So I came in touch with one of the best Linkbuilders in the field of SEO, Garrett French. I follow his posts in Search Engine Watch – simply because they are awesome and provide high-value information to me and my team. I asked him if I could have a sneak peek into one of his latest projects (they have officially launched now) -  a link prospecting tool named Link Prospector.

Garrett helped build one of the most popular linkbuilding tools available in the market right now – Ontolo. Knowing that, it’s pretty much a no-brainer that I really had to look into what he’s up to now in his new co-founded company, (along with Darren Shaw of Whitespark.ca) Citation Labs.

After going through Link Prospector, here’s my two-cents about it:

Ease of Use
Link Prospecting Capability
Link Prospects Quality
Features
Overall:

Dashboard

The dashboard lets you check out your previous prospects, rename or delete them. It also lets you create a new campaign. Using Link Prospector is very simple and easy to use. You don’t have a whole lot of options to confuse you. You only have to start by creating a new campaign.

After you have created a new campaign, you will see this screen. Obviously, you have to click on Find Prospects to start prospecting.

Prospecting

When you are inside your campaign, you can then create a new report. The Prospects section of Link Prospector lets you choose your Report Type and filter your report by Region / Country, Search Scope, Depth, TLD and Date Range. These are very powerful filters and can really help you narrow your prospecting down.

There are different report types you can choose from. You can filter your reports to:

• Guest Posting – Discover blogs who allow guest posts and offer your writing services.
• Links Pages – Find the resource and links pages that will add a link to your site.
• Content Promoters – Find writers who are likely to cover your story, or repost your infographics and articles.
• Reviews – Look for people who review products or services in your space.
• Giveaways – Offer goods and services in exchange for coverage.
• Donations – Be charitable and earn links through sponsorship opportunities.
• Commenting – Find the posts relevant to your key phrases. Join the conversation, and link to your site.
• Expert Interviews – identify domain experts you can interview, or pitch your own expertise.
• Directories – Identify quality directories to help you get your site listed quickly.
• Forums – Add value to the conversation and build brand equity.
• Topical Blogs – Pinpoint the blogs that cover your industry, and are likely to post about your site.
• Professional Organizations – Locate trades and professional organizations you can join.
• Research: Content – Find top tips for writing great content.
• Custom – Use any amount of research phrases you like.

Select Region / Country and Search Scope

You can filter your prospecting further by using the Select Region filter – to which country and region you’re looking for a prospect in. You can also filter the Search Scope of your results -either web only, blog only, or both.

Select Depth Filter

You can also narrow your results down further by filtering the depth of the results to the first 20 results – giving you the top 20 most relevant results from the tool.

TLD Filter

TLD filter is one of the best features of Link Prospector. Getting a thousand .edu or .gov most relevant results that can help you in your link building opportunities is the ‘shiznit’. It’s amazing to have a list of 1,000 .edu prospects – even if you get just a 3% conversion rate, that’s still 30 .edu links for you. If you didn’t know, .edu and .gov are high authority links – and it’s really difficult getting some for yourself.

Date Range Filter

To top it all off, you can choose the freshness of your prospects by being able to choose a date range. You can choose ‘Any time’, ‘Past 24 hours’, ‘Past Week’, ‘Past Month’, or ‘Past Year’.

Research Phrases – Keyword Intent / Parameters

The Research Phrases section is all about your keywords and/or niche. This is where you are telling Link Prospector ‘These are the kinds of websites I’m looking for’. ‘Exclude Domains’ deals with your exclusions (in the exclusions section of the tool) – which you should fill up to tell Link Prospector which URLs you want Link Prospector to exclude from the report. You use the exclusion tool if you have already been to that URL and have contacted the webmaster or you have gotten a successful link, etc

After you have submitted your prospective keywords and filters, your report will be put on queue for creation. You will be notified via email when the prospect list is available for you to see.

Exclusions – Used up URLs should be ‘weeded out’

On the Exclusions section, you can put each and every URL you’ve been to so as not to have that URL be repeated again in your next reports. You can put a URL in the Global Exclusions – this can be your blacklisted websites (maybe they’re spammy, or the webmaster is hostile, or the webmaster doesn’t reply at all, etc…). At the same time you can put exclusions by campaign – all to make it easier for you to weed out which URL has been visited already so you don’t waste your time re-visiting them by mistake or by forgetfulness.

Profile

Your Link Prospector profile is where you set your account changes. It’s also where you can top up more credits to use for the reports, and subscribe to the Link Prospector tool.

Reports

Once the report is finished, you can either export it by domain or by path (webpages). The prospect list is described as ‘opportunities’. LTS in the report stands for the Link Target Score – this is most probably calculated with an in-house developed algorithm. – This is what the report looks like:

By Domain URL / By Site

Exporting the Link Opportunities in an Excel sheet makes it much easier for you to sort out and track your prospects – if you’ve visited them, contacted them, received a reply from them, got a link from them, etc… An Excel sheet also lets you easily put all the ‘used’ URLs into the Exclusions part of the Link Prospector tool.

By Deep URL / By Page

You can even export the Link Opportunities by page. Pretty neat as the tool easily lets you see the relevance of your prospecting with the page URL.

Key Takeaways: The Link Prospector is a very easy to use tool – and it’s ease of use is what makes me use it. The Exclusions feature is also a great comfort for me and my team – doing the ‘weeding out’ of used up URLs automatically.

Recommendations: It would be awesome if there is a PageRank, MozRank and Site Backlinks filter included in the tool – which I heard was underway. I’m excited to see it! These three metrics are very important to some linkbuilders and I think it would greatly benefit users if these three metrics will be implemented as data – and can be used to sort and filter all other data entities of the report.

I also think that the LTS can be further explained so that users will have more idea about it, what it’s for, how it is ‘generally’ calculated, what the benefit of high LTS is, etc… I think having an in-house algorithm such as the LTS is brilliant. Users just need to be educated a bit further about it so we can use it with understanding.

