Link Building

Made Simple
Wordtracker’s Free Link Building Guide

Ken McGaffin

www.wordtracker.com
Contents
Introduction  4

Chapter 1: Plan your link building strategy  7

Chapter 2: Measuring your success  17

Chapter 3: What’s the current situation  21

Chapter 4: Networking and link prospecting  42

Chapter 5: Create the right content  73

Chapter 6: Promote!  84

Special Offer 92

Link Building Made Simple | 2

The Wordtracker Academy
Free articles, case studies, tips and tricks to help you grow your online business through effective
keyword research, pay per click advertising and search engine optimization (SEO).

We’ve commissioned some of the world’s best online marketing and SEO professionals to be your
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Need help with your online marketing?

We’re here to help, so if you’ve any questions about this book or your search marketing strategy, we’re
happy to answer your questions. Just email [email protected]

Link Building Made Simple | 3

Introduction

Introduction

The benefits of link building

Links bring your business multiple benefits that will repay your investment many times over.

Quality links boost your search engine rankings – so that you get more traffic and sales.
The higher you appear in search engine results pages, the more traffic you’ll get and the bigger
response you’ll get to all your marketing initiatives.

Quality links bring you direct visits to your site – because people click on links to arrive at
your site so again you get more traffic and sales. Even better, if they’ve just been reading about
you on an external site, they’ll already have a positive impression of what you have to offer.

Quality links establish you as a leader – no matter what market you’re in, there’s an informal
community of websites that your potential customers will use. When they regularly see links to
your site, they’ll think of you as a leader in your market.

Quality links attract more quality links – once you’re seen as a leader other sites will want to
talk about you, comment on your products and link to you - without you having to ask!

Quality links keep on working – unlike advertising, links usually stay in place and continue to
bring you traffic and sales for years into the future.

Quality links connect you with people – if someone has taken the time to link to you, then
they’re interested in what you do. That gives you tremendous opportunities for getting to know
the people behind the sites that link to you, and building relationships for mutual benefit.

Getting quality links to your site is one of the most productive marketing strategies you can use.

Google and the power of links

It’s hard to believe it today, but Google was once a little known start-up arriving on an already
crowded search engine scene.

But the impact Google made was immediate - because they consistently delivered better
results than the established search engines.

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Introduction

And they delivered better results because they realized the quality and structure of links
pointing to a page could give an objective view of its real worth. So pages that had good links
would be inherently more valuable than pages that did not.

Google now dominates the search engine market and to be successful online, you simply must
be successful on Google. And that means putting the power of links to work for your website.

Links and your site

No matter what size your business, no matter what sector you’re in, no matter whether you’re
a start-up or a well established business, link building can play a central role in your success
online.

Getting quality links does take time and effort. But everything that’s worthwhile in business
takes time and effort – link building is no different.

This book will take the mystery out of link building and will guide your efforts so that you get
benefits as early as possible.

We’ll show you how to find quality link prospects, how to approach sites asking for links, how
to create content that is going to attract links, how to promote your website through links and
how to engage with your online community.

The link building process

In this e-book, we’re going to give you the process you need. We’ll show you each of the seven
essential steps:

• Strategy – how to set realistic objectives and plan the work that you need to do

• Management and metrics – how you need to organize yourself and measure your
progress

• Networking and prospect hunting – how to find link prospects, collect contact
details and build relationships

• Content creation – it’s the content that you create that will bring you your most
valuable links - we show you the content you must have

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Introduction

• Promotion – making link requests, using social media and online PR

• Monitoring – what and how to monitor and report on your progress

• Building on your success – link building never stops and this e-book tells you how to
use your success as a launch pad for even more links

And that is what is at the heart of this e-book – a process where you can research, manage and
monitor your link building efforts. A process where your success is almost guaranteed, if you
put in the work required.

If you have a process and stick at it:

• You have a clear path to follow and you know exactly what you should be doing.
• You can use the same process time and time again over multiple projects.
• You can educate others in your team to follow the same process.
• You can scale your efforts.
• You’ll get better and better at implementing the process as your confidence grows.
• You’ll add your own ideas and innovations to the process to make it uniquely yours.

The Link Builder tool

The concepts, methodologies and examples we’ll be using in this book are universal to link
building. We’ve used them over the last decade to make Wordtracker one of the most popular
and well-linked sites in our market.

Follow the logic and the process and you too will succeed. To help you, we’ve taken our many
years’ experience and created the Link Builder tool.

You’ll learn a lot about link building from this free e-book. But you’ll learn even more with a
free trial of the tool, available here: www.wordtracker.com/linkbuilder

Sign up today and we’ll send you $155 of link building goodies - yours to keep.

Link Building Made Simple | 6

Plan your link
building strategy

Chapter 1
Chapter 1 | Plan your link building strategy

Be specific about what you want to achieve

The more specific you are about what you want to achieve, the easier it will be to reach your
goal.

Your objectives could be about:

• Increasing direct sales from your site

• Building links to improve your SEO

• Increasing your presence on specific authority sites within your market

• Making more people aware of your brand name

• Improving your search rankings for anyone searching on your brand name

Which of these you choose depends on your own business situation.

Take some time now to think about what your objectives really are. Talk it over with your
partners, your staff or other website owners.

Even having this discussion can help clarify your approach to link building and what your
priorities should be.

Many people who start link building don’t succeed.

Why? Well, because link building takes time and effort and if you underestimate that you may
become disillusioned and give up.

Set your expectations too high, too early and you will fail.

So start cautiously and give yourself a chance to succeed. For example, your objective might
be:

“to publish six guest posts on external sites within the next two months”

Once you’ve reached your objective, set another higher one and stretch yourself a little bit
more.

Setting the right expectations – ‘defining your objectives’ in management speak – at an early
stage sets you up to succeed.

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Chapter 1 | Plan your link building strategy

An objective has three essential ingredients:

• It must be measurable – if you don’t know how to measure it at the start, how will you
know that you’ve succeeded? (In the example above, I’ll know I’ve succeeded when I’ve
got six external posts).

• It must have a target date – things can really drift if you let them. But there’s nothing
so motivating as setting yourself a deadline – a target date by which you achieve your
objective. (I’ve said “in the next two months” - that’s clear).

• It must be realistic – you must feel that you really can achieve your objective. (Do you
have the time and the ability to write six good posts in that time?)

Only you can answer these questions so think about them, draft some objectives then sleep
on them overnight.

It’s worth spending the time doing this honestly. The resulting clarity will mean that your link
building efforts have a much higher chance of success.

And once you’ve done that you must do something really important:

“Write your objectives down and paste them up on the office wall”

The funny thing about people is that once we set ourselves a goal, we have a natural, stubborn
tendency to stick at it. But whatever your goal, the important thing is that you set it and that you
write it down.

When you reach your goal, set another and write that down too!

So we’ve looked at a modest objective: “to publish six guest posts on external sites within the
next two months”.

But very quickly we realize that our objective does not go far enough.

What external sites do you want to get links from?

And here we can introduce the idea of relevance, so that it’s not just external sites but:

“to publish six guest posts on relevant external sites within the next two months”.

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Chapter 1 | Plan your link building strategy

So, if we make handmade chocolates, we’ll want links from relevant chocolate sites.

If we sell mountain bikes, we’ll want links from relevant mountain bike sites.

Yes, of course we will, but that too is limited.

I think that many link builders can be too blinkered in their view of what is relevant. As a result
they miss out on some very useful links.

You need to think about link building in a creative way.

So ‘handmade chocolates’ are not just relevant to sites about chocolate, but to gourmet foods,
artisan product, quality gifts, delicatessens and so on ...

And ‘mountain bikes’ are not just relevant to sites about mountain bikes, but to all types of bike,
to outdoor activities, tourist destinations, fitness sites and so on ...

We’ve got to take time to think about what market segments are relevant.

Which market segments are relevant?

A ‘market segment’ is a clearly definable segment of a large overall market. If you understand
which market segments are relevant to your site, then you’ll uncover link prospects that you
might not initially have thought of.

And you’ll be able to customize your approaches to each segment - which of course, increases
your changes of success.

I’ll take a couple of examples to illustrate the point.

Let’s look at www.dna-worldwide.com who offer both commercial and individual DNA tests.
The home page on the following page gives a good indication of the sectors that are important:

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Chapter 1 | Plan your link building strategy

As you can see, DNA-Worldwide are going to be interested in market segments such as sites
concerned with paternity, ancestry sites, legal sites and so on. And they’ll want links from them
all.

So of all these, where do they start their link building?

The answer must be the sector that brings them the most business at the moment. So if the
Ancestry industry accounts for say 50% of their business, then they should concentrate on link
building to that sector first.

Let’s look at another example.

