Over the past couple of weeks we’ve already gone over content creation and did keyword research to help target markets that will garner traffic for your site. This week we’ll be focusing on doing some link analysis to see where your site could benefit the most in the linking department. Links are basically a vote of confidence that the search engine’s look for when crawling your site. The weight of a link is determined by several different factors. The authority of the linking page and domain is one, which is like getting the approval by the mayor of your town over your friends. The mayor may only be one person (one link), but has more authority then all of your friends (many links).
There are multiple ways to determine the authority of a site, but many times you can use common sense before delving further. If it is a highly trafficked site with great content that aligns with your message or product getting a link from the site would be beneficial
Additionally, placement of links on a page determines the importance, or how much link juice you will receive from the link. Again if the Mayor sent you a letter with a vote of approval pales in comparison to him presenting you the key to the city, this is the same thing for where links are placed. Are they directly in the body of an article surrounded by relevant keyword rich content, or are they near the bottom of the page off to the right? Regardless linking is an important aspect of helping your website rise to the top of the SERP’s. Below I’ll highlight several ways to do some initial link analysis and set up a tentative strategy.
Utilize your keywords:
Links should be directed towards relevant material so by querying some keywords with the right command can help you see who is linking to the top ranking sites in your field. Simply think of several keyword phrases you already aggregated for the content of your site in step one. Then enter the correct command prompts in the search engine of your choice. Google’s prompt would look like this:
[(kw) intitle:”round up”] – helps find notable linkers
[(kw) intitle: “blog list”] – finds relevant bloggers centered toward your content
After poking around a little you’ll be able to generate a list of potential sites that could be beneficial if they linked to you. Since you have already set up great content that revolves around the keywords we setup in step one, it shouldn’t be hard to get some great links. I think I should point out that the way to obtain links can be done in a number of ways.
You could directly email the webmaster with a very nice message talking about the relevance of your website and how it might be beneficial for the webmaster to link to your site, guest blogging is a great way, directly talking to a potential linker at conferences, and at lower ends leaving comments in blog areas (although these are often nofollowed, they can help to foster a relationship first). Before you set your sights on certain linkers, following the steps below will help you narrow your link dream list down.
Test in multiple search engines and Use tools.
Just like you wouldn’t do testing for a new website in one browser, you shouldn’t do SEO in just one search engine. Additionally I suggest using tools like Yahoo Site Explorer or Open Site Explorer to extract some really deep and interesting data from your competitor’s websites. If you are new to doing any form of link building I suggest looking at any guides for a tool before you use it. By using a tool, like OSE, you will be able to pull out additional linkers that you may have missed with your link building queries.
Break into multiple Linking Lists:
You should now have a decent list of link opportunities. Breaking this list down into levels of importance can help you determine what level you can afford to go after in your link building strategy. You already have relevant content, but to get the highest level of links takes time and money to incorporate even greater content and to allow a person to actively pursue links. After breaking your large list down into subsets of high, medium, and low you can decide how much funding you want to pursue and then focus on the list of your choosing. Keep in mind that more then three subsets can be made and you could choose to pursue multiple subsets – say for instance a high level and low level respectively.
Set up a new Link Building Strategy:
You have now decided which list(s) you’ll be focusing on and now is the time to not only match your competitor’s content, but to surpass it. By using all the steps beforehand you should now have keyword specific content and an idea of what links you’ll be going after. Now the brainstorming comes into effect of how to truly create one of a kind content that your traffic and linkers want to swarm towards. This, ultimately, will depend on a number of factors and will take a lot of brainstorming and a dedicated budget. Still with the groundwork laid out, it shouldn’t be too hard to get several departments together to create something truly unique.
