This is where we keep our lab notes, industry analyses, how-to guides, webinars and experiment write-ups. At Citation Labs, our constant is innovation, and this blog is where we share our findings.
Once you've selected your report type and found some productive research phrases, it's time to "dial in" your prospects with the Link Prospector's Advanced Targeting Parameters. Setting the parameters can help reduce your time spent qualifying your results by "weeding out" or narrowing the non-prospects before you even download your results.
May 12, 2012
Topics: Agency Hacks, CL Tools: Link Prospector, Content Planning, Enterprise Link Building Tips
The Link Prospector takes your research phrases and combines them with tactic-specific footprints. This is what we use to find prospects for you. Your research phrases determine how useful and relevant your prospects will be. Learn our three rules for selecting successful research phrases.
This is part of a series on using the Link Prospector. After creating a new campaign for your account (campaigns are essentially "folders" for organizing your link prospects) it's time to click "Find Prospects" and pick a report type. The report types in the Link Prospector are roughly organized around tactics. Here are a list of the report types, the tactics they support, the resources you're likely to need and any notes.
My team and I are pretty heavy users of the link prospector tool. Combined with a couple of other sources, Link Prospector helps us to find a large number of guest posts consistently every month for our clients.
Today, I'm sharing a few of the little tips and tricks we’ve uncovered after several months of heavy usage of the tool.
March 25, 2012
Topics: Broken Link Building, CL Tools: Broken Link Builder, Enterprise Link Building Tips
The process we outline is not elegant, but it does help you cover a lot of ground - you can find and analyze thousands of resources and root out the dead pages and sites quite quickly. I've been building 40+ links a month with this method for one of my clients, and selling BLB prospecting as a service to others. As I've said before, link rot is your friend.
In some types of campaigns - value-add commenting and broken link building for example - you know the URL where your link will show up, assuming it gets published. And until today though I've always had to go, URL by URL, to see if my links went up. So I built a bulk backlink checker tool for my fellow link monkeys out there!
Link builder, there remain deep wells of link prospect opportunity... Even if you've queried every last prospect from Google and snatched every last link from your competitors' backlink profile. If you can make the right offer and have a ready team for outreach then list-scrape prospecting could add a steady stream of powerful links to your portfolio.
With "Advanced SEO's 7 Curiously Obvious Rules," Gab identified and filled a "necessary niche" in the SEO Book space. His work is more accessible and engaging than the (necessary reading) Art of SEO, and narrow enough to make itself a requirement on book shelves containing Aaron Wall's sprawling (and mandatory) SEOBook. And while his is certainly a book about SEO, and contains fresh, timeless advice, it's more a book that urges its readers to retool their mindset.
Nick LeRoy, the Minneapolis SEO, adds to the broken link building interview series that began with Melanie Nathan and moved next to Napoleon Suarez. I'm conducting these interviews to add to my knowledge base for my August 25th webinar: The Content Marketer’s Guide to Broken Link Building.
Prospecting for broken link building opportunities typically begins with a "seed set" either of competitor/relevant sites to check for 404s, relevant pages with lists of links and old/niche directory pages.
You can also use the new Broken Link Finder tool for industrial-strength broken link prospecting.
I'm currently at work on a sort of "multi-tool" for large scale broken link building. Obviously I'm learning by doing, but reading definitely adds to my education that culminated in the launch of the Broken Link Building tool!
Here are broken link building tools, articles, interviews, forum posts, videos and link rot information that you may find useful in your efforts as well
Big thanks to Napoleon Suarez of SEO Company Seer Interactive for generously contributing to my education on broken link building... I will be citing both him and expert broken link builder Melanie Nathan in my upcoming webinar: The Content Marketer's Guide to Broken Link Building.
August 16, 2011
Topics: Enterprise Link Building Tips, Expert Interviews, Link Building Industry Insights
In preparation for my upcoming webinar - The Content Marketer's Guide to Broken Link Building (August 25th 8:30 AM - 9:30 AM PDT) I sent some "best-practices" questions over to Edmonton SEO Melanie Nathan, creator of a formalized broken link building process.
Read her broken link building tips here.
Through marketing with tips and tip inventory creation I came to think of tips as the smallest expressible unit of expertise. From a research query perspective, tips are quite easy to extract from a market's community of practice.
But what about larger and more complex units of expertise?
Marketers who develop a methodology for classifying, collating and documenting their market research queries facilitate, speed up and create meaningful work segmentation opportunities at all stages of a content marketing campaign. This article outlines not a methodology, but the elements I believe are required for developing your own methodology.
Combine these tip-stems with your subject matter phrase roots to create an initial body of research queries for use in your favorite search engine or search scraper tool. These queries are meant to be used in conjunction with your tip inventory spreadsheet.
Tips are the distilled, actionable wisdom of subject matter experts. Tips become apparent to the subject matter expert as his general principles encounter reality. For the content marketer, creating a tip inventory of a market's knowledge provides a deeper understanding of a market's pains and opens up the opportunities outlined in this post.
Every market comprises a universe of subject matter phrases that, once discovered and cataloged, provide a marketing researcher's basis for mapping, understanding and engaging that market or market segment with content. These phrases enable a researcher to identify a market vertical's content needs, its subject matter experts, its publishers and its potential content-promotion targets.
While link building techniques are important for marketers to follow, I find that the nuts and bolts of link building campaign design and execution - especially at the agency level - gets short shrift.
Agency-side link builders Arnie Kuenn and Michael Schwartz share how they design link building campaigns, manage clients, and design & price their services.
While link building techniques are important for marketers to follow, I find that the nuts and bolts of link building campaign design and execution - especially at the agency level - gets short shrift.
Agency-side link builder Julie Joyce shares how she designs link building campaigns, manages clients, and designs & prices her services.
While link building techniques are important for marketers to follow, I find that the nuts and bolts of link building campaign design and execution - especially at the agency level - gets short shrift.
Agency-side link builder Jason Walker shares how he designs link building campaigns, manages clients, and designs & prices his services.
While link building techniques are important for marketers to follow, I find that the nuts and bolts of link building campaign design and execution - especially at the agency level - gets short shrift.
Agency-side link builder Joe Davies shares how he designs link building campaigns, manages clients, and designs & prices his services.
While link building techniques are important for marketers to follow, I find that the nuts and bolts of link building campaign design and execution - especially at the agency level - gets short shrift.
Agency-side link builder Peter Attia shares how he designs link building campaigns, manages clients, and designs & prices his services.
3 weeks have blown by since I announced the launch of Citation Labs with a roundup... I hope you had enough time to read through all 89 resources in my last edition cause you've got 83 more now.
Let's get this round up kicked off with a bit of news - I'm starting a link building agency, Citation Labs! You can read more about Citation Labs on our About page, and do check out my training and custom campaign services. I look forward to hearing from you - Garrett@CitationLabs.com.