Where do you find your link opportunities?

[DarrenHaye]

So my friends please share exactly how you use social networking to generate linking opportunities...

I have got some good links from fashion bloggers for my retail site using twitter.

I just added loads of fashion/beauty bloggers and then replied to tweets, started conversations and built up some friendly relationships

Obviously people are much more likely to do you a favour if you are on a friendly basis, much more than if your a stranger in a cold email anyway.

Apart from normal stuff like buying advertising space, a couple of bloggers have given me links in the last couple of weeks for making them new banners (I'm not bad on photoshop and I quite enjoy being creative)

I also did another special favour for a pretty popular blogger that I'm not going to go into (not like that ;P) but I've got a very good free advertisement space for next month out of it that would of been pretty expensive otherwise.

So I guess you just have to find people, be friendly, start conversations and try and find an angle where you can do them a favour/or simply get them interested and on your site in the first place if your content is that good.

[Dr.Marie]

In addition we broke up our 3,600 term glossary into a database allowing us to create individual pages for individual terms that are also created on the fly. The old text content was mostly retained with new graphics and navigation.

I'm having trouble following what you did there. Any chance you could explain this more?

Thanks! I really appreciate you taking the time to share this.

[SEO_AM]

I'm having trouble following what you did there. Any chance you could explain this more?

Thanks! I really appreciate you taking the time to share this.

When there is a query for a term from within our glossary, we pick the term and definition from our database and create a page from a template for all definitions. Within that template we have Adsense ads at the top, side and bottom that is based upon the Adsense determined keywords within the inserted definition. This allowed us to have 3,600 pages AND students starting Liking and using other social media buttons on the individual terms. For example, in the "S" section we used to have one page indexed with about 400 terms and definitions. Now, from a database approach, we have 400 pages indexed with one definition each.

[NathanielB]

this is only half the job. What do you do with your fancy lists after the fact? Generic email spam? Phone calls? How do you find the right person to contact? What success rate do you have at getting these links? My guess is very very slim chances. fact?

Your quite right, finding the competitor links is only half the job, and learning about how to do competitor research and what to do with those links is a lot of information to post in a thread like this so I suggest people do some research on it if they want to use it as a link building tactic!

I never do what people call "generic email spam" I have a number of emails setup to send to different types of sites (all of which are personalised before I send them out, one at a time!). Again this is something people need to play with and test to see what works best for them, but remembering to always:
make the email personal,
let them know you think their site is great,
point out what you like about their site (specific parts of the site that stand out and are original),
sell them the fact that linking to you will benefit them,
and add any more good points about the link that would help.

You could add more to that little list, but thats the generic starting point for the emails I would tend to send out to people when asking for a link or "recommending" a page that would be a good resource for their visitors, but thats a whole new email layout when it comes to a "recommended" link

For finding the contact info, most sites tend to have good contact pages which tell you who to contact, but failing that you can:
A. Check if they have a contact on a links page (most sites have an email to contact if they have a link exchange page so check it first)
B. Ask them who you would need to contact either via phone or live chat if they have it.
C. If both of those fail, try a google search for the contact details
D. If all else fails, try an email to webmaster@

The success rate, depends on a number of factors and it has worked out a lot better for some clients then others for me... but in general I get an email back from most people I contact, most of which want to talk more about what we can offer them, some ask about guest blogging for them and others simply email to let me know they have placed the link live.

A lot of people will ask for links back, but to combat this you need to offer something in return for the link in the first email you send out. This can be anything you want, but make SURE that its something relevant for that site and something they will be interested in as simply offering junk will most likely result in your email hitting the spam box like so many others asking for a link!

[gazzahk]

Some more great ideas…. Thank you all that have contributed.

Please other members share your secrets… Tell us what has worked for you!

Here are a few more things I have read about or done myself that have lead to linking opportunities…

A very good general suggestion I got from fathom was about identifying gaps in the market of knowledge. A basic way to do this can be by using your own analytics data. See if you are coming up for longtails for things that are not really on your site. Ask yourself why are people visiting your site for stuff you do not have? Maybe it is because they cannot find that information elsewhere and are searching. This could be a great opportunity to create a piece of link bait specifically catering for those type of search phrases. If you then become the source of information on that topic links could start to flow to that piece of data.

Suggest replacement links… I know this has worked with people seeking a link on my site. Find a site that is no longer in existence that used to have similar stuff to the resources you have on your site (easy way to do this is visit pages of well categorized links related to your industry and click each one). Check the people that still link to the non existing stuff/parked web page. Send them a nice email titled something like “dead link” and let them know that resource is no longer there that they link to. Suggest your resource as a replacement for the missing information. Create the resource first if you have to (Once again wayback machine can be used here to see what they were linking to in first place).

Come on my friends I know that almost everyone reading this has some great ideas for finding linking opportunities please share them with us.