And lastly, perhaps my most important recommendation is: Keep it simple. Don’t add too many features. I know I gave Link Prospector 2 stars in the Features category – but that’s perfect! I love the simplicity and the ease of use of the tool – and I think that is what MOST of the tools I have seen and reviewed, lacks. Link Prospector is brilliant in its own way and keeping it that way is cool.

Tips for Keeps: I really recommend this tool for all my fellow linkbuilding specialists out there. It’s a delight to use.

Online Reputation Management (ORM) deals with everything about your company’s brand in the online community. This community includes the entire web – search engines, forums, blogs, news sites, social networking sites, etc…

Online Reputation Management is first being mindful of your company’s online brand then building on that brand in the search engines (chances are this is where you are sought for the most) through social media and other websites that produce and disseminate content.

Online Reputation Management is done through a funnel of three main processes:

Being mindful of your company’s online brand (Monitoring)

First and foremost, you have a brand – as the owner and manager of that brand, you have to be mindful about it. Know what’s happening to your brand. Know what’s the latest news about it. Know what people think about it. Where are you mentioned? What are they talking about when your brand is mentioned?

There are tons of tools that you can use in order to monitor your brand in the online world:

Google Alerts

This will be your best friend when you’re monitoring your brand online. You can track web results, news, blogs, video results, and groups results. There is no better way to get all of your brand mentions than Google Alerts. ‘Nuff said.

Yahoo Alerts

Set up  for free to track news by keyword, stocks, local news, feeds and more. Receive notifications via email, Yahoo Messenger or mobile.

Twitter Search

Twitter has grown to be one of the best places to monitor your brand in. Almost everyone in the Twitter world retweets content with or without hashtag. The beauty of Twitter search is that it also lets you set-up search parameters such as dates, links, location, sentiment, Twitter account, and more.

Social Mention

Social mention is the social media version of Google Alerts. It helps you monitor your brand in different social platform throughout the web. you can subscribe to the feed, get email alerts or download the Excel file.

Building on that brand (Prevention)

Online Reputation Management extends to these factors connected to you:

• Your Name
• Company
• Brand(s)
• Product(s)
• High profile employees
• Handles/usernames

If one of these things get affected by a bad reputation, it would usually spread itself to the others like a festering disease. Protecting your name, company, products and high profile employees are carry less impact compared to your brand (which should almost always be your username). For this tutorial, we will be discussing more about your brand and how to protect it.

BRAND / USERNAME:

This is the best thing you can do in managing your online reputation. Build and build and build and build on your brand. Branding is key to ORM. Surprisingly, it’s also arguably your most powerful asset when it comes to SEO. Building your brand can start from getting all of your brand’s social media usernames. You can find it out using Knowem.

As soon as you know on which social media sites your brand is still available as a username, grab the opportunity to register it there. These accounts are your online licenses to build ‘online real estates’. It will boost the chances of you filling up the first page of your brand SERP if you own powerful social media accounts with your brand as a username.

Some of the key social media accounts you SHOULD get are:

• Facebook profile / page
• Twitter
• Google+ Account / page
• Quora
• LinkedIn

If you have these accounts, interlink them with each other and link to them from your blog / website and they should rank really well in the search engines.

Get a Blog

Another great way to prevent bad reputation webpages from ranking as your brand is to create and maintain a blog. Search engines love blogs. That’s enough for you to know that you SHOULD get a blog for yourself in order for you to rank well and to have that powerful leverage for your brand that you can flexibly use whenever there is any newly published bad reputation out there.

There are a lot more reasons why you should have a blog for your company – you can publish company news, establish a readership, promote products and services, etc…

We will be discussing more about ORM Prevention methods in the next lessons of this tutorial.

Fixing any damaging content to your brand (Cleaning)

Once the damage is done and you don’t have any ammo to fire back, here’s what you need to immediately do:

• Hire an ORM consultant
• Contact the owner of the bad reputation site and humbly ask if he/she can put it down
• If it is against the law, contact any possibly concerned government body and ask them for help to bring it down
• Ask Google to de-index it if there are any elements in the page against Google’s guidelines

If all of those are not an option for you, start with getting all those powerful social media accounts and create a network of links to them using your website. Start a blog and interlink that blog with those social accounts and with your main website. It will take more time for these to rank – and most probably the damage will already be done by then.

ORM work is mostly about establishing that bullet-proof reputation in the web by getting all the possible ‘real estate accounts’ you can for your brand.

As much as possible, the Online Reputation Management campaign / work SHOULD NOT reach the Cleaning stage. It amplifies the workload on any Online Reputation Manager – all the while the damage has already occurred. The funny thing is, most companies that look for Online Reputation Management only do so whenever there is damage already done. Online Reputation Management is not about damage control, it is about establishing online brand foundations.

Tips for Keeps: If you have not already taken your brand name as your username in all the powerful social networking sites, do it. Now.

A business’ reputation is arguably its most valuable asset. Marketing is all about brand building. We invest in our brand because we believe it is what will make the business grow and flourish. Once that brand gets a bad reputation, everything about the business gets dramatically affected. Online Reputation Management is all about protecting your brand or cleaning it if things get dirty.

The internet is an area of free ideas, facts, opinions and voice. It is a place where you can directly or indirectly find almost anything and everything you’re looking for. It is also a place mostly beyond your control. And often times, there will be people you don’t agree with – and people who don’t agree with you. When this happens, the internet can be a very messy place.

Disgruntled customers today mostly vent out their anger and frustration in the web – where  they can freely do so and have an audience to boot. For companies, it might be unfair that these occurrences take place – but often times the ‘unfair incident’ happened to the customer first, and the web is their place of justice.

So just how do you make sure that these rants don’t go into the first page of the search engines? How do you prevent unwanted, devastating comments and feedback from popping up in the top results of the Search Engine Results Page?

I’ve compiled an Online Reputation Management Tutorial / Guide for you so that you can do your part in helping your company / other companies protect or fix their reputation on the web.

This Online Reputation Management Tutorial consists of the Following:

  Online Reputation Management & How to do it

  Social Media Reputation Management

  Search Engine Reputation Management / Reverse SEO

  Mininet Creation

  Reputation Distribution

  The Best Online Reputation Management Technique

We will be completing this tutorial one entry at a time.