SurveyMonkey.com is the market leader in online survey software, so you might think that the
places they should look for links are from the market research segment.

But that would fail to discover many legitimate link prospects.

As you can see, DNA-Worldwide are going to be interested in market segments such as sites
concerned with paternity, ancestry sites, legal sites and so on. And they’ll want links from them
all.

So of all these, where do they start their link building?

The answer must be the sector that brings them the most business at the moment. So if the
Ancestry industry accounts for say 50% of their business, then they should concentrate on link
building to that sector first.

Let’s look at another example.

SurveyMonkey.com is the market leader in online survey software, so you might think that the
places they should look for links are from the market research segment.

But that would fail to discover many legitimate link prospects.

Indeed, SurveyMonkey.com as DIY survey software could be seen as a threat to the traditional
market research industry and established sites within the segment may not be keen to
undermine leading players by linking to SurveyMonkey.com.

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Chapter 1 | Plan your link building strategy

Instead of chasing links from the market research industry, SurveyMonkey.com should be
looking to the market segments that it serves. And should be seeking to get links from authority
sites within each market segment who influence what others do.

So in business, links from magazines who advise businesses would be useful:

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Chapter 1 | Plan your link building strategy

In education, links from teachers who use technology and advise others on how to use
technology would be useful:

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Chapter 1 | Plan your link building strategy

And in the software industry, magazines who cover subjects such as usability testing are going
to be valuable:

These links demonstrate the variety of sites that could be potential link prospects for
SurveyMonkey.com. (These link examples were all found using the Link Builder tool - more of
that later.)

Brainstorm market segments

One useful exercise is to brainstorm the market segments relevant to your website. This
diagram shows the market segments that should be relevant to SurveyMonkey.com:

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Chapter 1 | Plan your link building strategy

It really is important that you spend time exploring such relevant market segments for your
own site. Once you’ve done that, prioritize them and start your link building with the most
important segment.

Choose your target keywords

Search engine traffic can bring significant numbers of potential customers to your site. However,
such traffic will not happen by accident - you’ve got to optimize your content to attract search
traffic.

Search engines match results pages to the words people use when they search - keywords. So
if you don’t use the keywords people use to search, then your site won’t appear in the results -
and you won’t get the search traffic.

However, you can never guess your best keywords – you’ve got to do the research.

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Chapter 1 | Plan your link building strategy

If you’ve already got a website, check which keywords are bringing you traffic at the moment.

If you’re just starting out, try out the free Keywords tool at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.
com.

You can learn more about keyword research by viewing Wordtracker’s free guide: Keyword
Basics.

To be successful for your target keywords, you’ll need links from relevant external sites - and
you need to include keywords in the anchor text wherever you can.

The obvious place to start is with your internal links - the menu items, categories and other
internal links on your site that you have complete control over.

So if you supply mountain bikes, using a menu item such as ‘new products’ is wasteful.
Consider something like ‘New mountain bikes ranges’ because the anchor text contains the
keyword mountain bikes. You’ll learn more about this in Chapter 4.

Planning and preparation are everything

If you just jump into link building without careful thought you’re going to miss many
opportunities and make a mess of those that you do find.

If you’ve thought about and worked through everything in this chapter, you’re already well
ahead of the competition.

Let’s move on to the next chapter where we’ll look at the management and metrics you need
to have.

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Measuring your success

Chapter 2
Chapter 2 | Measuring your success

It is of course important to measure the success of your link building campaigns.

Not only so that you can measure your return on investment but also that you can learn what
works and what doesn’t work for your website in your particular market.

It is therefore important that you set up mechanisms to measure what happens before you
start your link building.

Google Analytics will give you valuable information and the Link Builder tool can give you
powerful insights into how your individual campaigns have performed.

Here are the most important metrics you should have in place:

Overall traffic coming to your website

You link building campaigns will lead to an overall increase in the number of people visiting
your website and you will be able to measure this using a standard analytics package such as
Google Analytics.

Referrer traffic coming to your website

Have the new links that you generated led to an increase in the number of people who have
reached your site by clicking on a link from an external site?

What goals have you achieved?

Has the increased traffic that your link building campaigns generated led to an increase in
sales or an increase in achieving another goal, for example sign-ups for your newsletter?

Search engine rankings for your important keywords

Over time, you’ll see an increase in your search engine rankings for your important keywords.
Have you managed to influence the anchor text that external sites use to link to your website?

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Chapter 2 | Measuring your success

How many targeted sites linked to you?

Of the specific prospects that you targeted in your campaigns, how many of them decided to
link to you?

How many non-targeted sites linked to you?

One of the side effects of a well-managed link building campaign is that the buzz generated
will lead to other sites linking to you who you have not directly targeted. However, such links
are as a direct result of your link building activity and therefore you should document them.

If you have to report to others on the total number of links you achieved through your link
building activities, make sure you count these links from non-targeted sites in your reports.

Which of your campaigns have been most successful?

Some of your campaigns will outperform others and it is impossible to tell beforehand which
these will be. By monitoring carefully you will discover what works and what does not and
therefore learn how to improve you success in the future.

How have your overall links grown over time?

General trends over time give a nice insight into how you are progressing. You can see
cumulative and non-cumulative histories of your link acquisition over time in the Link Builder
tool.

How has your spread of links changed over time?

The spider profiles within Link Builder allow you to see how your links are spread across
different types of sites. Taking a regular snapshot of the spider profile will show you how you’re
doing.

Setting your success metrics and understanding how you’re going to measure them will keep
you on plan and help you guide your link building efforts.

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Chapter 2 | Measuring your success

With those metrics in place it’s now time to move on and have a look at how you’re doing at the
moment.

Try Link Builder for free

The Link Builder tool can help you measure your success. You can track the number of
links your site gets, and see what types of sites are linking to you.

Link Builder makes link building easier.

Tell me more about Link Builder

If you’ve questions about Link Builder email [email protected]

Link Building Made Simple | 20

What’s the current
situation?

Chapter 3
Chapter 3 | What’s the current situation?

Many people start their link building by doing competitive link analysis.

The basic idea is that you see who’s linking to your competitors and then chase after them for
links.

That sounds eminently sensible and competitive link analysis is where we started with our Link
Builder tool. But then we discovered something astonishing that made us completely
rethink our approach.

We found that people were spending most of their time researching and building lists of link
prospects rather than getting stuck into what was really vital - getting links from quality sites
as quickly as possible.

You really can spend too much time researching and to our horror we realized that our tool was
encouraging people to do just that.

So we had a major rethink.

We knew that research was vital in identifying link prospects - but we also saw that the research
process was time consuming and dominating the work flow.

We asked “How can we find quality link prospects for our customers as quickly as possible?”

The solution we came up with was to shift all that time-consuming research behind the scenes
so that all you would have to do is enter a keyword or a set of URLs and we’ll automatically
build the campaign for you in minutes.

And once the campaign is complete, you have the choice of starting to approach link prospects
right away or taking some time to understand the current situation.

Whether you’re building links for a new or an established site you need to know where links are
coming from in your market, understand how the links got there and work out how you too can
get similar links.

In Link Builder, you explore your current situation by actually building a link campaign. This
chapter will explain how to look at your current situation and move on to look at some easy
quick wins in getting links.

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Chapter 3 | What’s the current situation?

What are others in your market doing to get links?

In the introduction I talked about how link building was about engaging with your online
community. This means much more than looking for directories and ‘submit a url’ opportunities.
It means actively engaging with authority sites, bloggers and journalists, customers, experts
from your industry and many others.

And the ways you can engage are many and varied. Looking at how other websites are engaging
will give you lots of link building ideas.

The Link Builder tool allows you to do this easily.

You can start with a keyword search or a URL search. Let’s look first at a URL search – enter
the URLs of leading brands in your industry – in this case, I’ll look at the fountain pen market.

URL search

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Chapter 3 | What’s the current situation?

I’ve entered the leading brands in the market because these are the websites that have the
most inbound links – by using the leading brands we find the largest number of possible link
prospects.

Each URL you enter is a source for building your link campaign. So Sheaffer.com, Waterman.
com, Pelikan.com, ParkerPen.com, Montblanc.com and Lamy.com will be the sources for this
campaign. Behind the scenes, we collect domains that link to each source in turn and add
them to your campaign. These domains then become your link prospects.

You’ll also see that I use the root domain, sheaffer.com rather than www.sheaffer.com when
I enter URLs. That’s because if I use the root domain, my prospects will include sites that link
to all the sub-domains, like example.sheaffer.com. The result is that I get more prospects in
my campaign.

Keyword search
You can also enter a keyword to build your campaign. When you do so, we conduct a Google
search for your keyword, and this time we use each of the top 10 results as a source to build
your campaign.