Thank you all

[Dr.Marie]

A very good general suggestion I got from fathom was about identifying gaps in the market of knowledge. A basic way to do this can be by using your own analytics data. See if you are coming up for longtails for things that are not really on your site. Ask yourself why are people visiting your site for stuff you do not have? Maybe it is because they cannot find that information elsewhere and are searching. This could be a great opportunity to create a piece of link bait specifically catering for those type of search phrases. If you then become the source of information on that topic links could start to flow to that piece of data.

This is great. Something like this happened to me yesterday. I wrote an article about a particular topic. My facebook fans started to discuss it and a few of them mentioned a particular product. I had vaguely heard of the product but wanted to research it. What I found was that there really are no good sites discussing this product, but lots of people asking questions about it. So, guess what I'm going to write about next?

Which brings me to another idea. If you have a facebook page, encourage your fans to ask questions. At first I thought it was a waste to answer questions on facebook as the content is not stored on my site. However, what I do is see if I have the answer somewhere on my site. If I don't, I create a page that answers their question and then I refer them to that page for their answer. Some of these pages have attracted natural links.

[seomonkeymanocp]

Can we please add +1, facebook and tweet buttons to each thread. For posts like these we need to be able to spread the word which would mean even more SEOs may even join the forum.

[Lb1878]

A very good general suggestion I got from fathom was about identifying gaps in the market of knowledge. A basic way to do this can be by using your own analytics data. See if you are coming up for longtails for things that are not really on your site. Ask yourself why are people visiting your site for stuff you do not have? Maybe it is because they cannot find that information elsewhere and are searching. This could be a great opportunity to create a piece of link bait specifically catering for those type of search phrases. If you then become the source of information on that topic links could start to flow to that piece of data.

Suggest replacement links… I know this has worked with people seeking a link on my site. Find a site that is no longer in existence that used to have similar stuff to the resources you have on your site (easy way to do this is visit pages of well categorized links related to your industry and click each one). Check the people that still link to the non existing stuff/parked web page. Send them a nice email titled something like “dead link” and let them know that resource is no longer there that they link to. Suggest your resource as a replacement for the missing information. Create the resource first if you have to (Once again wayback machine can be used here to see what they were linking to in first place).

Two great nuggets of information here. I keep coming back to these. Thanks for sharing this.

Maybe the former can be added to the Link Bait thread? Damn, I am enjoying this thread!

[DarrenHaye]

I've had what I think will be a good idea.

I have an online boutique and I've been In discussions with a stylist from a popular reality tv show, I've sent her a few dresses for the stars of the show to wear, she asked if I wanted them back after because the girls would only wear them once.. and my first thought was no they can keep them, but then I had an Idea.

I'm going to get the dresses back after the stars on the show wear them because I'm going to auction them off on my site for charity. Some of the girls on the show have 100k+ twitter followers and if a few of them tweet about the charity auction on my site I should get a massive spike in visitors and exposure.

I guess it comes back to charity again.. people will link to a good cause no problem + your helping others whilst helping yourself.

[sanduskyseo]

A couple really good ways are to develop (or pay someone to) a website plugin and give it away for free (but keeping a link to your site in it). Another really good one is to get a WordPress theme developed with a "Theme by [your site]" backlink at the bottom. These techniques can lead to hundreds and thousands of links if done properly.

[jsteele823]

Cute baby contests seem to be doing great for some companies - you would just have to be in an appropriate market, and have a large social following in order to make it work.

Not to mention cute babies. Nobody likes ugly babies, unless they're so ugly they're funny. In that case, you'd be even better off.

[scraff]

Join article sites like squidoo (hubpages has NOFOLLOW, booo) and write some useful articles. You can add links just fine.

[Peter Davis]

Link building is an important phase of marketing and optimizing a website, to make it prominent on search engine result pages.
Basically there are six ways to find link opportunities...
1. Advanced Search Queries


2. Studying your competitors’ links and relationships


3. Web Directories

4. Twitter Search


5. Google Alerts

6. Link search through related foreign websites

Search about these ways you will get your answer accurately.....

[NathanielB]

On the note of contests, facebook is the ideal place to hold them!

Companies like Razer (a gaming component company), have added competitions to their facebook pages and site where you have to first like the facebook page, register for the competition on their main site where you do the question air or what ever is required, and then head back to facebook to post some code, comment or something as this also helps to grow a healthy facebook page.

To gain more traffic and even links to your main site you could adding something like "you can find the answers by looking around the site", is a great way to keep people on your site for longer and maybe gain more links as people link to the page where info and hits are hidden in the content.

[eddyf]

I'm late to the party here, but I got a major link doing this:

I make and sell custom-made widgets. I found a very popular site that is about a very specific type of themed design. I proposed to the site owner that they start an on-line contest to design the best "theme" and I would incorporate the winning design into my product and give it to the winner. I got a nice permanent high PR link with text & photos, and lots of visitors, just for giving away about $250 worth of product (my real factory cost was only $60).

Ed