Other Tutorials you might be interested in:

Linkbuilding Techniques

Linkbuilding Tutorial

On Site Optimization Tutorial

Just read about Mark Zuckerberg’s letter to the shareholders. It’s intriguing that he calls their corporate culture the ‘Hacker Way’. It clearly shows that companies are not the same as they were before – especially online companies. The culture is different, the way of doing things is different, the mindset is different, the competition is different. It’s a whole now different playing field at a whole new different level.

I think it is an encouragement and at the same time, a vision that we can all absorb. I’m definitely inserting this in my company DNA. And what a coincidence that our company’s name is SEO Hacker (SEO Hacker’s Way? Lol. On second thought…)

Here is a brief summary of what Mark said in his brief letter to the shareholders (I’m re-posting it here… In risk of Google Panda… Kidding.):

Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.

And we think this is a good way to build something. These days I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits.

By focusing on our mission and building great services, we believe we will create the most value for our shareholders and partners over the long term — and this in turn will enable us to keep attracting the best people and building more great services. We don’t wake up in the morning with the primary goal of making money, but we understand that the best way to achieve our mission is to build a strong and valuable company.

This is how we think about our IPO as well. We’re going public for our employees and our investors. We made a commitment to them when we gave them equity that we’d work hard to make it worth a lot and make it liquid, and this IPO is fulfilling our commitment. As we become a public company, we’re making a similar commitment to our new investors and we will work just as hard to fulfill it.

The Hacker Way

As part of building a strong company, we work hard at making Facebook the best place for great people to have a big impact on the world and learn from other great people. We have cultivated a unique culture and management approach that we call the Hacker Way.

The word “hacker” has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers. In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. Like most things, it can be used for good or bad, but the vast majority of hackers I’ve met tend to be idealistic people who want to have a positive impact on the world.

The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration. Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it — often in the face of people who say it’s impossible or are content with the status quo.

Hackers try to build the best services over the long term by quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations rather than trying to get everything right all at once. To support this, we have built a testing framework that at any given time can try out thousands of versions of Facebook. We have the words “Done is better than perfect” painted on our walls to remind ourselves to always keep shipping.

Hacking is also an inherently hands-on and active discipline. Instead of debating for days whether a new idea is possible or what the best way to build something is, hackers would rather just prototype something and see what works. There’s a hacker mantra that you’ll hear a lot around Facebook offices: “Code wins arguments.”

Hacker culture is also extremely open and meritocratic. Hackers believe that the best idea and implementation should always win — not the person who is best at lobbying for an idea or the person who manages the most people.

To encourage this approach, every few months we have a hackathon, where everyone builds prototypes for new ideas they have. At the end, the whole team gets together and looks at everything that has been built. Many of our most successful products came out of hackathons, including Timeline, chat, video, our mobile development framework and some of our most important infrastructure like the HipHop compiler.

To make sure all our engineers share this approach, we require all new engineers — even managers whose primary job will not be to write code — to go through a program called Bootcamp where they learn our codebase, our tools and our approach. There are a lot of folks in the industry who manage engineers and don’t want to code themselves, but the type of hands-on people we’re looking for are willing and able to go through Bootcamp.

The examples above all relate to engineering, but we have distilled these principles into five core values for how we run Facebook:

Focus on Impact

If we want to have the biggest impact, the best way to do this is to make sure we always focus on solving the most important problems. It sounds simple, but we think most companies do this poorly and waste a lot of time. We expect everyone at Facebook to be good at finding the biggest problems to work on.

Move Fast

Moving fast enables us to build more things and learn faster. However, as most companies grow, they slow down too much because they’re more afraid of making mistakes than they are of losing opportunities by moving too slowly. We have a saying: “Move fast and break things.” The idea is that if you never break anything, you’re probably not moving fast enough.

Be Bold

Building great things means taking risks. This can be scary and prevents most companies from doing the bold things they should. However, in a world that’s changing so quickly, you’re guaranteed to fail if you don’t take any risks. We have another saying: “The riskiest thing is to take no risks.” We encourage everyone to make bold decisions, even if that means being wrong some of the time.

Be Open

We believe that a more open world is a better world because people with more information can make better decisions and have a greater impact. That goes for running our company as well. We work hard to make sure everyone at Facebook has access to as much information as possible about every part of the company so they can make the best decisions and have the greatest impact.

Build Social Value

Once again, Facebook exists to make the world more open and connected, and not just to build a company. We expect everyone at Facebook to focus every day on how to build real value for the world in everything they do.

Thanks for taking the time to read this letter. We believe that we have an opportunity to have an important impact on the world and build a lasting company in the process. I look forward to building something great together.

I’m not a big fan of Mark Zuckerberg. But after reading these ideas, I must admit that he must be pretty darn good – even outside programming.

Link Research Tools is one of the best tools that came out after Yahoo Site Explorer shut down. It is really an exceptional Yahoo Site Explorer Alternative – and we’ve had the privilege of being one of the first to review the set of LRT tools in its entirety.

Link Juice Thief

In any business, you always want to stay at least one step ahead of your competitors. Well, when it comes to having a lot of link juice, you can. Let’s take a look at one of the tools by Link Research Tools – Link Juice Thief.

Link Juice Thief will enable you to look at the links that your competitors link to. You can also check out the outbound links of other authority websites or of any website you wish to for that matter. The target is to get backlinks from the links generated by the tool in order to indirectly get link juice from your competitors, authority pages, and other notable websites. As the name suggests, you “steal” the link juice from your competitors.

Let’s do a quick run through of the tool:

Once you enter the Link Juice Thief module, you can directly enter the URLs of the websites that you want to analyze or you can click the Find Competing Pages link. From there you’ll be able to enter the keyword(s) relevant to the website(s) you want to look up. In this example, I want to look up my competitors for “seo philippines.”

As you can see, these are the top 10 results that you will get from the keywords “seo philippines.” My website is ranked 8th which is good but I can do better by “stealing” link juice from my other competitors.

