Technical Link Building Tips

Here, we get into the technical nuts and bolts of link building. Pull out your advanced operators and favorite spreadsheet tool, and jump in with us!

[Links [are not | are no longer] a | There is no Universal] Top 3 Ranking factor(s)

The SEO community is reeling from an announcement by Googler Gary Illyes – @methode on X – during an AMA session last week during PubCon Pro 2023. Responding to a question, Gary indicated ‘backlinks are not a top 3 ranking factor, and have not been for some time’. Point of clarification: many posts/comments/Xs have injected ... Read more

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Links to Sales Pages: Total Overhaul for 2021-2022

Earlier this week, Garrett and I presented a 90-minute webinar that showcased a start-to-finish approach to building links to sales pages. Hosted by SEMrush, about 500 people registered and nearly 400 watched the broadcast live on YouTube and Periscope. Thank you to all who took time out of your day to join us, and a ... Read more

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Better Keywords, Better Links

The Prospecting Keyword Trifecta

Whenever a new tool is released, the first thing that comes into many SEOs’ minds is how can it help me get links? Certainly, the much anticipated release of Moz’s keyword tool was one of them, as finding good prospecting keywords is often essential for finding link building opportunities in tools like the Link Prospector or Broken Link ... Read more

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Big Prospecting with Authority Anchors

A Process Guide

Though our team has passed the 30 member mark I still hold tight to link and audience prospecting. This is in part because I love the hunt, but also because the relevance of our prospects to our promoted assets massively impacts conversion rate (being on a mission helps too...).

That said, I have recently formulated a scalable and repeatable process for some of the deepest, broadest niches of audience and link opportunities that exist. Think 10s of thousands of ops at a strike. Here goes…

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Link Prospecting Pro Tips

Discovering New Pages on Massive, Multi-Author Sites

Terry Van Horne of the SEOTrainingDojo presents the first video in a series of tips for using Link Prospector to perform SEO and Webmaster tasks. Use two tools to solve a common problem for anyone marketing a large website with multiple departments and webmasters constantly adding content to the site.

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Contact Finding + Link Outreach

Link Prospector Mastery

Congrats, Link Prospector - you've come a long way in learning how to use the link prospector tool. You've selected your link building tactic, discovered productive research phrases, dialed in your parameters to a razor focus and qualified your list down to 100 or 1000 of the best-suited prospects.

Now, at last, it's time for you to start on the final outreach portion of the process.

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List-Scrape Prospecting for Link Builders

List Scraping In a Nutshell

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.

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Towards a Methodology for Classifying & Collating Market Research Queries

For Content Marketing Campaigns

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.

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48 Query Stems for Creating a Tip Inventory

For Content Marketing Research

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.

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11 Suggested Columns for Your Tip Inventory Spreadsheet

The How-To for "How-To"s

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.

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A Brief Introduction to “Subject Matter Phrases”

For Content Marketing Research

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.

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