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Chapter 3 | What’s the current situation?

The process is exactly the same as for the URL search, but in this case we treat each URL that
appear in the top 10 results as your source – we collect domains that link to each source to
build your campaign.

Your link building campaign

Whether you started with a URL search or a keyword search, we present your campaign as a
large set of link prospects.

These have already been organized into different strategies for you – blogs, news media, social
media and so on.

Here’s a campaign I created using the keyword fountain pens.

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Chapter 3 | What’s the current situation?

Now, there is a lot of information here, but I don’t want to jump into that right away - there will
be time to do that later.

I want to look at how important it is to see links in their context.

Seeing links in context

I want to look for reasons why those links got there and the best way to do that is to look at the
‘Top Links’ column.

This gives me the exact web page on which the link sits so I can click on it, go straight to the
page and understand how the link got there.

So here’s one result from my ‘fountain pens’ example:

In this case the ‘Prospect’, www.getrichslowly.org ‘Links To’ www.fountainpenhospital.com

and the link can be seen in situ by clicking on the ‘Top Link’ which leads to this page:

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Chapter 3 | What’s the current situation?

Here’s another where the ‘Prospect’, HuffingtonPost.com ‘Links To’ www.jetpens.com

If I click on the top link, I’m taken to the exact page on which the link sits:

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Chapter 3 | What’s the current situation?

So I can see this is an editorial that links to JetPens.com because they’re interviewing the co-
founder of JetPens.com.

There’s another somewhat unusual but illuminating example on the following page. The
prospect, Dmoz.com links to www.nibs.com:

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Chapter 3 | What’s the current situation?

The ‘Top Link’ also shows me that the anchor text is ‘left-handed writers page’ – something I
didn’t expect.

Click on the link and you’re taken to the exact page:

So how come, Nibs.com is linked to with this anchor text?

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Chapter 3 | What’s the current situation?

Follow the link and I can see a page on Nibs.com specifically about left-handed writers:

This shows that Nibs.com have been rather clever in their link building.

They understand that one of the ways to get a link from Dmoz.org relatively quickly is to go for
an unusual category – in this case left-handed writers.

By browsing the top links, you’ll have:

• Seen what others are doing to get links.

• Identified link prospects that are of immediate interest.

• Gained a picture of what you have to do to get links.

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Chapter 3 | What’s the current situation?

Which prospects are already linking to you?

The Link Builder tool shows you which of the prospects we found who are already linking to
you. That means you can concentrate on those who are not linking to you and generate some
new links for yourself.

However, there is still a lot of value in improving your relationship with sites who already link
to you.

You could maximize the value of the links on sites that already link to you – people who
already link to you have shown an interest in your business, so they could be persuaded to:

• give you a keyword rich link

• deep link to one of your important pages

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Chapter 3 | What’s the current situation?

• link to you again when you launch something new

• or they may be interested in some sort of business relationship

I’m a great believer in maximizing the value of work that you’ve already done. I always advise
people who already have some good inbound links that the best place to start link building is
with sites which already link to you.

Indeed, this is so important that you should set up a specific campaign containing only
prospects who already link to you.

Campaign based on sites that already link to you

Here’s how to set it up in Link Builder:

(i) Enter your own root domain - I’m using wordtracker.com here.

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Chapter 3 | What’s the current situation?

(ii) Include the historic index as this will give you the maximum number of sites that link to you.

(iii) Create a fictitious mydomain - I’d suggest links-to- followed by your own root domain.

This creates a campaign made up of the quality domains that already link to you. In this case it
shows over 7000 quality domains pointing to wordtracker.com.

You can start your next link building campaign today - with a Link Builder 7-day free trial.

So what should you do with people who already link to you?

Someone took the trouble to respond to your link request or has heard about you, read about
you, found you after a search, gone to your site, perhaps even bought from you.

Whatever the reason, they thought you were worth linking to! Such a person deserves a bit of
your attention and time.

Not only should you be thanking them for the link, but by establishing a relationship you could
open up rich collaboration and business opportunities, as well as boosting your search engine
rankings.

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Chapter 3 | What’s the current situation?

Consider these eight important questions to ask about sites that already link to you:

Can you put a name to the person behind the site?

It’s people who make links, not websites. Visualize a network of people linking to you, not a
network of websites linking to you.

Find out who they are and do a bit of research on them. What do they do? What do you have in
common? Why did they link to you?

How popular is their site?

The more popular the site, the more beneficial it can be for you. A good measure of the
popularity of a site is the number of inbound links it gets so check it out. Then you can sort in
order of priority and start with the most popular.

Is the site bringing you traffic?

Have a look at your log files or investigate Google Analytics. You’ll be able to find out if the link
brings you traffic and you’ll be able to see whether that traffic converted.

If they do, reach out to them. Invite them for lunch and explore what else you can do together.

Have you done them a favor in return?

No? Do so.

Yes? Do so again.

It’s easy to do a favor for someone and doing so is a great way to build relationships – and
relationships are at the heart of link building.

What social sites are they active on?

Follow them on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Linkedin or whatever, and respond to their posts
by re-tweeting or commenting. Do that and just watch your network - and your links - grow.

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Chapter 3 | What’s the current situation?

Can you post something positive about their site?

Make sure you do. We all love a bit of flattery and it can be a powerful tool in building
relationships with other people.

So make a positive comment, write a complimentary blog post, agree with them, elaborate on
their ideas. You’ll be getting yourself an even bigger fan.

What linking text do they use when they link to you?

Of course, the linking text that people use when they link to you is very important for your
search engine rankings. Sometimes it can be as lazy as ‘click here’. It’s worth making a quick
approach to them and suggesting they use one of your important keywords in the linking text.

Are there any ways you can collaborate?

If there’s really a good business fit between you and a site that links to you, then they’re likely to
respond positively to any business proposition you may make. Time to get your thinking hat on.

In summary, if you see links as simply a way to boost your search engine rankings, then you’ll
miss out on some tremendous opportunities. Link building is really about building relationships
with people and who knows where that could take you?

Link Builder has been designed to help you find precious link prospects - and then build
relationships. If you haven’t already done so you might like to try it free for seven days.

What is linkworthy about your business already?

Any business will already have something that’s linkworthy – and many opportunities to use it.
But somehow they’ve never got around to doing it.

Before you start creating new content for your link building, it makes sense to check whether
you’re making the most of the opportunities that you’ve already got.

Here are some things to consider:

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Chapter 3 | What’s the current situation?

The nature of your business:

• Which general directories could you get listed in?

• Which industry specific directories?

• Which resources lists could you be added to?

Associations or groups that you belong to:

• Do they link to member websites?

• Or offer free listings?

• Do they run awards or special events?

• Do they run networking events?

• Do they offer opportunities to take part or volunteer?

Trade magazines that you read or subscribe to:

• Do they publish a directory?

• Or mention companies like yours in editorial?

• Who’s the editor?

• Who writes regularly?

• Do they invite readers to submit tips?

• Do they accept articles for publications?

• Do they publish case studies?

• Do they run annual awards or contest?

• Do they run networking events?

Suppliers and customers:

• Do your suppliers link to their customers? If so, why not you?

• Could you give a testimonial?

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Chapter 3 | What’s the current situation?

• Could you write about how a supplier has solved problems for you?

• Could you volunteer to be a case study?

• Would your customers recommend or link to your site?

• Could you publish a complimentary case study about one of your customers?

About you and your people

• Who writes about the town/city/region where you’re located? What could they write
about you?

• What school/college did you attend?

• What have you done that’s unusual or newsworthy?

• Are you a young entrepreneur, an inner-city entrepreneur?

• A rural entrepreneur?

• A woman entrepreneur?

• A work at home dad?

• An entrepreneur over 50?

• What do you do outside business?

• Do you offer internships?

• Do you sponsor local events?

• Do you carry out pro bono work for non-profits?

… and anything else you can think of.

Internal linking and link power

Improving your internal linking on its own can have a dramatic effect on the ranking of the most
important pages on your site – the pages you really want people to visit.

The most important pages may be your best converting pages, or the pages where people sign
up to your newsletter or where you have the most important information about your company.

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Chapter 3 | What’s the current situation?

It’s up to you to decide which are the most important pages for your site – and once you decide,
you can give them a dramatic boost by using two simple techniques:

• Keyword rich links

• Distributing link power

Let’s look at each of them in turn.

Keyword rich links

Google places great value on the anchor text used in a link pointing to a page. That’s the blue
text that people click on to follow the link. Have a look at web pages and you’ll see many
internal links like ‘click here’ or ‘read more’.

These are functional links of course – they take the customer to the page they’re after – but
they don’t give the search engine any information about the page they’re pointing to.

Let’s look at an example.