You can also choose the metrics that you want to see in your report. Here I have chosen to see the stats on backlinks, PR, MozRank, and Alexa Rank just to name a few. After you’ve done choosing the metrics you want, click Run Report to start creating it. It will take some time to finish creating the report depending on the number of metrics you’ve chosen to include. The Commonality settings allows you to filter the links to be generated by showing only the links that that match the number of times a page or domain has been linked to by the pages/domains you want analyzed. For this example, I have set it to 2.

After the report has finished processing the data, you can see the number of links that were generated (in this case, there are 9 links). You can also see the different metrics in a bar graph format which makes it easier for us to interpret the report. It is also important to note that the report can be exported in either CSV, Excel or PDF format.

Here you can see all the details pertaining to the websites that you can get links from including all the metrics that you have pre-selected before generating the report. As you can see, there are a lot of details that are shown at the same time. You have the option of editing several filters to make this report suit your needs

There we go. I have hidden the columns which I don’t need to see and I have set the order of the links by their Page Rank.

I want to find a link that has a theme related to “newsgroups.” In this case, I’ve chosen seomoz.org. This would be a great site to get links from because a lot of my competitors are linked to it.

Overall, the Link Juice Thief tool is a great resource when you want to stay ahead of the game. When used effectively, this tool will give you an edge over your other competitors.

Missing Links Tool

Is your website lagging behind your competitors in terms of the number of backlinks your website has? There’s one tool that can help you catch up – Missing Links Tool.

The Missing Links Tool has a very simple function – it compares your website’s backlinks and your competitors’ and shows all the links they have but you don’t. By adding those “missing links” to your own website,

Here’s the run through I made:

For this example, I have chosen to compare and analyze the domain backlinks from digitalmoz.com and woosamedia.com against my own. As for the metrics, I just chose to show the Basic SEO Stats and Google Metrics.

From the advanced options, you can input the Report Title you want and select the Common Links Strategy you’d like to use. Common Links Strategy enables you to find and compare either the domain source pages or the page/URL source pages.

Here you can see that the report generated 1,033 domain backlinks with most of them having a Page Rank of 0 and coming from blogs.

From here, you’ll be able to view the domain backlinks of your other competitors.

This is another report which analyzes and compares page links instead of domain links. This is useful if you want to get as much credible links from one site as possible.

Juice Tool (Bulk URL Analyzer)

The Link Juice Tool is a favorite of many because it gives a quick overview of a lot of data. You can get detailed information from any page/s and backlinks using the metrics provided including Link Research Tools’ own CEMPER Juice.

As usual, I have chosen to analyze the URLs of digitalmoz.com, woosamedia.com, and seo-hacker.com. In addition to the Basic SEO stats and Google metrics, I have selected to use the CEMPER Juice Indicator metric as well. The CEMPER Juice Indicator evaluates if the domain and/or pages are good targets for link acquisition.

This report is similar to all the others except for one metric; the Juice metric. As you can see, digitalmoz.com has a “Juice/25″ result. This means that the domain and/or pages within has/have been found to be juicy. It ranks no. 1 for a unique phrase. The value of 25 signifies the numerical rating of “juicyness.” The higher the value, the better. 25 is the highest value possible.

For seo-hacker.com, the result returned was “JuiceD/25.” This means that the page/s has/have been found to be juicy but has been replicated on the same domain. This is usually the case when it comes to blogs and forums that show the same content but are under different URL pages.

Strongest Sub Pages Tool

The Strongest Sub Pages Tool (SSPT) crawls the domain in search of the most powerful sub-folders and sub-pages. Essentially, if a page is considered to be “strong,” then it is an excellent page to get a link from. A special algorithm has been developed to define a page’s strength which is based on its contents’ quality and linking structure. Up to a 1000 pages can be shown.

I’ve chosen to use my site as an example for this test.

The report generated 291 pages. As expected, my website’s homepage is the strongest page. Generally speaking, it will be difficult to get links from a website’s homepage so you can try to get links from the other top ranking pages.

Here we have the strongest subfolders which shows which parts or sections of the website have the highest ranks. From here, you will be able to gauge where you can get the best links possible.

All in all, the tools found in Link Research Tools are focused on one thing – extensive research and analysis of the best possible backlinks anyone can find.

Contact Finder

In the Link building arena, the more quality back links you acquire from different domain names, the better. One of hardest aspects of acquiring links is contacting your link prospect. Your Pitch should be detailed and personal for your prospect not to ignore you and at least reply to your inquiry. Let’s take a look at one of the tools by Link Research tools – Contact finder.

Contact Finder will enable you to be ready for your pitch to your link prospect. Your Pitch is that important that you need to research certain information about him/her to gain the chances of you receiving a reply from your prospect. This great tool will automatically give you a list of a bunch of information about your prospect like contact information, email addresses, twitter accounts, Facebook profile and etc.

Let’s do a quick run through of the tool:

Once you’ve chosen a Website you want to build links into, enter its URL to the Contact finder and click the ‘Run Report’ Button. This is the first and the last step before you see the details regarding your prospect.

In just few minutes, you’ll be able to see fresh contact information about the man behind the website you chose. You’ll be able to see if he has an account on Facebook, twitter, Google+ and linked in. This feature will help you build a relationship to the webmaster which will greatly grease your pitch to a quality backlink for your website.

Overall, the Contact Finder tool is a great resource for the necessary information regarding your Link Prospect. It will allow you to give your pitch a personal touch that will help it earn a positive answer from the web master.

SERP Research Tool

Are you having a hard time looking for Link Prospects? Well, you haven’t exhausted it all yet. Here’s the SERP Research Tool by Link Research Tools.

The SERP Research Tool allows you to find link prospects where you can get quality and juicy back links for your website.

Here’s a run through I made using http://seo-hacker.com :

For this example, I’ve entered the URL of Seo-Hacker and some of its keywords. What’s great with this tool is that it will allows you to choose what kind of website you’re looking for, are you looking for forums, Q&As or Discussions, and others. This feature gives you a bit of control that will yield to your desired results.

You can also choose what search engine you want the tool to use for your search query. This is a great feature that allows you to exhaust the results of all your preferred search engines. Also, the tool provides you with an option regarding the extensiveness of the search. You can determine your standards with regards to the link you want to get for your website. You can easily tick the check box of the metrics you want to apply. This is the first and the last step before you will be able to view the details regarding your prospects.

