Discover the Linking Secrets of Your Top Competitors
In the SEO world where competition continues to increase, it’s a boon when you know your top competitor’s formula for success. Of course there are no SEO secrets but content and links, but nothing is sweeter than finding out who links to your most powerful competitor!
You could be creating good content and building links for your site already, but there are still a few tricks you can do without crossing the line into blackhat SEO. Here are some ways to take you a notch higher in your link building:
1. Aside from doing a Google/Yahoo search for linkdomain:enemy’s-domain.com, you can also perform a check for high value links. These are .edu and .org sites that point to your competitor’s domain. This technique works in MSN and Yahoo for now.
Searchengineland shares the following queries:
- linkdomain:domain-to-check.com site:.edu “resource”
- linkdomain:domain-to-check.com site:.edu “directory”
- linkdomain:domain-to-check.com site:.edu “bookmarks”
- linkdomain:domain-to-check.com site:.edu “links”
- linkdomain:domain-to-check.com site:.edu “favorite”
2. Once you see who’s linking to whom, fill up your list of links to get, from the high-value ones to the least powerful ones.
Tip: Use these criteria in categorizing links: PR of domain, number of outgoing links, and nature of links: are they “nofollow” or “dofollow” (this is especially valuable when you check for bookmarking sites).
3. Research the contact person in charge of linking schemes. It is very crucial you go to the right guy unless you want your request to go down the drain immediately. Craft a convincing email stating why you want their links. Tell them you share the same objective in helping whatever industry you are both in.
4. SEO experts claim a nice phone call, or a meet up in the offline world, is really worth it. If a link is truly valuable, it pays to go the extra mile.
5. Once you and your competitor are on the same level of link authority, it’s time for you to continuously improve how you SEO your site. Regularly post valuable content for your readers while expanding your keyword targets. And of course, progressively build your links.
12 comments
Oooh, sneaky white hat SEO. Luv it!
Cool resource. Thanks for the tip Terry.
I like “copycat” marketing strategies where you see where competitors are being successful and copy it.
Mark McCullaghs last blog post..Save Time Blogging With New Content Creation Software
Where do you recommend submitting articles though? I have a blogsite where I’ve usually posted mine….but I was wondering if there was somewhere that will get more exposure.
very nice! this is going to save you loads of time and money… and what is even better is youd be able to get quality links…
Great practical tips. Taking the time to contact bloggers and other webmasters can certainly be time consuming, but those links are valuable and can pay off big time
Jamey Bridgess last blog post..FREE Contact form for Blogger
we also can use this to avoid link from our page.
linkdomain:competitor-domain.com -site:competitor-domain.com -site:www.competitor-domain.com site:.edu
and site:.edu can be change to .com, .net or else.
IMFreakz Busby SEOs last blog post..SEO as a Career ?
i never thought of it that way - good stuff, ill have to look into it
@Tiny Tiger: Personally, I get traffic out of ezine article submissions. There are other article sites there too that can offer good links and visibility for you.
Eric wrote about some tips on SEO Article submission here.
Romela de Leons last blog post..How to Optimize Pages for better Visibility
@IMFreakz Busby SEO: yes you can vary the domain extensions when checking up links. Thank you for your added tips.
Romela de Leons last blog post..How to Optimize Pages for better Visibility
Great tip, its a great way to learn how the other guys are doing so well. Is this why google’s backlink (link:example.com) feature is”broken”?
great tips, is posible to know how long have those incoming links pointing to my competitors?
Regards
Good tips - especially so because the links are from authority sources.
Thanks!
Leave a Comment