potential contributors to any comment thread participation, link requests or interview offers.

2) URLs that Convert Visitors into Leads
Do you have any URLs that are known contributors to email newsletter sign ups, trial software downloads or white paper requests? These are key URLs for link building campaigns as increasing their rankings will increase the number of visitors who convert into leads for your organization.

Link Opportunities to Watch For:

-Free resource (white paper, application, newsletter, etc…) recommendation lists

Who to Tap Internally for Input or Guided Link Acquisition:
The original content creators could provide useful input on crafting link requests or comments.

3) URLs that Naturally Align with Large, Rank-Influencing Linker Segments
You may already be sitting on a link opportunity gold mine. For example your large scale backlink research may reveal a large number of influential forum and blog conversations about your company’s return or shipping policies – or those of your competition. If these conversations don’t include links to your shipping policy page then join those conversations and look for natural ways to build links. If your market size warrants consider creating a community facing role that covers such issues directly and transparently.

Link Opportunities to Watch For:
-discussions of your company’s shipping or return policies
-discussions of your company’s environmental policies
-product quality discussions
-common factual inaccuracies

Who to Tap Internally for Input or Guided Link Acquisition:
-Ideally PR and Marketing are highly involved and engaged here… and nothing beats the actual CEO for making a few, well targeted comments in highly trafficked community sites. Any managers involved or related to the URLs you’re building links to should have input as well (ie: shipping managers should have input on how the organization addresses shipping issues).

4) URLs that Already Have Links and/or High Traffic
URLs that have already earned links provide you with ample opportunity for increasing their value and rankings. First look for sites similar to those already linking. Then look for higher traffic, higher influence sites and write some highly targeted emails. Look for ways to distribute this page through social media as well. Be sure to reoptimize all the standard on page factors.

Link Opportunity Examples:

-Previous or inadvertent link bait

Who to Tap Internally for Input or Guided Link Acquisition:
-The authors of that content may potentially have a higher rate of link acquisition if they’re the ones making requests. Consider letting them take a look at your link prospects – they may even have contacts at some of the sites on your list.

5) URLs that Provide Answers to Common Community Questions
What types of questions – how-to and otherwise – are common amongst the community and social media sites that influence search rankings for your keywords? If you already have pages adressing these questions then these URLs could provide you with ample content for building links.

Link Opportunities to Watch For:

-Forum, answer page or social media conversation threads

Who to Tap Internally for Input or Guided Link Acquisition:
Ideally your internal knowledge holders can at least frame the links you’re making with unique content, or ideally become contributors themselves. Again, if the size of your market warrants it you may consider creating a community-facing role here as well.

6) Ranking URLs with Proven Conversion Value that Fluctuate Due to Competition
Link building can help to stabilize your URLs that fluctuate in the SERPs due to high levels of competition – or their newness. If ranking these URLs contributes measurable value to your organization then this makes them logical targets for your link building campaign.

Link Opportunity Examples:
-Varies

Who to Tap Internally for Input or Guided Link Acquisition:
-Varies

7) URLs that Rank on Page 2-3 for Your Valuable Keywords
Do you have converting URLs that rank on page 2 or 3 of the SERPs? These are prime targets for link building, as often just a few extra links will put them into the higher traffic positions. Building links to these URLs can help you show rapid revenue results for your efforts.

Link Opportunity Examples:
-Varies

Who to Tap Internally for Input or Guided Link Acquisition:
-Varies

By structuring your link building campaign around your site’s URLs you position your site to achieve maximum benefit from your large scale link research efforts. As a side note, your efforts should include aligning – as best as you’re able – keyword link text, keywords in your tags, keywords on the page and the keyword relevance of your link prospects.

This article identifies 16 measurements that determine a link’s marketing value outside of search rank influence. We work with 200k+ URLs at a time, so we focus on automatable, repeatable and/or scrapeable measurements. SEO for Firefox provides a great deal of the measurement data we recommend evaluating – in exportable format.

If you are unfamiliar with the rel=”nofollow” tag and its various usages, read this reasonably thorough Wikipedia entry: nofollow. Note that the Wikipedia entry skirts the SEM-led controversy surrounding nofollow. So do we! If a nofollow link from a relevant page has a measurable marketing value then we say start a relationship and land that link.

As a side note, we suggest that you apply some or all of these measurements to dofollow links – they can help you decide which opportunities to pursue first.