In just a few minutes, there you have it, more than 2000 prospects for http://seo-hacker. Take note that the SERP Research Tool doesn’t show the URLs you’ve already built links into. So these results are definitely fresh, meaning, you don’t have links yet from these websites related to your market niche. That’s one great feature a link builder dreams to have but know it’s possible though the SERP Research Tools. Also, this great tool enables you to sort the results through different filters like keywords, Yahoo links, Moz rank and etc. This feature gives you more power to customize your desired results.

Overall, the SERP Research Tool is a must-have for every link builder. It gives you the freshest Link Prospects with regards to your keywords that possesses your desired search parameters and metrics.

Link Juice Recovery Tool

Have you ever encountered a link that goes to an error page? That is called a dead link. Having dead links in your websites costs you a lot of link juice. The Link Juice Recovery tool by Link Research Tools enables you, as a webmaster, to locate or identify your website’s dead links.

Having this information gives you the liberty to either create a new page for that link or you can redirect that link to a working page in your website. This will help you improve the interlinking of your website – passing the link juice from one webpage to another inside your website.

Let’s have a run through of this tool:

On this page, all you need to do is to input your website URL/Domain and click the ‘Run report’ Button to initiate the analysis. This is the first and last step before you see the dead links of your website.

After a few minutes, you’ll be able to see a list of dead links and their error codes analysed from your website. These results also tell you how many back links are affected by the dead links found in your website. This is a great picture to actually inform you, as the web master, how much you are missing due to your dead links.

Got too many dead links? That’s easy with the Link Juice Recovery Tool! All you need to do is to copy and paste the .htcaccess code created and all the affected dead links will be redirected to your website’s home page. But, of course, going through the hard way of creating a page for every dead link is still the best solution to dead links.

Overall, the Link Juice Recovery Tool provides the most detailed and freshest data with regards to the dead links in your website. You can also use this tool when you’re doing Broken Link Building as a link building strategy. This tool is definitely a must-have for every link builder or web master.

Link Alerts

Have you ever wondered where your links are coming from? What are your most recent links? In what theme/market niche do you get the most links? These are some questions that you can get from the Link Alert Tool by Link Research Tools. This great tool finds the back links you have from other websites and automatically gives you a list of all the links you were able to get in a certain period of time.

Having this information on hand, you’ll be able to adjust the link building strategy you implement for your website based on the current movement of your back links.

Let’s have a run through of this tool:

In this page, all you need to do is to assign a URL you want to get the Backlinks information and tick on the boxes of the metrics you want to implement. This is the first and the last step before the tool gives you a report. The report doesn’t come timely due to the extensiveness of the crawling that needs to be done for your URL.

The Bar graphs above shows you a summary of where your links are coming from. For example using the Seo Hacker domain, (as shown in the 1^st Bar Graph by Theme of a Domain) this bar graph shows you on what theme of domains you get more links. With this information you can easily adjust on what market niche/ theme you’ll focus your link building strategy. In our case, Seo Hacker is getting links from blogs and other website themes.

As seen in the 2^nd Bar Graph, you’ll be able to see on what kinds of sites Seo-Hacker is getting its links from. In our case, the company is getting the most number of links from blogs and general websites. In the 3^rd and 4^th Bar Graph, this information focused on the ranks of the websites Seo Hacker is getting its links from. In our case, we wanted to get the information based in the AC Rank and Seomoz Rank. This information will most probably tell you how juicy your links are.

The Report also gives you a detailed list of the links you were able to acquire in a period of time. Through this report you will be able to know what Anchor Texts are used on the links, is it a do follow, no follow or a mention and the date when the link was acquired.

Overall, the Link Alert tool provides essential and simple information that every link builder needs. Through this tool you get the information you need and you want and it automatically notifies you via email. You can also schedule the notification if you want it weekly or from the moment a link is acquired. It is a very complex yet easy-to-use tool.

Google Plus is gaining momentum now more than ever – especially with the SEO world. It is continuously becoming a major factor – especially now that Search Plus Your World has rolled out. Google Plus Optimization isn’t so far from being an SEO technique that we can all use.

Search Plus Your World has changed the search landscape – making Google + a very powerful factor in Google search. At that, you should really put effort and focus on optimizing your Google Plus. Otherwise, you could get behind the Google shift – from links to social.

For this entry’s purposes, please refer to the SEO Hacker Google Plus Page.

Name / Brand as the Page Title

The name of your Google+ Page will be included in the Title of the page. Again, Title tags are very important and hold considerable weight in on-site optimization. My advice is to put in a casual keyword in your Google+ Page’s Name section. Don’t put keywords that can shame you whenever you will use your Google+ Page account to post a comment on another person’s Google+ posts.

SEO Hacker is fortunate enough to have the word ‘SEO’ on its name – so our Google+ page already has our keyword casually inserted in.

Meta Description

The Meta Description of your Google+ Page is the one right below your Name/Brand. You should include your keywords inside to help you rank better for those keywords in Search Plus Your World.

When people find you in Google, this is evidently what they will see. As of now, SEO Hacker put its company slogan “Be Visible. Get Searched. Let’s Make this Happen.” in its Google+ Page. You can put yours there too.

Introduction Section

The introduction part is the body of your Google + Page. This is where you should put in all the stuff that people will want to know about you. This is also your chance to put in your primary keywords in a way that you can be strategically subtle about it. You can also take advantage of its ability to let you write stuff out in bulleted format to make it more reader-friendly.

Photos

In the photos section, you can put up to 5 main photos that will show up whenever someone looks at your Google Plus Page. Here, you have the chance to upload photos with your keywords in. This will also increase the completion of your profile. I would advise that you put in the most related pictures and not personal ones.

Your Google+ Page pictures will also appear in the new Search Plus Your World’s SERP.