A mountain bike retailer may have this link on his home page:

“Click here for more information on our special offers”

Fine from a customer point of view but it tells the search engine nothing about the page being
linked to. The anchor text is the generic ‘click here’. It’s easy to improve this link by using the
keyword ‘mountain bike offers’ as the anchor text:

“Click here for more information on our mountain bike offers”

This link now gives Google the extra information that the page the link points to contains
details of mountain bike offers.

This change is particularly powerful when the link appears in editorial copy on the home page.

“… and for this Thanksgiving holiday, CEO, Mark Beech has put together our best ever
offers. But these prices are so good, we expect to sell out pretty quickly so don’t miss
out. ‘Click here for more information on our mountain bike offers’

And meanwhile back at our Portland, Oregon HQ, Mark was …”

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Chapter 3 | What’s the current situation?

So we’ve given Google more information by including a keyword in the anchor text AND we’ve
placed the link in editorial copy on the home page.

You could improve on this even further by making sure the link appeared towards the top of
the page.

The inclusion of keywords in menu items also helps though the effect is not as strong. A menu
item such as ‘New products’ gives little information to the search engine.

Much better would be ‘New mountain bike ranges’

So have a look at your own site. Are you using generic terms such as ‘click here’, ‘read more’ or
‘new products’ in your anchor text?

Now let’s move on to a more complex but powerful technique that is totally within your control
and that is about how you distribute ‘link power’ throughout your site.

Distributing link power

The links that point to a particular page, say Page A, give it a certain ‘link power’.

This link power is then passed on and divided between the pages that Page A links to.

Suppose the value of the link power coming into Page A was 10 units:

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Chapter 3 | What’s the current situation?

The 10 units of link power are then divided between Pages B, C D and E, giving each 2.5 units.

Those 2.5 units of link power are then divided between the pages that Page A links to and so
on.

As this process continues, pages at the bottom get very little of the original link power.

Yet, these are often the most important sales and conversion pages – pages that could do
with all the help they can get!

The lesson is that if you let your link power distribute through the standard structure of your
site, then your important pages will get little benefit.

But simply by planning your internal linking you can give your important pages the link power
they deserve. The secret is to link from your home page directly with a keyword rich link to your
important pages.

In the following example, I’ve highlighted an important page on a site with three levels of
content (for simplicity’s sake).

At the moment, the important page gets only 0.5 units of that precious link power. However,
by making one simple change, we can give the important page four times as much link power!

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Chapter 3 | What’s the current situation?

In the above example, I simplified the maths so that it is easier to understand. The fundamental
message is that just by controlling your anchor text and internal linking, you can give a significant
boost in link power to your most important pages.

That means they are likely to rank better on search engines and give you more traffic and sales
as a result.

Summary

Link building is an exciting activity. It’s a fantastic feeling to reach out and persuade other sites
that you’re worth linking to.

However, the benefits you get from your hard-earned links can be greatly enhanced if you take
the time to really look at where you are now and recognize the many things that you have
control over and can improve significantly.

It is the link builders who lay such solid foundations that will have the edge in the long term.

So now, we’re ready to start networking and prospect hunting.

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Networking and
link prospecting

Chapter 4
Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

Link building has changed dramatically over the last dozen or so years that I’ve been in the
business. It used to be that you could succeed if you simply sent out hundreds of link requests,
swap reciprocal links, submit your site to directories or even buy links.

None of that is enough any more.

If you’re going to succeed at link building you’ve got to actively engage with your online
community in all its richness and variety. You’ve got to invest time in networking, carefully
researching link prospects, establishing your own credibility and building relationships with
people who can give you links.

You need to adopt a mindset and ways of working that are going to bring you success.
Understand that mindset and you’ll find the whole process of link building much easier.

The link building mindset

Here’s the mindset you’ve got to adopt:

Know your community

Get to know the best news sites, the most popular social media sites, the busiest forums and
the most popular blogs. Be curious about what people are writing about and discussing: sign
up for newsletters and RSS feeds: set up Google alerts for your important keywords. Spend at
least a part of every day finding out what’s going on in your industry.

Obsess about your customers

Listen to your customers and understand what they’re really looking for. Respond quickly to
any questions and turn what you learn into powerful web content. Ask customers to share
stories and use them to add detail, opinion, examples and ‘color’ to your copy.

Understand the language that your customers use

Discover the words people use when they look for products like yours. Use these keywords in
your writing. When people link, they often use the name of a product, a publication, or the title
of an article or blog post as the linking text. So use keywords in headlines and titles and you’ll
get valuable keyword rich links.

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

Be generous with your outbound links

Link to quality content in your market – even if it comes from competitors. But don’t just link to
any relevant sites you find, choose sites that publish exceptional and useful content.

Watch out for great content ideas, no matter where they come from

Take a close look at any piece of content that catches your eye - an article, a contest, a survey.
Isolate the basic elements and then transfer the idea to your own industry. Look for the basic
elements of any story and see if you could adapt it to your own business.

Get your message out

Be proactive in getting your message out on your blog, on social media sites and publications
in your market. If people don’t know about your great content and if search engines have not
indexed it, you’ll not be getting the payback that your hard work deserves.

Incorporate writing into your daily routine

Learn how to write great copy – writing is a skill that can be learned. And the best way to learn is
to write a little bit every day. Start simply - a 100-word blog post several times a week is a good
start and should not be beyond any of us. As you confidence grows so too will your volume of
writing

Obsess about quality

You need quality links from quality sites and the best way to get them is to provide quality
products and publish quality material for your customers. Quality content encourages more
people to link.

Build links offline

Don’t forget about offline activities. There is much you can do that will encourage people to
link - pick up the phone, attend local business meetings and national events - you’ll easily
build contacts among fellow delegates, and links will follow.

Be relentless and determined

Quality links are hard to get but they’re worth the effort. But when you’re just starting out, you’re
not going to be immediately successful. Don’t lose heart, keep at it, hold to these principles
and you will succeed.

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

Checklist for quality link prospects

Is it relevant?

Is the content well-written?

Has the content been updated recently?

Does the site link out to many other sites?

Are there real people on the site?

Has the site got good inbound links?

Does the site score well on Google PageRank, Alexa, Compete, etc

Is the site well-established?

Does the site perform well on keyword searches?

Are they easy to contact?

Do they publish resources or reviews?

Do they interview people for opinion or case studies?

Use Link Builder to find quality links

You can use Link Builder to check whether prospects are likely to give you quality links.
Link Builder automatically collects Alexa and ranking information for each of your pros-
pects, saving you hours of potentially tedious work.
You can check out your link prospects for free with a Link Builder 7-day free trial

Tell me more about Link Builder

If you’ve questions about Link Builder email [email protected]

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

Different types of sites need different approaches

You’d never dream of approaching a directory in the same way that you’d approach a blog, and
you’d never dream of approaching a trusted site (eg, .gov) in the same way you’d approach a
shopping site.

You’ve got to have links from different types of sites and you’ve got to adapt your approach to
each different type.

Here are the strategies that we automatically create within Link Builder together with notes on
the best approach for each.

Blogs

No matter what industry you’re in there’ll be many blogs that write about it. The great thing is
that blogs contain lots of fresh content and links and are therefore popular in search engine
results. They’re usually written by a single individual who makes themselves very easy to
contact.

Best approach: A personal approach is important and rather than just ask for a link, you
should seek to build a relationship with the person behind the blog. Start by commenting on
interesting posts, summarize them and link to them from your own site. Monitor content of
blogs that are of interest to you by signing up to their RSS feed (see page 66).

Trusted sites

Trusted sites include government sites (.gov), academic sites (.edu, .ac.uk) and non-profit
organization sites (.org). Trusted sites, particularly government and academic sites can be
difficult to get links from because they generally have a high level of bureaucracy, high standards
or are reluctant to link to commercial businesses. However, because they are difficult to get,
links from such sites may be valuable.

Best approach: Become involved in some way. That might mean offering discounts to
government employees or students, supporting an economic development initiative or
jobs program, or taking part in research. Being energy efficient, recycling or following green
principles are some of the best ways to attract attention and win support of government or
academic sites.

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

Directories

These vary from dedicated directories such as Dmoz.org, Business.com and JoeAnt.com to
a whole variety of ‘Top 10’, ‘Best of’ and ‘Recommended’ lists of resources that are regularly
published by site owners, bloggers and journalists. Such lists provide an immediate opportunity
for new link builders, and are often the first place where people start.

Best approach: Directories are in the business of publishing links to other websites so
approaching them should be a no-brainer. However, there are a number of things to look out
for:

• All directories’ have guidelines – make sure you read them carefully and follow their
instructions to the letter – otherwise you will waste your own and the directories time.