Our Link Building Guide leads motivated readers through the methods and processes of large-scale, research intensive link building.

1) The Link Prospect Page Ranks Top 20 in the SERPs
Always pursue links from qualified pages that appear in the SERPs for keywords and phrases relevant to your URL. Why? These pages already have traffic, and targeted, relevant traffic at that. Knowing what keywords and phrases a page ranks for – and at what level they rank (1-10 on first page? 11-20 on second?) – can help you make quick, simple decisions regarding which links to pursue.

2) Multiple Pages from the Same Domain Link to Top Ranking Sites
Once you’ve conducted large-scale link building research you may determine that certain domains have multiple rank-influencing pages. This indicates that the domain may have a larger impact on your targeted traffic than others. Find opportunities to establish content sharing or other relationships with such a site, with an emphasis on those ranking URLs!

3) PageRank of Domain/Target Pages
PageRank indicates how much trust/PageRank flows to these pages from the web at large. While not an absolute rule, you can generally assume that the higher the PageRank of a page or domain, the higher the likelihood of traffic. And though PageRank may not flow FROM these pages, shoppers or prospects certainly might if the pages are relevant.

4) Social Media Distribution
Do any of your qualified link prospect URLs have links from social media sites? Check for both domains AND individual pages in sites like Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace and any other social media site that’s relevant and targeted to the URLs you’re building links to. Individual pages with links from multiple social media sites may have a steady flow of traffic. These pages, if relevant, produce a steady flow of targeted traffic to your site. Domains with links from multiple social media sites may well be worth building an ongoing linking relationship with through content or other contributions.

5) Domain Traffic Estimates: SEMRush, Compete, Alexa etc…
Domain traffic estimates provide you with a rough guide for the popularity of a domain and how much traffic may spill over from links to your URLs. Only the site owner has relatively precise traffic numbers, however a number of traffic estimators can provide you with ballpark figures useful for ranking your link prospects. Remember, a targeted, relevant low-traffic site often – though not always – trumps a high-traffic less relevant site. Pursue relevance over traffic first and foremost, but circle back around for those traffic links later ;) Some traffic estimate sites enable you to see geographic data. If you seek referral traffic from specific geographic areas then this information could prove highly useful.

6) How Quickly Site Pages Enter SERPs
The rapidity with which a site’s pages enter the search results (especially Google’s) can be an indicator of how much trust that site has earned. If you know what time their feeds updated you can simply check that against the time that Google cached the page. If you seek to launch news quickly, for example, you may want to more heavily favor those sites that enter the SERPs quickly.

7) Site “Publishes” to Google News
Google News – especially the front page – can provide enormous amounts of traffic. Build links quickly on relevant pages that appear in Google News and you’ll see targeted traffic increase. Further, sites that publish to Google News make excellent prospects for longer-term content/collaborative relationships.

8) Blogroll Backlinks to Domain
The number of blogroll backlinks to a domain may indicate how widely read/respected that domain is. Knowing this can help you to prioritize and structure your outreach efforts. To ensure the greatest relevance, concentrate on the blogroll backlinks within your keyword-based link research data set.

9) Bloglines Citations/Google Blog Search Backlinks
The number of domain and individual page backlinks within Bloglines, Google Blog Search and any other blog search engine you favor can indicate the value a link may have. If any of the pages on your link prospect list have blog backlinks then those pages should have steady flows of traffic. Float these pages up your priority list as they can contribute – especially in aggregate – a steady flow of traffic to your site.

10) Longstanding Wikipedia Backlinks
Pages and domains with longstanding links from Wikipedia have a steady flow of traffic, so long as Wikipedia does well in Google’s SERPs and maintains its editorial standards. If pages within your qualified link prospects have links from Wikipedia then these should have an increased priority, especially if the Wikipedia page inlinking has relevance to your URL.

11) Feed Reader Subscribers
Measuring the number of feed reader subscribers a blog has gives you an idea of reach – especially if you’re considering approaching the blogger with a story pitch or even a guest post. Commenting on past posts can be a way to test the audience waters, and to prove your value to the blogger. Bloglines provides a subscriber count, as does Google Reader, FeedBurner and others.

12) Pod/Video Cast Subscribers
If a domain owner produces regular podcasts or videocasts – and has earned subscribers – this greatly increases their distribution and reach potential for your site. Podcasters and videocasters often link to offsite urls from their sites – further, by establishing a conversation you may position yourself for future publicity. A targeted site with podcast or videocast subscribers could provide you with value beyond targeted traffic.