Recommended Links

This is pretty much a no brainer. The Recommended Links section in your Google+ Page lets you put in any link that you like. In order to optimize your Google+ Page, we advise putting in links that are only directly relevant to your Google+ Page and keywords. Put in links to your other social network profiles, blog, website, resources, etc…

Update Frequently

An update in your Google+ Page every two days can work. As long as people see that there’s something happening on your Google+ Page, it will indicate that you are active. Of course, Google will also notice that something’s cooking in your Google+ Page – and chances are, it will help put you up in Search Plus Your World.

Link to your Google+

Putting links to your Google+ Page with your keyword in your anchor text can help boost your Search Plus Your World rankings. It’s basically linkbuilding for your Google Plus Page. Do guest posts with your Google Plus Page link in your author bio with a rel=”publisher” or rel=”author”

Promote your Google+ Page

A Google Plus Page is only as good as the people who has it in his or her circles. You have to have people in your niche add you up. SEO Hacker’s Google Plus Page is only so fortunate that a lot of people in the SEO and internet marketing niche included it in their circles. Some of those people also gave us valuable +1′s. I want to personally thank all of you – please make your voice heard in our Google+ page and even our Facebook Groups!

Because of you, SEO Hacker is now in the Top 10 of Search Plus Your World when looking for ‘SEO’.

Disclaimer: I’m using an empty Google Adwords Account for this screenshot. Results might not be the same with your Google Account.

Tips for Keeps: Optimize your Google Plus Page and humbly ask for +1′s if they ‘Like’ your page. Quite ironic, isn’t it?

You can also check out a more complete Google Plus guide for SEOs to add to your Google Plus Optimization knowledge.

Google is now undergoing a major change in their search engine as they implement ‘Search Plus your World’ – it is simply integrating Google + into their search engine algorithm in order to serve it in their search engine results page.

Social Takes Center stage

We can see social having a bigger part in the search engines. It’s slowly but surely creeping in and taking center stage. There have even been news that social is the new linkbuilding – and that linkbuilding is dead (which is simply not true).

Search Plus your World takes social one step further into its grasp on search. You have to be signed in to Google (meaning you have to have a Google account) to take advantage of its benefits.

What does it do?

Basically, Search Plus your World helps you dig into Google+ data and pulls this data out together with the usual search engine results, and shows it to you. This data may concern people in your circles, their photos, what they’ve shared, +1′d, etc…

Search Plus your World combines both personalized search (which deals with tracking your logged-in personal searches) and social search (which deals with your social media connections and efforts affecting search results). It merges it in a way that tries to make the search engine’s results more relevant to you in terms of your personal intentions behind the query.

How Search Plus your World affects SEO

Search Plus your World shifts the paradigm to a whole new level. Suddenly, you have to be in the Circles of everyone! You want your company to be in the Circles of anyone and everyone in your market. You want your Google + Page to be easily accessible and looked for by people in your market.

Search Plus your World promotes Google+ in a very compelling way. Companies will realize that having a Google+ page, and promoting it, is a must – if they want to get better (albeit personalized) rankings in Google.

On top of that, if you are on a lot of people’s circles, you would want to keep on sharing your stuff all over – so that it would appear on your circle’s ‘personal results’.

People and Pages

Search Plus your World now lets you check out people and pages in Google + in the SERPs. It really highly encourages all people to go into Google +. We still don’t exactly know how Search Plus your World ranks relevance in order for your Google+ profile or page to appear on the right-hand corner of the search results. We’re guessing that it’s a combination of profile keywords, +1s from people with relevant profiles, number of people with relevant profiles who have you in their circles.

The more people seeing you on the People and Pages on Google+ results, the more chances of you getting more people in your niche into your circles. Crazy.

The Social Landscape

Search Plus your World is currently set at default and you would have to opt out if you don’t like the feature. It gives you an option to switch back to the previous version of search – which segregates social and personalized search results from the normal, unpersonalized ones through a toggle button on the upper right side of the query text area.

Knowing that, we can now say that ‘personalized’ and ‘social’ search is now the norm. Search has changed drastically in the past few years. And it’s changing even faster as social slowly but surely changes the landscape.

Search Plus your World definitely encourages people to go social. Cut down your linkbuilding efforts, and increase your Google+ promotion!

Chances are, sooner or later, there will be a lot of new players for Social Media Optimization. It’s getting bigger and bigger and the bearing on search is getting heavier and heavier..

Tips for Keeps: BEEF UP YOUR GOOGLE+ PROFILE AND PAGES!!!

Guest posting is a very powerful linkbuilding technique. Basically in a guest post, you have full control. You can direct the title tag, anchor text of your backlink, number of words, images, author bio, etc. Let me show you where you have to start

Looking Out

First thing’s first. You have to look for blogsites where you can guest post in. Usually this is done through link prospecting. If you have established your list of blogs where you want to be heard, it’s now time to look for a way to get in touch with the webmaster.

Building Bridges

If you want to let your voice be heard, you have to sing to the webmaster first. Like his pages, Share his stuff, Retweet his entries and updates, leave insightful and encouraging comments in his blog. If you want to gain favor from the webmaster, you have to earn it. There is almost no other way on the web – unless you’re Justin Bieber.

Another option is to just shoot the webmaster an email even without investing much social media effort to catch his attention. This is a less effective way, but if you’re buying time – this works. And just for you, I’m going to reveal the guest posting email template that SEO Hacker is currently using.

It is always better to establish and build on your relationship with the webmaster before asking for any favors. Guest posting is a mutual act but most webmasters think of it in a way that they’re giving you a favor instead of the other way around. You won’t want to go against that. Ride it. Make them feel how much you appreciate them and mean it.

Climbing the Mountain

Success is achieved only if your guest post gets published the way you want it to – with your keywords in the title tags, your anchor text in the backlinks, your link placements, etc…It’s not easy to have it all under control – simply because it’s not your blog. There are lots of factors affecting your guest post success rate:

• Length and quality of the guest post - Too short is always bad. Too long is only a bad thing if you’re beating around the bush and you don’t have the best grammar. Be straight, informative, and entertaining.
• Links inside your guest post - Too many links may signal to the webmaster that you’re a person who has no shame. Put in a little humility – only include links that are really relevant.
• Relationship with the webmaster - This is your best bet and leverage. Having a relationship with the webmaster alone puts your success rate up by more than 50%
• Topic of the guest post - Topics that have already been written in the webmaster’s blog will be unacceptable. You need to put in a unique one with a catchy title, attractive pictures, and reader-friendly style.
• Quality of your own blogsite/website - Webmasters will take a look at what they are linking to. Having a crappy website never helps.