• Do your preparation in advance – prepare short, punchy and keyword rich descriptions
of your site – go for 10-word, 20-word, 50-word and 100-word descriptions of your
website. Then you can slot them in as appropriate

• Use a variety of keyword rich linking text to your site whenever you get the opportunity.

Resource lists are informal collections of links published by an industry expert or blogger.
Usually the authors of such lists will invite new suggestions and contributions. Be direct and
brief in manner.

News media

Newspapers, radio and TV stations and magazines now have a significant online presence
to complement their printed or broadcast editions: there are also exclusively online media
outlets, podcasts and video blogs. These offer great link building opportunities.

Best approach: To get such links your content needs to be newsworthy and two tactics work
very well:

• Make yourself available to reporters and become a source of ready quotes. Sign up for
the excellent HelpaReporter.com and you’ll see what journalists are looking for.

• Learn how to write and distribute press releases through sites such as PRWeb.com,
PRNewswire.com and BusinessWire.com.

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

Shopping sites

The shopping category is made up of sites that are primarily interested in buying and selling
on the web. They range from shopping directories through to resource lists and recommended
products.

Best approach: Be businesslike in your approach - these sites are interested and cater for
people who want to buy products. So:

• Be direct about your products and where you can, emphasize the benefits that your
products bring to customers.

• Offer special deals or pricing geared to the audience each of these sites have.

• Highlight the advantages you have over competitors.

Social media sites

Social media sites allow the sharing and spreading of a wide variety of material – articles, ideas,
opinions, videos, links, news, content, offers and much more. They’re hives of activity where
huge numbers of people interact and you’ve got to be among them if you want to get links.

Best approach: The most important part of social media is the social bit – taking part and
interacting with others. This spreads your message and builds relationships, and these can
be powerful ways to promote your business and generate links for your website. You’ve got to
explore and find out which social media sites work best for you. You could start with Twitter,
Facebook, YouTube, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn and others. Look out for social media that is
specific to your industry – and take part!

Job sites

Finding jobs, recruiting staff and other employment related issues are popular activities on
the web. And there’s a useful niche of sites that list jobs and CVs and offer recruitment advice.

Best approach: This is a niche opportunity and perhaps not for everyone. However, if you do
have regular vacancies, then it may well be for you. Here are some guidelines:

• Be honest – only use such sites when you have genuine opportunities or career advice
to offer. A well-written job description is essential.

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

• Recruitment sites usually charge a fee for listing a vacancy so make sure you budget
for that.

• If you do use such sites and have successfully found new employees through them,
write a short case study and let the site concerned know – that might be enough to win
you a link!

Business sites

Sites related to business advice, exhibitions, summits, conferences and other business events
are good places to pick up links. They will often list and link to attendees in order to promote
their event, and can lead to editorial opportunities from people who have attended the event.

Best approach: Running events can be an absolute nightmare for the organizers. If you can
offer any help to make their lives easier they’ll be very grateful and that can bring you links. So:

• Be helpful to the organizers whenever you can.

• Always submit your details or company description well ahead of time. If you reply
early, you’ll get additional opportunities for coverage and links.

• Be prepared to talk to experts or journalists who are looking for people to interview and
good stories to tell.

• After the event, give honest testimonials. Let organizers know right away the benefits
you gained from attending.

Selecting targets

When we first introduced the Link Builder tool, we advised you to browse through the results
to first get a feel for who was linking to other sites in your industry; second, see the link in
context; and third, understand what you might have to do to get a similar type of link from that
prospect.

I really enjoy that type of quick overview because it gives me a feel for the market and starts to
influence how I’ll approach the link building task.

But of course, I’ll quickly want to get down to the task of picking actual sites to target.

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

I’ll look at the rank of the site and I’ll click on the top link and it will open up in a new window.
I’ll mentally apply my quality criteria and if I like the prospect, I’ll go back to Link Builder and
‘target’ the site.

So here I’ve spotted http://www.tutorialblog.org as a likely prospect:

I’ll click on the top link and have a look at the site:

I see that the site has both a link directory and an invitation to submit a guest post. I like the
look of the site and decide that I’ll target it.

To mark it as a target, I click on the grey target

icon and it will change to red:

And it will then appear as ‘targeted’ see

image on following page:

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

I’ll work through my list of prospects like this, always hitting the target icon for every prospect
I like.

This targeting is essential because:

• Concentrating on quality sites rather than blasting every prospect is fundamental to

good link building.

• It allows us to check and report on your success in the future.

• It will allow us to easily collect contact details for you (see next section).

Collecting contact details

Now that you’ve selected sites to target, Link Builder can get you additional information on
each prospect – this includes Alexa rank, Compete rank, social media links as well as the URls
for ‘About us’ and ‘Contact us’.

We’ll collect all of these details for up to 100 prospects at a time – that’s a fantastic time saver!

Here’s how:

First, let’s collect all your selected targets together by applying a filter. See image on the
following page:

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

Now select all your targeted prospects by clicking on the box:

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

Switch to ‘Contact’ view and hit ‘Find contact data’:

Click on ‘More info’ to get this card view for each prospect:

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

There’s space to add your own notes on what you’ve done to contact the prospect:

– and you can search this field using the filter function.

You can try Link Builder for free.

Quick Win: Co-linking prospects

You’ll remember in Chapter 3 we explained the idea of a ‘source’?

A source is either one of the URLs you enter or one of the sites that turns up in the first 10
results of a keyword search on Google.

To create your campaign, we add together all the domains that link to each source. That also
allows us to create a specific strategy for ‘co-linking’ prospects– those that link to two or more
of your sources.

Because they link to multiple sources, there’s a high probability that they will link to your site
as well. That’s why they should be the first strategy you look at when you’re starting a new
campaign.

You can see how many sites they link to in the right hand column.

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

You’ll find examples of co-linking sites in all the types of sites that we’ve talked about. So let’s
look at some of the types of link prospects that can be found in the co-linking strategy. Here
are just some:

I’m going to use the ‘outdoor clothing’ market to give examples. We’ll start with the easiest and
work our way up.

General directories

Here’s the directory, JoeAnt.com among the prospects. Click on ‘links to’ and the record will
expand to show you who in the market JoeAnt.com links to and the ‘Top Links’ column will give
you the actual page on which the link sits.

Follow one of the top links and here’s what you see on the following page:

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

So as you’d expect, lots of outdoor clothing links. To get a link all you have to do is pay the fee
or apply to become an editor, where in return for reviewing submissions, you get yours for free.

Industry specific directories

You also find industry specific directories in the co-linking strategy and those will of course just
concentrate on your own industry. Browsing through the list of prospects, ExpeditionQuest.
com seems interesting:

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

Click on any of the ‘Top Links’:

Now we know that this is a directory link, so let’s click on /expesearch/expesearch.ell and have
a look at how we can get a link. That is it – all you have to do is submit your details.

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

Blogs

These are a great way to find the people writing about your industry. They link out freely and
are often easy to contact. Here’s the blog at FieldandStream.com that links to multiple sites:

Follow the link circled in the image above and you’ll arrive at this page:

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

And with blogs, always look out for guest blogging opportunities or how to get in touch as you
can see here:

Summary of co-linking

• Co-linking prospects link to multiple domains in your industry and so your probability
of success is high.

• There is a wide variety of link prospects within the co-linking strategy. They are high
probability prospects if you approach them in the right way.

• Spend some time looking through the list of prospects, picking out sites that you would
be interested in getting a link from.

• Look for easy submission opportunities – the kind you get from specialized directories.

• Look for individual bloggers with whom you can build a relationship.

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

Quick Win: Hidden niches

Your campaign can also contain ‘hidden niches’ – sites that have something in common but
which don’t appear automatically. Such niches are powerful because they’ll be entirely as a
result of your work – they’re unique and your competitors will not have access to them as a
group.

Here’s where a bit of creativity can come in handy.

Suppose, as you’re working through your prospects, you come across a site that is obviously
concerned with green issues. If you find that appropriate to your site, you’ll probably wonder if
there are other sites that belong to a green niche?

You can find out easily using the filter function.

Filter on the top link for any that contain the word ‘green’. In this case, Link Builder has found
233:

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

That’s a nice size of a niche, so you can tag these prospects and save them into a custom
strategy – I’ll call it ‘Green sites’:

I can now save these prospects, 100 at a time and a new tag will appear under the strategies
menu, so you can access them at any time. See image on the following page:

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

If I was doing this in a real project, rather than as an example in this book, I’d go on to tag all
233 prospects.

And I’d also filter on other related words such as ‘enviro’, ‘eco’, ‘sustain’ and so on. The end
result would be a hidden niche clearly focused around green issues.

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

I’ll just show another couple of examples.

Why not explore the different filters on Link Builder and see what hidden niches you can come
up with?

