Searching the Engines for High-Quality Links
SECTION V
Using Search Modifiers
Use Tools
Use Tools
Now that you understand the importance of attracting quality links, you’re almost certainly wondering exactly how you’re supposed to find them. Fear not, dear reader. In this section we’ll look at how to identify quality links for acquisition (the process of actually getting those links is covered later on).
The most basic way to find valuable sites is to simply run searches on the major engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask) for the keywords/phrases you’re targeting. The top 50-100 results obviously have some pull when it comes to those terms, making them good candidates for link acquisition. There are, however, many more targeted options for identifying solid links.
Using Search Modifiers:
All of the search engines allow you to perform advanced searches to identify pages where your keywords appear in page elements such as page title, anchor text, URL or body text. Using Google (although you should try these searches at all four major engines), let’s look at how the search results narrow for advanced queries for the term ‘agents of value’:
*Results numbers are only estimates and generally only useful for purposes of comparison.Using these advanced search modifiers will progressively narrow down the results for your keyword searches, usually identifying pages that are more and more closely related to your topic. However, as the results narrow, the number of truly valuable pages also thins out (i.e. the top one percent of 5,410,000 is 54,100 pages, but the top one percent of 2,410 is only 24 pages). The top 30-50 results in both basic and advanced query searches are usually strong link acquisition targets.
Google results for the search ‘allintitle: "agents of value”’:
Use Tools:
There are a few tools available that speed the link research process. When you have many search phrases you want to target, these tools can save considerable time and effort. They also include links to searches for directories, blogs and sites requesting submissions related to your keywords. We’ll talk more about these kinds of links later, but it’s nice to know you can get the resources from these tools.
a. SoloSEO’s Link Search Tool (soloseo.com/tools/linksearch.html) provides an extensive list of links out to valuable advanced Google queries based on your search terms.
b. We Build Pages’ Search Combination Tool (www.webuildpages.com/search/) provides a more concise list of advanced queries, but allows you to enter multiple keywords at a time and returns results from Google, Yahoo! and MSN.
c. The SEOmoz Page Strength Tool (www.seomoz.org/tools/page-strength.php) will give you an idea of how popular a page is and, thus, how valuable a link from that page will be. Any link from a page with Page Strength over 1.5 is typically worthwhile.
d. Aaron Wall’s SEO Book Tools Page (tools.seobook.com) has a rich set of tools for link research and beyond.
By using these tools and the search methods outlined above, you can begin to compile a list of sites and pages you may want to try and get links from. In order to further refine this list, you’ll also want to know which links are helping your chief competitors rank well for your targeted keywords.
a. SoloSEO’s Link Search Tool (soloseo.com/tools/linksearch.html) provides an extensive list of links out to valuable advanced Google queries based on your search terms.
b. We Build Pages’ Search Combination Tool (www.webuildpages.com/search/) provides a more concise list of advanced queries, but allows you to enter multiple keywords at a time and returns results from Google, Yahoo! and MSN.
c. The SEOmoz Page Strength Tool (www.seomoz.org/tools/page-strength.php) will give you an idea of how popular a page is and, thus, how valuable a link from that page will be. Any link from a page with Page Strength over 1.5 is typically worthwhile.
d. Aaron Wall’s SEO Book Tools Page (tools.seobook.com) has a rich set of tools for link research and beyond.
By using these tools and the search methods outlined above, you can begin to compile a list of sites and pages you may want to try and get links from. In order to further refine this list, you’ll also want to know which links are helping your chief competitors rank well for your targeted keywords.
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