13) Sig/Non-Sig Forum Backlinks
Forum backlinks can tell you a great deal about the nature of both a site and its owner. Numerous signature-level backlinks from multiple forums could indicate that a site owner has significant community presence. If your outreach strategy includes forums, this could prove highly desirable as you may be able to influence a power-user. If a given URL has numerous forum backlinks it’s likely that the page will have a steady flow of traffic from the community. If the forum members fall within your target market then you should definitely pursue a link.

14) Email Newsletter Subscribers
Though list owners don’t often openly publish list size, knowing this number can help you to determine whether or not to pursue a link. If you simply know that a given site publishes a newsletter you could potentially work at acquiring links before the newsletter goes out. If you have links on pages mentioned in the newsletter then you will see an increase in targeted traffic so long as the site is relevant to your business.

15) Page/Domain “Brand”
If the page or domain of your link prospect has brand value you’d like their visitors to associate with your site then you should pursue the link. Brand is highly subjective of course, and any links you choose to pursue because of brand will likely be chosen by hand.

16) Quality of Threaded Conversation
If the link prospect URL cultivates conversations, what quality of participant do they attract? Judge this based on the level of rhetoric displayed by participants, and how well they seem to support or defend ideas. Further, if purchase decision questions relating to your business occur then you may have a winner. Also, if you recognize well known participants from your industry or market then the thread may be a good place for links. If there seems to be a great deal of abstruse in-joking you may consider passing them by as they likely place history with the community over quality of new contributions. One closing thought – be cautious, courteous and highly relevant in any comments with links you may leave.

Bonus: Just Get the Link and Track It to See What Happens ;)
When in doubt, go for the link. If you employ sound analytics you’ll know the precise impact the link has on your marketing efforts. So long as you only pursue link opportunities from pages relevant to your business you can often afford to acquire links even if you’re not quite sure what ultimate marketing value they will bring.

We used a number of resources to further our brainstorming. The following articles provided us with insight, ideas and points of departure.

Putting a Value on NoFollow Links
Links with rel=”nofollow” (wmw thread)
How Google, Yahoo & Ask.com Treat the No Follow Link Attribute
How Do You Measure; Measure a Link?
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When evaluating a free, web-based link building research tool, the main thing you want to look for is the ability for one of the following actions:

- Export to a CSV/TSC. This will allow you to open the file in MS Excel/OpenOffice Calc so that you can aggregate all of the data easily.
- Allow you to select and copy the data from the web page, so that you can easily paste it into MS Excel/OpenOffice Calc.

Large scale link building works only when you can aggregate and sort thousands or even hundreds of thousands of urls and their related link information. If you have to copy and paste individual pieces of data into a spreadsheet for analysis then the usefulness of a link data tool for large scale link building becomes negligible.

Here’s what you’ll find in this article:

- Large Scale Link Building Process
- Analyzing URL Link Value
- Downloading Bulk Search Engine Results
- Competitor Backlink Gathering Tools
- Co-Citation Analysis Tools
- Bulk PageRank Checkers

For link builders without access to custom scraping and crawling tools we recommend the following link prospecting process.

Setup…
- Set SEO for FireFox settings to display PageRank, DMOZ status, and Yahoo! Backlinks
- Set a 5 second delay for each setting in SEO for FireFox to prevent banning by the search engines…it also doesn’t hurt to be polite.
- Set your Google search preferences to display 100 results.

Get Top Ranking URLs
1. For each keyword…

a. Search Google
b. Wait until DMOZ, Pagerank, and Y! Backlinks are acquired for each of the top 100 results.
c. Click the “CSV” link at the top of the web page, underneath the Google search box, to export all results.

2. Aggregate each keyword report into a single spreadsheet. (These is your “competitor list”.)
3. Sort the final spreadsheet by PageRank, then by Yahoo! Backlink totals, then by DMOZ status.
4. Manually review URLs, from top to bottom, to determine if the page is from a competitor or complimentary website. Prospect backlinks from the competitor URLs most relevant to your website.

Aggregate Top Backlink Opportunities
1. For each URL identified above, export the backlinks with Yahoo!
2. Aggregate all of the backlink URLs, similar to the CSV files above.
3. Here, you will have duplicates. Remove all duplicates to create a final list of Link Prospect URLs.

