It may not be glamorous but it’s damn useful. Whatever kind of link building campaigns you're running, the ability to find relevant link prospects can help lay the foundation for a successful campaign. These are some of my top techniques to get away from the common methods and discover more relevant prospects waiting for you off the beaten track. As I've found that this stage of an SEO campaign is often one of the biggest unnecessary time drainers, I've also shared some tools and tips to help you prospect smarter. You can find links to all the tools mentioned as well as detailed tutorials on some of the methods over at: http://www.webdurance.co.uk/brightonseo-slides/

1. Link Prospecting:
Step Away From
The Search Engine

2. Takeaways
• Why you should step away from the search
engine
• Other places to find prospects
• How you can do this more efficiently

3. Spend more of your time
• doing things where you can make a difference
• that need the personal touch,
• planning, researching, delivering great
campaigns,
• building relationships

4. What’s wrong with
search engines ?

5. not to scale
sites found with
advanced search
queries

6. I <3 lists

7. alltop.com
ebuzzing
blogmetrics.org technorati.com bloglovin.com
ebuzzing.co.uk blogcatalog.com konector.com dmoz.org
cision.com lookbook.nu foodies100.co.uk hibs100.co.uk

8. Copy & Paste
Donkey’s years & RSI

9. Alltop.com
Right click headings > Select “scrape similar” > Save as google doc.
Chrome Scraper Extension

10. Blogmetrics.org
Scrape similar > change xpath: //div[*]/table/tbody/tr[*]/td[2]/a >
scrape > save as google doc

11. More than one page?

12. No details on page?

13. OutWit Hub & Bloglovin FTW!
Outwit Hub & Bloglovin Tutorial

14. Curated lists = social proof
• top / best [keyword] blogs to follow 2014
• “list of [keyword] bloggers”
• “top [keyword] blogs” etc…

15. Linkclump chrome extension
• Hotkeys > drag > paste

16. We’re still not done with lists
• Blogrolls
• “list of blogs I love” and “Places I’ve been
featured / interviewed / guest posted” style
pages
• Linkclump works well for all of these

17. I also <3 comments

18. Comments
• Commenters on articles that have covered your
stuff or a similar topic
• Collect and review those with sites.
• Linkclump or Scraper extension works on
majority of formats.
• Blogger.com, Disqus powered trickier

19. Disqus
• Name links to disqus
profile
• Profiles include site &
social details
• And other sites
they’ve commented
on!

20. Blogger.com powered
• name links to blogger profile or redirects to g+

21. I also <3 linkys

22. Common linky tools
• misterlinky.net – linkclump does a nice job as
does scraper with xpath tweaks
• inlinkz.com & linkytools.com - hop through
redirect. Scraper and linkclump don’t work,
Outwit Hub does.

24. From an e-mail list

25. Gmail & rapportive chrome extension

26. Fullcontact Person API

27. Fullcontact API & Excel
What you need: e-mail addresses, FullContact API key, the
Excel Template

28. social

29. twitter

30. Followerwonk
[keyword] blog > more options > “http” in URL field > download

31. Twitter chats & hashtags
• #bbloggers – beauty bloggers, #fbloggers – fashion ,
#pbloggers – parenting, #lbloggers – lifestyle
Loads more hashtags: http://blog.tweetchat.com/calendar/

32. Twitter Archiving Google Spreadsheet
http://mashe.hawksey.info/2013/02/twitter-archive-tagsv5/

33. #brightonseo

34. Who’s tweeting about #brightonSEO?

35. Let’s find out more about them
Top 100 Tweeters

36. Where are they?

37. What do they talk about?
advertising bbc radio 1 blogging brighton
business christmas east midlands facebook google
infographics london manchester marketing microsoft
windows music public relations ricky gervais search
engine marketing seo social
media software sussex twitter web analytics wordpress

38. What else did it find?
MySpace 1 Occupation 50
Age 2
Other: Vimeo,
Foursquare etc 50
Skype / gtalk 3 LinkedIn 53
Flickr 3 General Location 88
YouTube 8 Klout 92
Google+ 17 Bio 94
Facebook 33 Name 95
Gender 36 Photo 95
Company 50 Website 95

39. Twitter has lists too
But no native way to search for them!

40. Twitter List Explorer Google Doc
So we made one:
• Search for lists & collect member details
Will be released shortly

41. Google+

42. Google+ Communities
Search “[keyword] blog” > Click on group > Scroll down to
members > Click see all > Visit profiles & collect URL data

43. Facebook

44. Facebook Groups

45. Graph search

46. Events

47. Pages

48. A Problem with Facebook
• 50% profiles we tested didn’t display website
details anywhere!
• Is email outreach the best way?
• Facebook advertising to individual ids.

49. Getting their info off
Facebook

50. Step 1: Scraper or Linkclump Chrome Extension
Groups members page > scroll to show all members > scrape
similar on last member > swap numbers with * in expath >
scrape
Method also works for
Events & Graph search

51. Step 2: Facebook Graph API & SeoTools for Excel
=JsonPathOnUrl("https://graph.facebook.com/username","id")

52. What about Pages?
• Can’t get all fans, but Facesniper will get engaged ones.

53. Google news

54. Google News
• If you have something topical to promote – find
people who are already talking about the topic
http://press.customerdevlabs.com/

55. Spy on your
competitors

56. Which sites linked to a few competitors?
• Moz competitive link finder & Majestic Clique
Hunter
Great, but based
on historical data

57. Which sites linked to a few competitors?
• Link intersect excel template by @mihaiaperghis
• Last 6 – 12 months backlink data from ahrefs or Majesticseo.

58. What are they up to lately
• Open Site Explorer Fresh links – no api yet
• Majestic Seo fresh links - has api
• Ahrefs - sort by date - has api

59. What are they up to lately
• Monitorbacklinks.com handy if you don’t have a developer

60. What’s their best performing content?
But what does best performing mean?
Used to check for top linked pages.

61. What’s their best performing content?
Now find social performance more helpful

62. Reverse engineer
badges

63. Bloggers love badges
• Check where they link to
• Pull a link report & review
• Ongoing: monitor fresh links

64. Spy on similar themed
assets

65. Find similar themed stuff & borrow their success
• Buzzsumo again

66. Look for similar themed infographics*
• Paddy Moogan’s infographic search engine
*yes even if you’re not doing an infographic

67. Look for similar themed infographics*
*yes even if you’re not doing an infographic
• Search on visual.ly

68. Find who linked
Use backlink tools to all of its URLs

69. Find who linked
• reverse image search to find some the tools missed

70. Before I go…

71. Remember
• Not about spamming people
• It’s about being more efficient
• Spend less time collecting and more validating
and on the stuff you shouldn't outsource or
automate.

72. Thanks!
Find links to all tools, files, templates and
tutorials at
http//www.webdurance.co.uk/brightonseo-
slides/
Find me on twitter @carolynlyn