Quick Win: The Magic Middle

Why the ‘Magic Middle’ is so good for link building

When you’re building links, you need to find quality sites to target. But you also want sites
where you have a good chance of success in getting links.

A perfect place to find such links is in the ‘Magic Middle’ made up of sites that are not quite
A-list, but still have a lot of authority to pass on. Instead of going for the A-list sites, you could
find the best return for your link building efforts in the Magic Middle.

There are literally thousands of such sites that offer an audience, an opportunity to submit
articles and guest posts and a great opportunity to get quality links.

Magic Middle sites are not inundated, but they are focused and passionate about what they do.

They’re usually easy to contact, and may even be flattered to be picked out.

And the people behind those sites can be fantastic people to build a relationship with. Let’s
look at an example:

I see that DesignMom.com is listed as a prospect – in other words we’ve found a story with a
good link to a car manufacturer.

I’ll click on the top link to see the story. See image on the following page:

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

So I can see that it’s a good, well-written story and it’s a good-looking blog. And the author
makes it easy to get in touch at http://www.designmom.com/about/

That’s certainly worth an approach.

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

In Link Builder you can filter according to the rank – that is the number of linking domains that
link to a prospect. To explore the Magic Middle, just pick an upper limit - in this case, sites with
a rank of less than 15000:

and a lower limit of 5000 …

And the Magic Middle of 2496 prospects is revealed:

And there you have it – the Magic Middle revealed!

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

Building relationships with prospects

So you’ve found some great link prospects. And you’ve created some great reasons why
someone should link to you. Now you want to make an approach and craft a great link request.
But are your link requests missing the most vital ingredient?

It used to be that a polite email would set you off on your link building. It was the email
equivalent of a ‘cold call’ – you had no contact with and you probably didn’t know too much
about the person you were targeting.

The fact that you didn’t know too much about the person was a real problem. Because it is not
websites that give you links, but the people who are behind them that decide that you’re worth
the effort and go ahead and give you that link.

Through social media we can get to know people before we make a link request.

Instead of spending time writing the perfect link request email, spend time getting to know
the people who could give you the links you’re after. NEVER send a link request if you haven’t
done this preparation.

Here’s the process to follow:

i. Identify the blogs in your industry you want to target. You can do that easily by taking the most
popular from Link Builder. Or by doing a search on Technorati or a search on Google using
something like ‘top 10 blogs on mountain bikes’.

ii. Browse through your chosen blogs and follow the people behind the blogs. Tweet any
articles you find particularly interesting. You’ve now done your targets a favor and you’ll find
that most of them will follow you back.

iii. Set up an RSS reader to give you automatic notification of any new posts on your chosen
blogs. That means rather than having to go to each blog in turn, the blogs come to you. You can
get all the latest news in one place: Google Reader, for example, is very easy to set up.

Just look for the RSS feed on your target blog, Serious Eats in this case. See image on following
page:

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

Click on the RSS link and you’ll see:

Once you’ve subscribed to several blogs, this is what your Google Reader will look like. See
image on the following page:

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

The list of blogs you subscribe to will be listed in the bottom left. And new posts will
automatically appear when you open up your reader:

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

iv. Once you have Google Reader set up, check every morning for new stories. Spend perhaps
30 minutes to an hour looking at the news stories that have been published.

When you find useful articles, you can catch the attention of the author by making a comment.

Do this immediately – authors always look for early reaction to their pieces. Make your comment
meaningful and useful. Agree with the point the writer is making, or give an example from your
own experience, tell them that you found the article helpful and give a reason why.

v. Tweet the articles you find useful. Copy the title and URL into Twitter and add a short
comment yourself such as “check this out”, “very useful”, “interesting thoughts” and so on.

vi. Write a blog post expanding upon and linking to the original article. Make your opinions
clear, give further explanation or other resources that you have created.

Another possibility is to take the post as inspiration for one of your new posts.

vii. Look for dissenting voices. Does anyone really disagree with the author? Is their opinion
valid? Is there a debate that you can join in? Write a post outlining the argument, give your
opinion and encourage others to contribute.

viii. Once you’ve written your post or article, tweet it and don’t forget to ask for re-tweets – just
add “Please RT”.

ix. If you’ve done your job well, you’ll acquire new followers and fans and your name will spread.
Thank people for follows and re-tweets.

All of these activities draw you to the attention of the person behind your target blogs.

You will have done them a favor in engaging with them, adding your opinion, tweeting their
post and linking to the post in articles or blog posts that you write.

And they will have noticed you. That means they’ll be much more receptive to an approach.

Write link requests

Imagine you’re attending an out-of-town business conference where you don’t know a soul.
There’s a social event the night before and you decide to go along.

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

You enter the room and there are over 50 complete strangers. You grab yourself a drink and
look round the room hopefully. You walk up to another delegate, also on his own and say:

“It would be mutually beneficial if we could have a chat. Chatting together would raise both our
social standings in the room and reduce the anxiety we both feel about being on our own ...”

They would run a mile and rightly so.

The sentiments you’ve expressed to the other delegate are probably true ... but the awkward
and labored words you use would have him squirming and looking for a quick escape.

So if that type of approach is disastrous at a social event, it will be disastrous in a link request.

You’ve got to approach people in a natural, friendly way. Don’t fall into the trap of following a
rigid format for a link request that makes you look amateurish.

To be successful, the subject line of your link request email needs to be directly relevant to
them.

So if I have a fountain pen website and I find someone who publishes a resource that lists
fountain pen websites, my subject line would be something like:

“Another fountain pen resource for your website”

If I find someone who has a shopping site offering to review gift products, my subject line
would be something like:

“Fountain pen gift set for your review”

And if I find a marketing publication looking for story ideas, my subject line might be something
like:

“Story idea: The Handmade Brand”

In each of the three cases above, I’m promoting exactly the same website, but the approach I
use is geared to what the individual link prospect is looking for.

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

Does this mean you can’t use an email template?

No it doesn’t, templates are great for saving time and helping you be effective. But you should
only use each template for the appropriate type of site.

So I might have:

A template for all resource sites ...

Another template for all shopping sites ...

Another template for all publication sites ...

And so on.

This variety in link requests will allow your request to stand out, and your link prospect will be
more likely to open your email.

Tips for writing link requests

#1. Always find a name to approach. It’s people who make links not websites, so spend time
discovering the person you need to contact.

#2. Write a subject line that is going to be of immediate interest to your link prospect. Otherwise
your link prospect won’t even get opened.

#3. Highlight the benefits to them and their site visitors rather than the benefit you’ll get from
the link.

#4. Show you’ve read their site by mentioning a particular resource or article they’ve published.

#5. Be brief and to the point. Don’t write paragraphs explaining yourself and what you want. Be
as direct as you can be - too many words can hide your meaning.

#6. Be creative. You don’t have to be overly formal - a quirky, funny or original approach can
often work.

Summary

Networking and link prospecting are essential skills to learn. You must always be on the look
out for opportunities.

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Chapter 4 | Networking and link prospecting

The techniques in this chapter should have given you ideas for ‘easy links’ - that is, links where
the person behind the site is actively encouraging you to get in touch and suggest resources.
For the new link builder, such easy links are the most likely to bring success.

Once, you’ve learned from these experiences it’s time to move on to what every experienced
link builder knows: namely, it’s great content that brings you quality links. In the next chapter
we’ll look at the processes and ideas that allow you to create the type of contact that can bring
you hundreds of links - sometimes without even having to ask. Let’s move on!

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Create the right content

Chapter 5
Chapter 5 | Create the right content

Planning your content is crucial. Content is not just something that you can churn out: it
requires time, thought and effort.

Quality content brings real benefit to your website:

• Content attracts search engine traffic.

• Content encourages people to link to your website.

• Content gets potential customers interested in what you have to offer.

• Content attracts media interest.

The higher the quality and the value of the content you create, the more links and benefits
you’ll get.

There is a big temptation to jump in and start creating content that you enjoy creating or that
you think you should create. But wait a minute. You’re in business and you’ve got limited time
- you have to get a return on your investment in content.

That means you must always have a goal in mind for every piece of content your create, and
that goal must ultimately lead to selling more stuff and helping your businesses grow.

The most important question you should ask about any content is “how will this lead to more
sales?” You must think that through BEFORE you create the content not afterwards.

Start with the written word

There are all kinds of different types of content – articles, e-books, white papers, guides, videos,
interviews, infographics, photographs and so on.

The choice is enormous but I think the best place to start is with the written word. That is because
the web is still dominated by text, and written content - especially keyword rich content - will
bring you more search traffic and more attention.

Also, the principles you will learn can be applied later to any other type of content, be it video,
infographics or whatever.