Create a Prioritized List of Link Prospects
1. Copy URLs from the Link Prospect URLs list, 100 at a time, and paste them into a bulk PageRank checker.
2. Once the PageRank has been calculated for each URL, copy the URL and PageRank back into the Link Prospect URLs list
3. With the final Link Prospect URLs list, sort it by PageRank.
4. Repeat this process for other link opportunity qualifiers you believe may impact your goals.

Manually Review URLs
1. From top to bottom, go through each URL in the Link Prospect URLs list.
2. On each URL determine if it is a viable link opportunity. If so, denote it in a third column in your spreadsheet.

Note: We usually find that URLs with a PageRank of 3-5 are the ones most open to giving a link back to your website. If you are looking to be effective with as little time invested as possible, we suggest quickly skimming URLs that have a PageRank of 6 or greater, and PageRank of 2 or lower. Spend the most time with PageRank 3-5 URLs.

Key Metrics for Analyzing the Link Value of URLs
When performing link building research, specifically to determine the value of a link (as opposed to relevance), the important thing to look for are URLs that have the qualities and qualifications of a rank-influencing link.

Some of the qualifiers and metrics readily available tools enable you to analyze are:

- Primary Metrics:

o PageRank
o Total Backlinks in Google and Yahoo!
o If the URL is in DMOZ
o Co-Citation Analysis

- Secondary Metrics:

o Domain Age
o Alexa Ranking
o Delicious Submissions
o EDU Links
o GOV Links
o Wikipedia Links
o Yahoo! Directory Links

Downloading Bulk Search Engine Results
The best free tool for downloading search results, hands down, is the SEO for FireFox plugin.

This is a free plugin that integrates with FireFox, a free web browser, and allows you to easily export search results to a CSV file.

The great thing about the SEO for FireFox tool, is that it allows you to also research and collect important information for each URL in the search results.

With it, you can collect the PageRank, Yahoo! Backlinks, EDU Backlinks, GOV backlinks, Alexa Ranking, etc. Very quickly, you can see which top websites you should target to analyze their backlinks.

Competitor Backlink Gathering Tools
One of the greatest opportunities you have for quickly finding large scale link opportunities is to look at what websites link to your competitors.

There are a number of pieces of software that do this exact thing.

Perhaps the best tool for this job is the Yahoo! Search, SiteExplorer tool.

With this tool, simply search “link:domain.com” to get a full list of backlinks. Export the list by clicking on the “TSV” link at the top.

To perform this search, without also showing backlinks from that same domain, choose the “Except from this domain” option from the “Show Inlinks” dropdown.

Co-Citation Analysis Tools: Measuring URL Weight
Co-citation occurs when a single URL links to two URLs. Each of the two URLs has the same co-citation.

This URL explains the co-citation relationship and importance well, saying:

“Bibliographic Co-Citation is a popular similarity measure used to establish a subject similarity between two items. If A and B are both cited by C, they may be said to be related to one another, even though they don’t directly reference each other. If A and B are both cited by many other items, they have a stronger relationship. The more items they are cited by, the stronger their relationship is.”

What this means for you is that when you find a potential link opportunity that links with other strong websites, your link will be similarly valued in a certain respect with those other valuable websites. In other words, you want to be linked to, where other valuable websites/competitors are linked to from as well.

SEOBook’s Hubfinder is a subscription-based co-citation analysis tool.

Bulk PageRank Checkers
PageRank is the 0-10 score that Google gives to a website, based on all websites on the internet. In general, a higher PageRank gives a website the opportunity to rank for more total keywords and more competitive phrases.

Bulk PageRank Checkers:
- http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-lookup/
- http://checkbulkpagerank.com/
- http://www.bulkpagerankchecker.com/page-rank-checker.php

Though Page Rank should not be the sole metric you use for analyzing the value of a page to your link building efforts, it can serve as a good starting point for determining the flow of your link building acquisition.

Though many respected link building experts have compiled comprehensive lists of tactics, few have tackled the writing of an advanced process that includes crawlers, massive amounts of link data, and a systematic approach to link acquisition that delivers enormous numbers of high quality links to your website.

For those ready to begin the slow, methodical work of large scale, crawler-based link building we submit to you the processes and methodologies we’ve developed in our client work.