These are just some of the most important factors you don’t want to overlook. And to help your success rate increase, we also added another factor – which is your email template’s effectivity. We’re happy to share with you our own email template outlined below.

Guest Post Sample Email Template

Hey there, (name of webmaster)!

My name is (your name)– I’m a (profession) and the editor over at (your website), and I’m very interested in guest posting here at (webmaster’s website).

I discovered you through Twitter, followed your updates, and dig how informative you are. Checking out your blog this morning, I was really impressed and wanted to get involved.

Here are a few ideas I think your readership might enjoy:

1. “Is Your Title Tag Optimized for Search Engines?”

This post will explore the importance of title tags (basic stuff), then invite your readers to submit their site for review in the comments section — I’ll personally visit each website and offer a little feedback. You can see an example of this over at… (sample website)

2. “Why Google Wants You to Get Social”

This post will cover the reason behind Google’s launch of G+, how it affects SEO, and how we can approach SEO with social in mind.

3. “Front Page Title Tag: Are You Going for Optimization or Branding?”

This post explores the decision you need to make regarding your front page title tag … whether to go for optimization or branding. The solution I have in mind is optimization first, in order to help you gain footing in the early stages of your website, then moving to branding once you gain that footing.

Let me know what you think, (webmaster). Hope all is well!

(your name)
(Your blogsite)

This email template is composed of three major parts:

Introduction - Of course there is a need for the webmaster to know who you are, what you do and why you’re contacting him/her

Ego-boost - You need this as leverage. Webmasters are very, very busy people. Getting a hint of their attention demands more than what you think. A good ego-boost will almost always guarantee you a reply.

Alluring Options - If the first topic you send his way is not a good choice, you will waste time trying to send him another one, and perhaps another one. Getting that topic that will clinch the guest post is crucial.

This email template usually fetches us a good reply rate with a good success rate to boot. It goes a long way from the usual ‘Dear webmaster…’ which really sucks and ends up in the spam folder. I’m sure you’ve received an email like that somewhere in your life.

Once you receive a reply and an invite to guest post in their blog, you need to write the article – and write it well. But that’s the easy part.

Upload all the pictures to your own blog, then translate the entire guest post to HTML (you can do this through your WordPress editor). All the while, make sure all pictures are sourced from your own blogsite/website to get more links. Then submit it to the webmaster for publishing.

Keep your fingers crossed that the editing will be few and minor. And that’s it!

Tips for keeps: Only your relationship building method with the webmaster can increase your success rate to 100% – invest on it. You can also download Ann Smarty’s Guest Blogging eBook for more guest posting strategies.

This is arguably the most powerful linkbuilding technique there is. Having great relationships around you to availably help you out in your linkbuilding efforts is a priceless arsenal to behold for any linkbuilder. The idea is simple.

This entry is part of the SEO Hacker School series: Linkbuilding Techniques

Give and Take

All relationships start with something – usually a conversation. As a linkbuilder myself, I always make it a point to communicate with the thought leaders in my niche – usually just for the heck of it. Talking with a friend doesn’t have to have any motive behind it. And that builds the relationship between both parties.

In the internet, communication can be in a form of various methods. It can be through a Tweet, a blog comment, an email, even a Facebook Page wall post! Believe me, a Tweet can go a long way. Jason Acidre and I started a linking partnership together through just a Tweet – and we got to know each other from there on.

Ana Hoffman, on the other hand, contacted me through email to invite me to guest post in her blog (which I did – about the importance of URL Slugs). This started a series of linking to and fro between us for the different blog entries that we have. It also started a mutual sharing relationship between us with our latest entries.

Kristi Hines has always been a very generous linker. A simple email to her asking about her opinion on using Google+ over Facebook sparked a great linking relationship between us. She has published numerous extremely helpful posts out in the web. She’s everywhere! And I’m ultimately privileged to be mentioned (and linked to) in her Friday roundups.

These are just samples of relationships that I’ve built over the course of my work in SEO Hacker.

It’s all about Relationships

That is what Linkbuilding comes down to. In the real world, links pertain to referrals or references. If a good friend told you that you should buy an iPhone 4s and you’re looking to buy a new smartphone, his referral will influence you. Meaning, the iPhone 4s has been leveraged as an option in your life because of your friend’s influence over you as a good friend.

A link works the same way. It leverages that which it points to – in the online world. And if the link’s source is an influence over you, you will follow it. This link bears weight to you. And if it bears weight to a lot of other people, then it must be a good link. A trustworthy link. Therefore, that which it points to must be good. It must also be trustworthy.

All relationships around the linker, the destination and the link itself is affected. Just like in real life – the referrer, the buyer and the referred is affected by a single referral.

The best, purest form of linkbuilding should be about building relationships. If you have relationships around you that you can tap, it makes it all the easier for you to build great, quality links.

First Step – Say Hi

Almost all the time, if it’s you who needs links, you’re the one who needs to reach out. There is virtually an unlimited amount of resources at your disposal that enables you to reach out to the thought leaders and other publishers in your niche. Tweet them, email them, tap them on the back, you can even set a meeting and buy them coffee!

Our world today makes relationship building so much easier. Technology has made everyone easily reachable. Use this to your advantage.

Second Step – Give

Don’t go shooting out Tweets or Emails asking for links. That’s just not gonna work! You have to be a giver first. Genuinely participate in their blogs and the things that matter to them in order for them to give you their attention. Expecting something in return for nothing is wishful thinking.

Perhaps you need to link out to them or interview them or cite them as a source in your blog. Anything that enables you to give to them is a plus. In this step, you are reaching out to these people to show them you are interested in building a relationship with them.

