Archived Search Marketing Blog for KoMarketing Associates (up to 10/25/07): Keyword

While we all know that link building is a key component to any successful search engine optimization campaign. Many people get stuck when it comes to the actual identification of potential link opportunities. Here is a quick checklist for building a worksheet of potential link opportunities for yourself or your client based on keyword presence and competitive analysis:

Step 1: Identify your target keyword.
In this example, I am going to use the word "diploma frames" as my keyword target. My goal is to find the top 50 websites that rank for this term (in Google for now), and use Google's link command to obtain a list of all inbound links per domain.

Step 2: Search for your Keyword and Record Top 50 Results
Some companies go for more or less results, but the top 50 usually represents the maximum threshold for how far a regular user will search, so 50 is where I stop. If you use the advanced search functionality in Google, you can tailor your results so that the top 50 results appear as well. Here are my top 10 results:

Now we have 10 websites to check backlinks in Google with in order to obtain new link opportunities (out of the top 50). Note that there were 3 duplicates listed in search results (which I like to note anyways for purposes of correlating information on each duplicate result)

Step 3: Use the link command in Google to obtain inbound links to these 10 results.
Search and list the web addresses that appear as search results for all inbound link searches to the top 50 websites found for "diploma frames". Note that you may have to trim the results as a result of same domain links and it is known that Google does not show all inbound links, but (IMO) it does show a snapshot of (at least the type of) links that it values more than others. Here are the results for checking inbound links to all 10 of these results:

link:www.framingsuccess.com (143 Results)
link:www.diplomaframe.com (15 Results)
link:www.affordablediplomaframes.com (7 Results)
link:www.justdiplomaframes.com (4 Results)
link:www.herffjones.com (59 Results)
link:www.universitycoop.com (758 Results)
link:www.collegegear.com (3210 Results)
link:www.wordyisms.com (786 Results)
link:www.framingachievement.com (62 Results)

Now you have over 5,000 possible link opportunities for your website, based on the current competition that is present in only the top 10 results for "diploma frames" in Google. You also have a snapshot on where the competition is strongest online as well. Your next step is compiling the results, identifying where a link opportunity for you is possible, and ultimately, obtaining new inbound links.

Additional Keyword - Competitor Link Building Ideas and Suggestions
Using Yahoo gives you an even more comprehensive look at inbound links, and AlltheWeb will allow you to automatically filter out same domain links. Yahoo Site Explorer also lets you export the data into a tab-delimited file, which makes it handy for rapid formatting and organizational purposes.