Please visit our Large Scale, Crawler-Based Link Building Guide today >>

This article provides 9 tips for effective link building that will improve your efficiency and link conversion rates as well as the overall value that your link building efforts produce. At the end of the article you’ll find a checklist of 27 information items we recommend having on hand as you begin your work.

Please contact us today to begin our large scale link building service.

1) Gather All Relevant and Required Information
The scope of information you require for acquisition depends on the scope of your overall project. For the purpose of this article we assume the widest possible scope, including everything from one touch paid directory submissions to multi-touch threaded conversations to ongoing email exchanges with journalists and bloggers. Brainstorming, gathering and organizing required information in a single spreadsheet reduces time consuming and distracting “scrambling” for information when you need it most. Further, you pave the way for ongoing link prospect relationship management. For your convenience we created a list of most frequently used information for link acquisition at the end of this article.

2) Prepare a List of Your Potential Link Offers
Having a ready list of your link offers handy makes conversational and email outreach much faster. Your offers may include things like a list of how-to URLs that answer common community questions, or the contact info and qualifications for your internal experts. Other offers may be as simple as tshirts and bumper stickers. You will find your acquisition emails and threaded conversation acquisition accelerated by your offer list. Please see 12 Powerful Offers that Build Links in Your Link Acquisition Phase for more link offer ideas.

3) Acquire Your One-Touch Links
Acquiring one touch links such as submissions to niche directories, article directories and other such sites is a tedious process, but one that can you can accomplish in a straight forward manner. We recommend working through this stack of qualified link prospects first to create a sense of momentum. Alternately, hand this grouping of link opportunities off to someone you trust and let them work though them so you can move on to the opportunities that require more deliberation, conversation and finesse. Be sure who ever executes on this grouping of link opportunities is well prepared with anchor text information, proper categories, etcetera. See below for more types of information you may need.

4) Making Link Offers in Conversation Threads
When adding your links to conversation threads you must first and foremost be certain that you contribute to the conversation in a meaningful, valuable manner that reflects well on your brand. Your offer in these cases is a thorough understanding of the context of the conversation and a valuable response that includes a link to more information. This could take place in a blog comment thread, on a forum, in a Q/A site, within a social network or wherever else you’ve found that search engines AND communities derive value. Always remember that you’re a guest in their community, and an ambassador for your company. Read each page you’re about to comment on thoroughly and always proceed with the utmost sensitivity to your targeted communities. Because of the impact that conversation participation can have on your reputation we highly advise that you conduct these activities by hand.

5) Making Link Offers in Email
When making link offers via email we recommend doing each and every one of them by hand. Though this drastically increases the amount of time required, it also drastically increases your link conversions. When making each offer by hand you more effectively tie your offer into the specific page you’ve targeted for a link – and you’ll be more sensitive to the agenda of the person you’re contacting. This agenda and offer customization along with clear, direct calls to action and easy to copy and paste html means improved link conversion rates. We’ve also found that shorter is almost always sweeter. Further, when we include phone numbers for contact the few calls we get often open up opportunities far beyond the typical scope of link building.

6) Making Link Offers by Phone/In Person
We recommend making link offers by phone – and sometimes in person – when sites will provide especially high value or you know that an individual is especially influential in his or her space. When making link offers by phone it’s often best to leave links out of the conversation until later – perhaps not even in your first call. Focus on identifying informational needs and demonstrating your organization’s authority and participation within the community.

7) Manage All Link Offer Follow Ups
As your link acquisition efforts proceed you’ll accumulate email and conversation thread responses to your link offers. Stay organized using spreadsheets and dedicated inbox. In the case of your email responses you’ll either look for ways to maximize your new link relationship, inquire about the reasons for their rejection, or deliberate on a response to their counter-offer. For conversation threads, whenever possible subscribe to follow up comments. If this isn’t possible be sure to create a reminder for yourself to follow up on any further questions or conversation that may arise. You may find it necessary to placate community “watch dogs” who aggressively patrol for spam through demonstrations of authority.

8) Track Link Conversion Rates
If you have access to email marketing software then use its tracking functionality when mailing out your individual link offers. This way you can track opens, click throughs and begin to identify what calls to action are most powerful. In some cases you may treat a conversion as an interview with internal executives or an agreement to review your products or services. You should track your conversation thread links as well to see if they remain, and to learn how much traffic and rank lift they provide over time. Learning what makes people link in your community provides you guidance for your future content projects.