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Chapter 5 | Create the right content

In this chapter, we’re going to go through some content ideas that should be a priority, and I’m
going to present them in the order in which you should approach them.

And if you’re a small business you are also time pressed. You’re unlikely to have much spare
time. Therefore it’s important that you have some tricks up your sleeve to allow you to create
useful content quickly.

Answering customer queries

One of the best places to start is by what you do on a day-to-day basis every week in answering
your customer queries. Every business has to deal with customer queries: the answers to these
queries give you an immediate source of content ideas and this should be your first priority.

So take a note of all the customer queries you receive over a week. Record them formally in a
notebook or spreadsheet as they occur.

One week later go through your list, group the queries and turn them into blog posts. Because
they’ve been inspired by customer queries, they’re already going to be relevant to your
audience. Just make sure you use keywords in the titles and body text.

If you’re just starting up and you don’t yet have customers, you can find what people are looking
for by using Wordtracker’s Keyword Questions tool.

For example, on the following page is a list of questions real people are asking about ‘garden’:

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Chapter 5 | Create the right content

The results are a treasure trove of content ideas.

Go through the list and pick out questions that are closely related to your business - then write
and publish the answers.

Re-purpose or update your existing content

If you’ve been in business for a while, you’ll probably have written material on your site. It’s
important that you review and update this material before moving on to create new content.

• Is that material still relevant?

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Chapter 5 | Create the right content

• Does it need to be completely replaced or can it be easily updated?

• Have you ‘timeless’ material that perhaps you’ve neglected?

• What ideas are triggered going through your old material?

• Can you transform it into a different type of content? Ie, change an article into a video
or an infographic?

Again, for a time-starved website owner this can be a quick and easy way to get fresh content
that is going to attract links.

Comment on breaking news stories

The next type of content I’d advise you to write is to comment on breaking news stories or on
interesting and important articles that other people have written. So rather than sitting back
and having to create content from scratch, you can take the lead from people who know your
industry in depth.

You can quickly create content by either agreeing or disagreeing with the author. Pick out
specific aspects of what they’ve written and expand upon it to create your own content.

Always give a good, keyword rich link to the original article. Leave a comment on the original
article or drop them a quick line telling them what you’ve done.

The simplest way to do that is to set up Google Alerts on your important keywords or set up
Google Reader to monitor the most popular blogs in your industry. See image on following
page.

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Chapter 5 | Create the right content

Check your reader every morning and you’ll never be short of stories to comment upon. Many
will also suggest additional content ideas.

Write your own articles

I keep a notebook with me most of the time. When I’m on a train, a plane or just hanging out, I’ll
jot down content ideas. It’s amazing how much you can map out in 15-30 minutes.

I review my notebooks at least once a week, look at all the ideas I’ve jotted down and then turn
those into a prioritized list of articles. Of course, I never get round to writing them all but it
means that I’m never short of ideas.

If you’re new to article writing, you can pick up some good tips by just copying what the
professionals do. I think structure is all important and I’ll spend a lot of time mapping out the
structure of an article before starting to write. I’ll brainstorm the important points and then
arrange them into a structure that makes sense. Once I’ve got a structure, writing the actual
article is easy and the result is always focused.

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Chapter 5 | Create the right content

You’ll find the idea of a reverse pyramid useful. It’s something that will be familiar to every
journalist in the world and something you simply must learn if you’re to succeed in writing
effective content.

Pick up your favorite newspaper or browse a news site and read just the first paragraph of the
stories that catch your eye. You should find that just having read the first paragraph of every
story will give you a good idea of the day’s news.

This is because of the way the stories are structured. Journalists are trained to give you
important information in the first paragraph as it sets the story up, tells you what the rest of the
article is about and encourages you to read more. It looks like this:

The most newsworthy and vital information is given at the top: that’s followed by important
details that flesh out the story and that’s followed by general background information.

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Chapter 5 | Create the right content

A series of articles
Once you get used to writing articles, you’ll want to think about writing a series of articles. Can
you combine some of your article ideas to create Part one, Part two, Part three and so on?

There are a number of advantages to writing a series of articles:

• It plans out your writing time in advance. You don’t have to come up with new ideas as
you know what you’re going to be writing about.

• It engages your readers – do it well and they won’t be able to resist coming back for the
next part.

But the best thing about a series of articles is that you re-purpose them as a valuable giveaway.
So if you have a series of four articles, turn them into a single product - a PDF, email course, or
a video.

Such products are fantastic for getting links and you can also use them to build your email list.
Offer people the free product in return for their email address.

Submit articles externally

In the early stages of link building, you should concentrate on publishing content on your own
site where it is likely to bring you the most benefit.

However, there will be a time for publishing articles externally. This has the benefit of spreading
your name to a wider audience but is also a nice way of getting valuable links to your site.

Many sites openly invite you to submit guest posts or articles. See image on the following page:

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Chapter 5 | Create the right content

In return, you’ll get a signature box that contains a link back to your site – usually you can pick
the destination page and the anchor text that is used.

Many people advocate using article directories – submit your article to the directory and other
sites can pick it up and publish it as long as they give you a link. I’m not a big fan of such
directories as I think they result in low value links.

I much prefer to go direct to the publisher and try to build a relationship. It does take more
effort but the increased quality of the traffic and links make it worthwhile.

User generated content

Think about user generated content. For instance, on the following page is a piece of content
you’ll find on TripAdvisor.co.uk - an article made up of photographs submitted by the users.

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Chapter 5 | Create the right content

The beauty of this is that all TripAdvisor.com has to do is provide the facility for their people to
submit reviews, photographs and stories. And of course if you can do that you can get lots of
content almost for free.

Collect great ideas

Become a collector of great content ideas. And that means not just content ideas in your own
industry, but content ideas from any industries which you can adapt to your own.

In comedy writing this is called the switch. So you take a joke about an accountant and you
switch that into a story about a teacher.

As you read news stories, watch what is happening online and as you find great ideas, even
from unrelated industries, collect them (that notebook or spreadsheet comes in handy again)
and think how you could ‘switch’ the idea to your own business.

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Chapter 5 | Create the right content

Finally
Once you’ve followed these guidelines, you will have a fair amount of content and you’ll get
reactions from your customers. You’ll learn more and more about what your customers think
of your content, you’ll better understand what they’re looking for and you’ll be better able to
create content that will build the reputation of your website.

Once you’ve got that solid foundation, you may want to move into video and other types of
content. With YouTube there are so many opportunities to publish and create your own videos
that it’s something that I think everyone should consider.

Creating quality content will give real value to your existing web visitors. As a result, they’ll view
you in a much more positive light and as a result be more likely to buy from you.

But of course, your quality content will also attract new customers - it can become one of
your most important methods of customer acquisition. And to get new customers, you have to
actively promote your content.

In the next chapter, we’ll cover how to promote your content, in some detail.

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Promote!

Chapter 6
Chapter 6 | Promote!

Creating great content gives you tremendous ammunition for attracting links.

But content without active promotion is likely to turn into a very damp squib. So you must have
mechanisms in place that will allow you to easily and repeatedly get your message out to as
many relevant people as possible.

Creating those mechanisms is well worth the effort. Imagine launching a piece of content and
knowing for certain that you’re going to get a fantastic and predictable response every time.
And sometimes you’ll hit the jackpot and your content will really take off.

In this chapter, I’m going to outline what mechanisms you need to have in place and then I’ll
give you a 7-point plan that will give any content you launch a superior chance of attracting
attention.

Make it easy for people to share your content

When people find something really useful, their immediate reaction is to share it with their
friends. And especially if they can be the first to do so.

Therefore make it easy for them to share by including social media links in your posts. You’ve
seen them of course on many sites - they’ll look something like this:

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Chapter 6 | Promote!

You can get the code to give you buttons like this on your site from http://www.addthis.com

And of course, it will be even better if your content is eye-catching, opinionated, timely,
controversial, useful or just downright strange. Experiment and have some fun!

Create followers and fan bases on social media

In the introductory paragraph above, I asked you to “Imagine launching a piece of content and
knowing for certain that you’re going to get a fantastic and predictable response every time.”

The foundation for doing that is to have a serious body of fans and followers. The more followers
that you have who are genuinely interested in your company and what you do, the better.

On Twitter for example, I’m interested in genuine followers so I’m selective about who I follow
back. It’s easy to add 100 quality followers every week. Do that every week for a year and you’ll
have over 5,000 genuine followers.

Here’s how in 30 minutes a day:

• Pick your top news sources and set up Google Reader.

• Every morning (the earlier the better), scan the articles and tweet only the ones you
find useful (3-5 items).

• Scan what your followers are tweeting about and re-tweet those with genuine value.

• Reply to and thank others for their re-tweets and comments.

