Most of us in the digital marketing field have not received any formal training in SEO Link Prospecting: The Complete Guide to Finding Pure Link Gold .
We didn’t take any college courses on link building.
Or earn a master’s degree in the science of Google’s algorithm.
And here we are.
We are masters of self-education.
It’s hard to be your own teacher, but it’s made easier when others freely share their SEO knowledge online.
In the process of my own SEO work, I’ve learned a lot about discovering new backlink opportunities—a valuable practice known as link prospecting .
I am here to share this knowledge!
Link building can be divided into two broad categories: link prospecting and converting opportunities into links .
Yes, you can’t just start building links from scratch. There needs to be a separate step for research and preparation. This will help you build a larger number of higher-quality links—and in less time.
That sounds like a lot of work, but if you want rain, you have to accept the mud .
I’m not really sure if this is the perfect analogy, but any successful link building campaign requires thorough link prospecting to get started.
This article will guide you through finding links that will improve your SEO game, help you rank better, and increase traffic to your website.
What is link prospecting?
Simply put, link prospecting is the job seekers database process of identifying relevant backlink opportunities for your website.
There are many places where you can find these opportunities:
- Google itself
- Your competitor’s backlink profile
- Twitter and other social media profiles
- Quora and other Q&A forums
- Guest posts on relevant blogs
- Industry directories
- etc.
However, before you start looking for linking opportunities, you should identify your target keywords and a few other things.
The Anatomy of a Link Prospecting Request: 3 Elements to Include in Your Search
- The keyword
- The advanced search operator
- The footprint
Combining these three methods should 12 advantages of having a masters or doctorate allow you to find multiple backlink opportunities.
1. The keyword
Knowing which keywords to target is the first step to a successful link building campaign.
You might think that keywords and backlinks are unrelated, but that is absolutely not the case.
Each backlink should be linked to one of your target keywords.
In fact, your chances of finding relevant linking opportunities at all depend on your ability to identify the right keywords.
But it’s a little different than your usual keyword research. You can take a broad approach. For link acquisition, you choose broad keywords that define your industry or market.
Where you build your links doesn’t have to be a perfect fit for your specific niche. They just need to share the same broad industry interests.
Instead, choose keywords that you wouldn’t normally target with a PPC campaign because they’re too crowded and ambitious.
They are…
the words the market/industry b2c fax uses to describe itself.
common terms for practitioners in your industry (e.g. SEOs, digital marketers).
shorter phrases or single words (not longtail), so they are very crowded and competitive.
the words used in online magazines and publications within your market.
Keywords that bring a lot of traffic but few sales because there is no purchase intent.