9) Grow Relationships with Linkers
The people who have linked to you in the past should be the people you go to first with new linkable content, relevant company news, and even coupons or sales offers in some cases. Be sure to thoroughly document your outreach email addresses and make note of the conversation thread sites that provide the most traffic and valued communications. Even the people who reject your first link offer may accept future offers you make, especially because you’ll have so much more knowledge of what motivates your community to create links. Please read 12 Ways to Maximize Your Link Acquisition Efforts for more ideas.

The link acquisition phase of your large scale link building project requires a profound level of persistence and a strong dose of good customer service skills. Not to mention an agile, strategic editorial mind that can foresee long term link building opportunities but still have near term conversations with influential media and communities. We hope this guide better prepares you for the challenges that large scale link acquisition presents.

A 27 Item Link Acquisition Preparedness Checklist
We compiled the following to get you thinking about what information you need to have readily available when you begin your link acquisition phase. While thorough, our list is not comprehensive, as in most cases there are variations from project to project.

General:

list of your qualified link prospects
list of link offers you’re prepared to make
a link relationship management email address for yourself
list of your site’s URLs you’re building links to
keywords associated with each URL
ideal anchor text + variations for each URL
spreadsheets for tracking many data points

One-Touch:

segment of “one-touch” submission sites
description snippet prepared + variations
ideal categories
physical address of company
credit card billing information
articles/press releases prepared for submission
spreadsheet for recording logins/passwords per site

Multi-Touch Conversation Threads:

segment of conversation thread link prospects
spreadsheet for recording logins/passwords per site
list of how-to URLs that answer common community questions
list of link offers
ready demonstrations of authority for community spam “watchdogs”
working knowledge of company history and key founders

Multi-Touch Email-Based

segment of hubs, resource lists, journalists, bloggers and other authorities
spreadsheet for recording your relationship management
contact email addresses
list of link offers, especially data, white papers and expert access
preparedness to identify needs not expressed in your current range of link offers
contact info + qualifications for internal experts
working knowledge of company history and key founders

Because you used your business goals to qualify your link opportunities, you know that all of your following efforts will meaningfully impact your link building KPIs.

Segmenting your link opportunities impacts your acquisition efforts in two ways:

>> Increased Efficiency
By grouping like opportunities together you can gather necessary resources and information and knock out large portions of your outreach at one time. Further, you ensure that you’re using the right people for each type of acquisition group – the personnel submitting to niche directories may not be suitable for comment campaigns.

>> Increased Link Acquisition Rates
By organizing your link opportunities into meaningful segments you can better target each segment with link offers that will resonate with them. This in turn increases your acquisition rates.

We recommend that you read through these segmentation options and employ 2-4 of them in your initial efforts. You will find overlap – think of your link opportunity segments in terms of a Venn diagram. Concentrate on the opportunities that appear in multiple segments. Once you have qualified out your link opportunity urls you can return to them repeatedly with different target segments in mind.

1) Required Methods of Link Acquisition
Organizing link opportunity lists by required acquisition methods makes it easier for you to orchestrate the acquisition phase. For example, there will be a grouping that requires more personalized attention – several emails, a phone call even. And then there will be niche directory submissions. Sorting your link opportunities by acquisition methods helps to structure your work load and improve your link building efficiencies. Here are some examples of segments based on link acquisition methods:

-Establish phone contact to determine link prospect’s needs
-Request link inclusion on a list, article, blog post, etc
-Make your link offer
-Submit article/press release/blog post
-Add your listing
-Answer a question
-Leave a comment

2) Site (or Page) Creator’s Agenda
Depending on your market you may find a diversity of “agendas” within your link opportunity set. We define agenda as the page creator’s reasons for publishing that particular page. We find that “audience education” is a common agenda that is motivated to link by strong, informational content. By identifying agendas you can better target and align your link offers. For the “audience education” agenda segment within your link opportunity set you could send an email (or leave a comment) that provides further, more thorough or unique resources on the subject. In some markets you’ll find that audience education is still too broad and further segmentation could provide improved link acquisition rates. Here are some agenda-based questions that will help you determine your segments.

-Why did they publish this page?
-Why do they have a website?
-What are their online goals?
-Do they get revenue from ads?
-What are their areas of interest and expertise?
-What is their stance on your industry’s controversies?
-What is the tone of comments and commentary in their onsite conversation?