Third Step – Ask

Don’t be shy, you can sometimes ask a link or two if you have a linkable asset that they can use as a source. Once you got their attention and you’re sure you’ve given to them, there is now no reason for you to try and ask nicely for a link or two. Sometimes, if you’re very confident that they will notice you without asking, you can skip this step. In my case, the third step has generated me a bunch of great, quality links that I would otherwise have forfeited.

Fourth Step – Keep Talking

A relationship can die out if it’s left stale for a long time. If you don’t keep the communication going, it would soon be hard to ask for a link again. Giving is always a part of a relationship. Asking is an option. But communication is a must. Keep that Retweet button hot, tell them how much you liked their latest entry, give them a heads-up that you linked to them in your blog, etc…

 Tips for Keeps: Get your ass off your comfort zone and learn to say ‘Hi’ – who knows how that relationship can affect your linkbuilding campaign?

I’m sure along your SEO journey,  you’ve most probably already encountered news release. This linkbuilding technique is usually a great way to attract links through other publishers and press release websites. And as you well know, other publishers and press release websites can generate a lot of buzz – and they usually have good PageRank juice to boot!

This entry is part of the SEO Hacker School series: Linkbuilding Techniques

It all Boils down to Content

Again, the thing you need to start with is having a good, solid content that is newsworthy. Usually this content has to be fresh and new in your industry in order to spur interest with publishers. Always remember that in news pitching, you’re not just writing for any ordinary person. You are writing for publishers and other knowledgeable writers in your niche – who are usually as updated as you are!

Obviously, having a content that can be considered a ‘fresh scoop’ SHOULD be worthy of attention and media coverage. Once you have established your newsworthy content, it’s time to spread the word.

Getting it out

It’s not everytime that you publish the news in your own blog. Sometimes it is more strategic for you to publish it in press release websites such as Technorati or The HuffingtonPost.Why? Because they have a good, established amount of readers – some of whom are publishers such as yourself! And if they see you publishing in well known PR sites such as Technorati or The HuffingtonPost, they’re going to have an increased amount of respect for you.

You can either apply to become a writer for Technorati or be a top commenter to be able to write at The HuffingtonPost. Becoming a publisher in either one of these sites can be a good leverage for your news pitching strategy. It’s very hard to become a writer at The Huffington post though. But no matter, there are several other sites you can pitch news in.

Press Release Websites

• 24-7PressRelease.com – Free release distribution with ad-support
• 1888PressRelease.com – Free distribution, paid services gives you better placement and permanent archiving.
• ClickPress.com – Distributs to sites like Google News and Topix.net, Gold level will also get you to sites like LexisNexis.
• EcommWire.com – Focuses on ecommerece and requires you include an image, 3 keywords and links.
• Express-Press-Release.com – Free distribution company with offices in 12 states.
• Free-Press-Release.com – Easy press release distribution for free, more features for paid accounts.
• Free-Press-Release-Center.info – Distributes your release, offers a web page with one keyword link to your site. Pro upgrade will give you three links, permanent archiving and more.
• I-Newswire.com – Allows for free distribution to sites and search engines, premium membership differs only slightly in adding in graphics.
• NewswireToday.com – All the usual free distribution tools, premium service includes logo, product picture and more.
• PR.com – Not only will they distribute your press releases, but you can also set up a full company profile.
• PR9.net – Ad supported press distribution site.
• PR-Inside.com – European-based free press release distribution site.
• PRBuzz.com – Completely free distribution to search engines, news sites, and blogs.
• PRCompass.com – Distribute your press release with a free or paid version, others can vote it up ala Digg style.
• PRUrgent.com – Not only distributes your release, but attempts to teach you how to write one, and even offers downloadable samples for you to work with.
• Press-Base.com – Submit your release for free and get on their front page and the category of your choice.
• PressAbout.com – A free press release service formatted as a blog.
• PressMethod.com – Free press release distribution no matter what, but extra services based on the size of your contribution.
• PRLeap.com – Free distribution to search engines, newswires, and RSS feeds. Fee based bumps get you better placement.
• PRLog.org – Free distribution to Google News and other other search engines.
• TheOpenPress.com – Gives free distribution for plain formatted releases, fees for HTML-coded releases.

Source: Mashable – 20+ Free Press Release Distribution Sites

News pitching

• News sites usually have a “send a tip”, “submit news” or “contact editors” page linked somewhere in the footer – use this to submit your story if you think you have groundbreaking news in your industry.
• When pitching your story to news sites, try to keep it as short as possible, concise and clear – paint the story in the most interesting way and don’t forget to cite sources (one or two of which should be a content in your website). Make sure you don’t have any grammatical error as you’re trying to be a reputable source of information.
• When you’re submitting your story, don’t use their social network accounts or email addresses to do so. They have their ‘submit news’ page for a reason – overriding it may mean that your story will not go to the editors or to the people whom you want to send it to.
• It is a must to have great, juicy information – so you will have to go out of your way to acquire data that is not widely spread. Publishing a story like this can gain links, interest, brand exposure and traffic to your website – especially if the content in your website is the main resource of the news scoop.

News Sourcing

Sometimes the fish you’re trying to catch when pitching in these news sites are the journalists who are using them for sources. There are several other websites that are available out there in order for you to do this. You can tip journalists and reporters and publishers directly by using News Sourcing sites.

These sites help you become a source for reporters, journalists and other publishers out there – who will most probably link to you as they use you and your information in writing out their piece.

Some of these sites are:

• Help a Reporter Out (HARO)
• FlackList
• ProfNet
• Newsbasis
• Reporter Connection
• Source Bottle
• Media Kitty

In pitching your story to news sites, you should also direct them to your content as you dish out the story or the coverage. These news websites usually provide a contact details form or some other way wherein you can reach the publishers when submitting a pitch.

Also, keep in mind that your pitch should be short, concise while giving out juicy detail and information that you think is necessary for them to have a solid scoop. If they have no scoop, you will surely have no mention and no link. If your scoop is really good and they push through with the scoop, then the chances of your content being cited as a source shoots up immeasurably.

Tips for Keeps: Do your deep research -> Write it out and build great -> solid content for sourcing -> pitch it to authoritative news sites -> see what happens.