Just doing that was enough to bring me hundreds of followers for a site that didn’t yet exist!

And once you bring your follower base up into the thousands, you have a ready-made and free
way of reaching many influential people.

Build lists of bloggers, journalists, news media

You must have a process for collecting the names and contact details of people who can help
you promote your website. And you must build them into lists.

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Chapter 6 | Promote!

Throughout this book, I use the word ‘process’ a lot. I do that for a reason. I have many ideas
that work well - and many that don’t. And when something works well, I sit down and try to
figure out why it worked and what steps I went through.

That’s important to me for two reasons:

• When I write a publication like this, it gives me ready-made and useful content that
works to share.

• It gives me processes that I repeat time and again - that means that new pieces of work
don’t take as long as they could do, and I can be sure that they’ll work.

So create a process for building lists of people who can help you - bloggers, journalists, experts
and so on. The process will mean that your lists of people who can help you will get bigger -
and more useful as time goes on.

Publish your own newsletter

Perhaps you think publishing a newsletter is a bit old fashioned, perhaps even lacking in
excitement?

Well, it may be as old as the hills, but there are few better ways to get your message out. Your
email subscription list is gold dust so treat it with respect.

And the funny thing is that every time you send a newsletter out, you’ll get links for the content
you’ve featured in it.

On the following page is an example from a site I love, http://www.londoncyclist.com - it’s a

model that is hard to beat:

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Chapter 6 | Promote!

Identify what is newsworthy about your site

I love watching a good journalist at work. I’m amazed at how quickly they can get to the nub
of any matter, and how they can quickly turn that into a good story within very tight deadlines.

How they do that of course is not only down to raw talent, but because they have a very clear
idea of what is newsworthy and what will make a story that their readers will be interested in.

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Chapter 6 | Promote!

At training workshops, I’ll often run a session where I get small business to look at what’s
newsworthy about their site. Usually the ideas dry up pretty quickly.

So you’ve got to look at your business through the eyes of journalist and what they’re looking
for. Here are just some examples:

• Your business is a genuinely unusual idea

• You’ve overcome the odds to start your business

• You’ve won an unusual order

• You’ve created new jobs

• You have a fantastic offer

• You’ve launched a competition

• You’re supporting a non-profit

• You’ve a made a great video

• An employee has done something unusual

• The journalist needs to create a list - the best start-ups in ...

• They need a seasonal story

• They need a local story

• They want to follow up on a big story

• They’re writing about a competitor

• They’re writing about a particular group and you fit the bill

• They need an example to illustrate a national trend

• They need an example to illustrate legislation

• They need expert comment

• They need an award winner

… and so on.

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Chapter 6 | Promote!

The message is that every business has a worthwhile story to tell - you’ve got to put it across
in powerful way.

Piggyback on breaking news stories

I’ve always been an early riser - it goes back to my roots in rural Ireland and funnily enough
it has stood me in great stead in my business career. I used to run a small public relations
consultancy in the 1990s and I always started the day watching BBC Breakfast TV when it came
on air at 6 am.

Over breakfast, I’d listen carefully to national breaking stories. I’d think about how I could get
one of my clients to give a local or a small business angle on one of the big stories of the day.

When I’d got a good idea, I’d check with my client, then phone the producer of the show and
offer to jump in a taxi and be there for an interview. Invariably, they’d bite on the idea and I’d get
some fantastic coverage for my clients.

Now, with the internet, it’s so much easier to pick out and piggyback on breaking news. David
Meerman Scott has written an excellent little book, ‘Newsjacking’ that tells you how to do it.

Respond to journalist queries immediately

This is a short tip on responding to journalist’s queries. A journalist is usually under time
pressure so don’t delay or you’ll likely lose the opportunity.

However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t prepare. If a journalist phoned you right now, what
could you say to benefit your business that would be short, punchy and interesting?

Not sure? Go practice!

Distribute news releases via wire services

Press contacts that you have personally built up over the years will always be your best bet for
media coverage. However, if you’re just starting out and really don’t have any press contacts,
press release distribution services can be a way to get your story in front of potential media.

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Chapter 6 | Promote!

These services work by distributing multiple press releases to journalists and media who have
specified which market segments they are interested in. So journalists might sign up to get
press releases on the travel industry, banking, food and drink, retail, small business and so on.

Every morning they’ll receive an email with the summaries of up to several hundred emails.
Journalists will quickly scan this list, click through to stories that catch their eye and if it’s
interesting enough, write a story based on the press release.

So you face a lot of competition and you’ve got to make your release stand out. However, the
emails do have a wide reach - from thousands of journalists who may be looking for specific
story, you need only a few to react to make the effort worthwhile.

There are free press release distribution services but you do get what you pay for. It may well be
worth spending several hundred dollars on one of the major distribution services - PRNewswire.
com, BusinessWire.com, PRWeb.com and URLwire.com. In the UK, look at PressDispensary.
co.uk or SourceWire.com.

Finally ...
Promoting your content takes time and creativity. As you work through the contents of this
chapter, you’ll find promotional activities that come naturally to you and some that do not.

Start where you are most comfortable, focus on setting clear objectives and do not give up
until you achieve them. Then push yourself further.

Once you’ve achieved some success your ability and your confidence will grow, and you’ll be
amazed at what you’re able to do.

Next, I’ve a special offer I think you’ll like …

Link Building Made Simple | 91

Special Offer

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Link Building Made Simple | 92

Special Offer

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Professional SEOs will tell you that different types of sites require different approaches
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Link Building Made Simple | 93

Special Offer

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Link Building Made Simple | 94

Special Offer

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Link Building Made Simple | 95

Special Offer

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Link Builder’s unique Firefox extension allows you to save the links from any web page -
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With Link Builder, you’re able to:

• View historic reports that show your progress.

Link Building Made Simple | 96

Special Offer

• See competitor profiles so you know where your competition got their links.

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Link Building Made Simple | 97

Special Offer

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Click here to start your Link Builder trial

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Bonus #2: SEO Made Simple Guide (Value - $19)

Written by SEO guru Mark Nunney, this value-packed e-book

introduces you to the need-to-know basics, such as how to:

• Find the right keywords for a new website

• Plan and structure your site’s content

• Get other sites to link to yours (an SEO must!)

• Create engaging content that people will link to and share

Whether you seek more sales, response, conversions, or visits from the search engines,
SEO Made Simple gets you off to a running start. The book is full of illustrations and clear
explanations, making it incredibly easy to follow (even if you’re new to SEO).

Bonus #3: Presentation “25 reasons why another site will link to yours”
(Value - $19)

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Special Offer

Why would anyone else link to your site? This unique video outlines 25 reasons why another
site will link to yours. Many will be relevant to you. We include real-life examples, so you can
see each tactic in action!

Bonus #4: Presentation “13 ways to assess a link prospect”

(Value - $19)

Assessing the quality of link prospects is crucial at every stage of a link building campaign.
Get it right and you’ll be way ahead of your competitors: spending time on link prospects will
bring you the best business and SEO benefits. But how do you assess the quality of a link
prospect? No more mystery in that - Ken McGaffin gives you 13 ways to assess a link prospect.

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Special Offer

Bonus #5: Presentation “How to create good content and build great
links “ (Value - $49)

Content and links are inextricably linked but it’s not just any old content or any old links. To
succeed, you’ve got to have links from quality sites, and to get those you simply must have
quality content.

Copywriting expert Nick Usborne and Wordtracker’s own link building expert Ken McGaffin
present “How to Build Quality Content and Links.”

Sign up today and you’ll get each of these bonuses - worth $155. They are yours to keep
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We Guarantee Your Satisfaction – Or You Pay Nothing

We know that when you put the Link Builder tool to work for your business, you’ll be positively
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Go ahead and try Link Builder for free. If in 30 days you don’t feel that our tool has met your
expectations, we’ll return every cent you paid - no hassle whatsoever. In other words, you
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Special Offer

Get it All Today!

This exclusive Link Builder subscription offer won’t last forever. So:

• Stop wasting your time on poor-quality links - and start finding the best link
prospects in any market.

• Uncover your competitors’ link building strategies and beat them at their own
game.

• Evaluate your own link profile - and see how you can turn this information into
hundreds of top quality link prospects.

• Find out why you’re being outranked on your most important keywords - and what you
can do about it.

• Find the online community around any topic and establish your brand presence.

• Keep discovering more and more link prospects in lucrative niche markets.

If you’re ready to shift your online performance into high gear, take the next step and try a
premium subscription to Link Builder today!

If you’re teetering on the brink, not quite sure, just drop us a line, [email protected]
and ask any questions you like.

But remember: this offer is backed by our 30-day, 100% Money-Back Guarantee. That means
you have nothing to lose (and profits to gain) by trying Link Builder right away!

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