3) Your Link Offer
We prefer making “link offers” to making “link requests.” The difference may seem subtle, but when you make an offer you clearly communicate the value you have to the publisher. In a link request you put the onus of qualification on the site owner. We recommend that your link offer align with website/webpage publisher agendas. While strategically aligning agendas and offers is not always necessary for success, establishing and clearly communicating your link offers is. We wrote more extensively about link offers in 12 Powerful Offers that Build Links in Your Link Acquisition Phase:

-Expertise or data
-Tshirts, stickers, other freebies and offers
-Comprehensiveness
-Expert recognition of their contributions
-Provide mention or distribution on your platform
-Remarkable content that entertains or educates

4) Your Site’s Target URLs and Target Keywords
Often it makes sense to segment your link opportunities according to the URLs on your site you have selected for ranking increase for specific keywords. Ideally you have conducted usability testing and optimized conversion rates for these pages already. If you’re building links to thousands of potential urls on your site consider selecting the pages with the highest conversion rates and segment your link opportunities that way.

-Site pages with high conversion rates
-Site pages optimized for your target keywords

5) Page/Site Type
The type of page – or site the page is on – often dictates how you pursue the link. If your research determines that social bookmarking links are indeed influential for your target search phrases then you can organize a portion of your acquisition phase to include time for profile creation and bookmarker outreach. If you find both niche media journalists and bloggers you may find that offers of executive access resonate more powerfully with journalists while resource urls get bloggers linking.

-Q/A site
-Niche forum
-Social networking site
-News story
-Directory
-Resource list
-Blog post
-Niche media story

6) Ease/Rapidity of Link Acquisition
Sometimes on client link building projects – or projects handed down by management – it’s important to show link acquisition results quickly. Sometimes circumstances outside of your control dictate an immediate need for links. Creating a segment of link opportunities that show signs of quick link conversion enables you to achieve results even as you conduct your longer cycle, relationship-centric link acquisition efforts.

-How long will it take to get the link?
-Do you get to press the publish button?
-How likely are they to link?
-Is contact information easy to find?
-Who in your organization needs to be involved?
-Can you up the ante on your link offer?
-How many emails/phone calls are likely to be necessary?
-Who do you know at the organization?
-How long have you been in the industry?
-How well branded are you in the space?
-How seo/link building-averse is this segment?

7) Magnitude of Search Rank Influence
Impact on search rank is one critical way to segment your link opportunities. Links can bring targeted, converting traffic though, and link outreach can serve as the first step in a longer term relationship with purchase influencers in your market. Overly fixating on search ranking can detract from other benefits to link building – however in large scale link building efforts you must capitalize on the easily quantified impact that qualified link opportunities can have on your rankings.

-High, medium, low potential impact on rankings
-Level of contextual relevance to target keywords

8) Needs Expressed/Benefits Sought on Page
In comment threads, niche forums and Q/A sites you’ll often find needs clearly expressed, and benefits sought. These link opportunities also provide an opportunity to offer links to your products, services or informational resources. If there’s a great deal of need/pain expressed in forums, comment threads and Q/A sites then you may end up segmenting these groupings further to align with specific products, services or info resources you can offer links to.

-Specific pain points or problems described
-Requests for help, ideas or solutions
-Typically in blog posts, Q/A sites and news stories

9) Geographic/Demographic Reach
In certain cases you might want to target certain geographic regions or demographics with different links or different approaches… or even different languages. This type of segmentation enables you to structure your approach for greater efficiency and conversion.

-Where is the qualified target from geographically
-What geographic region reads them primarily
-Demographic grouping
-Language/s used on page

10) Level of Page Creator’s Purchase Influence
Though indicators of purchase influence exist in the data set, identifying and quantifying purchase influence is far more art than science. Building relationships with purchase influencers takes time and resources. If your link opportunity data set includes people who are likely purchase influencers then we highly recommend you develop an outreach strategy built entirely around asking the question: “how can my organization aid your agenda?”

-High, medium or low influence on organizational purchase decisions
-People who influence purchases at specific organizations
-People/bloggers who work at prospect organizations
-Type of organization they influence: Fortune 500 vs. SMBs

Sorting your link opportunities into segments increases the efficiency and conversion rates of your large scale link building efforts. Further, link opportunity segmentation paves the way for identifying content opportunities that these segments will link to in greater numbers.