JOHN DOHERTY DISTILLED NYC

Best in Show: Tools for Building Links

AKA: Solving Problems with Tools

@dohertyjf

I have a confession to make

@dohertyjf

The reason I write posts like this

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/linkbuilder-gmail-productivity-setup-and-outreach-

examples

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/linkbuilder-gmail-productivity-setup-and-

outreach-examples

@dohertyjf

And build tools like this

http://www.johnfdoherty.com/category/excel-for-seo

@dohertyjf

And have friends like @ipullrank

http://ipullrank.com/tools/social-scrape/

@dohertyjf

Is because I hate linkbuilding

Ok ok, hate is a strong word. But linkbuilding is tough

@dohertyjf

Tools speed up parts of linkbuilding so we can concentrate on the important and

harder parts, like outreach (and there are tools for that too)

@dohertyjf

There are a million and one tools out there on the Internet.

Image Source

@dohertyjf

We have to know when to use them.

Otherwise, you can get overwhelmed quickly.

@dohertyjf

Let’s talk about a linkbuilding campaign

@dohertyjf

A linkbuilding campaign involves many stages

of planning and execution, and takes two

kinds of tools.

@dohertyjf

Structuring a Linkbuilding Campaign

@dohertyjf

What

Why

Who/Competitor Research

Outreach

Scale

Track

@dohertyjf

Two Types of Tools

@dohertyjf

Paid tools

@dohertyjf

Free tools, Excel templates, and a strong dose of HUSTLE

@dohertyjf

Three Levels of Tools

@dohertyjf

Levels

Free Tools Paid Tools Enterprise-Level Tools

@dohertyjf

Tools for Budget Levels

No budget- $99 $100-$500 $501+

@dohertyjf

@dohertyjf

Starting a campaign with a new client (or as a

new in-house SEO)

Problem:

“What am I, or my

competitors,

ranking for or

targeting already?”

@dohertyjf

@dohertyjf

Analytics + Rankerizer (Free)

Rankerizer is a free tool to download (just provide

your email address) that you can use to check

rankings quickly. I have found it to be quite accurate

and because it’s a free tool, very useful to people

who need rankings quickly.

http://www.rankerizer.com

@dohertyjf

KeywordSpy (Free and Paid)

KeywordSpy will give you the

terms that the site is ranking for.

This is useful both for your own

site as well as competitor sites.

http://www.keywordspy.com

http://www.keywordspy.com

KeywordSpy (Free and Paid)

@dohertyjf

@dohertyjf

KeywordSpy + Excel Magic

Spreadsheet - http://dis.tl/semrushpivot

Excellent Analytics - http://excellentanalytics.com/

@dohertyjf

http://www.distilled.net/excel-for-seo/

@dohertyjf

SearchMetrics (Paid)

http://www.searchmetrics.com/en/

SearchMetrics Essentials is a paid

tool that we use at Distilled. This

is where I go after Analytics to

get a full picture of their SERP

and keyword landscape.

@dohertyjf

SearchMetrics Essentials

http://suite.searchmetrics.com/en/essentials

@dohertyjf

SearchMetrics Essentials

http://suite.searchmetrics.com/en/essentials

Rank

Checkers/Trackers

@dohertyjf

@dohertyjf

Authority Labs (Paid $24-99/month)

http://authoritylabs.com/

@dohertyjf

Raven Tools (Subscription)

http://raventools.com

@dohertyjf

SEOmoz (Subscription)

http://pro.seomoz.org/campaigns or http://ranktracker.seomoz.org/

Problem:

“What links do I

need?”

@dohertyjf

@dohertyjf

LinkDetective (Free) + OSE (Subscription)

Link Detective is a new tool that categorizes your

backlinks into types.

Take those competitors you found and plug them in

here.

http://www.linkdetective.com/

@dohertyjf

LinkDetective

@dohertyjf

Run backlink profiles of competitors (OSE)

and check their anchor text in Excel. Once you can see what anchor text your

competitors are targeting, you can better know what

kind of content you should be creating in order to

rank for those terms!

You’ll need this: https://seogadget.co.uk/categorising-your-links/ from this

guy - @richardbaxter (he’s frickin smart)

Problem:

“Where are my

competitors getting

links that I should as

well?”

@dohertyjf

@dohertyjf

LinkResearchTools Competitive Landscape

http://www.linkresearchtools.com/

@dohertyjf

SEOmoz Competitive Link Finder

(Subscription) A Labs tool that returns you the

sites that your competitors are

getting links from, but you are not.

http://www.seomoz.org/labs/link-intersect

@dohertyjf

MajesticSEO Clique Hunter

(Subscription) Majestic’s Clique Hunter also does

a good job of showing you who is

linking where within the compared

sites.

http://www.majesticseo.com/reports/cliquehunter

@dohertyjf

http://www.majesticseo.com/reports/cliquehunter

@dohertyjf

OSE Export + Excel

Export your backlinks from

OpenSiteExplorer and put them

into this Excel sheet. With a little

Pivot Table magic, you get the

unique LRDs that are linking to

your competitors, but not you.

http://dis.tl/exceltrifecta

@dohertyjf

http://dis.tl/exceltrifecta

@dohertyjf

Starting

@dohertyjf

Link Prospecting

Who?

Problem:

“I just need more

contacts!”

@dohertyjf

@dohertyjf

Advanced Queries + LinkClump (Hustle)

Use your advanced query skills

(such as “rock climbing” “guest

post”, with an Advanced Search

(50 results) and combine w/

LinkClump (Chrome) or

MultiLinks (Firefox). Dump into

Excel. Rinse, repeat.

Geoff Kenyon wrote this post: http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/finding-link-

opportunities-with-advanced-search-queries/

Adjust search settings: https://www.google.com/preferences?hl=en

@dohertyjf

Citation Labs (Free Trial, then Paid)

Citation Labs, by Garrett French

(@garrettfrench) lets you put in

your keywords and the type of

prospect you want, then it returns

your prospects in a CSV file.

http://linkprospector.citationlabs.com/

@dohertyjf

Citation Labs (Free Trial, then Paid)

Export the CSV to Excel and manipulate the data (sort by PR, etc)

Problem:

“How do I find sites

interested in

content?”

@dohertyjf

@dohertyjf

Let Ontolo make queries for you

Ontolo’s Linkbuilding Query Generator V2 (free tool) will build your queries for you. Simply put in your keywords and type of content, download the CSV, and go!

Pro tip: Advanced Search with 50 results.

http://ontolo.com/link-building-query-generator-V2

@dohertyjf

Ontolo Results Insert your keywords and asset (aka content) type.

@dohertyjf

Tool: http://dis.tl/Hd4OJi

http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/finding-link-opportunities-with-advanced-search-

queries/

@dohertyjf

BlogDash (Free)

BlogDash is a free tool that helps

you find bloggers. Add them to

project lists, see posts that you’ve

sent, and connect up Twitter.

http://www.blogdash.com

If I was building links for a website about outdoor leadership, I’d use BlogDash because

it allows you to sort bloggers by keyword.

Pro tip – You can sort by Google TBPR or Klout score.

@dohertyjf

http://www.bloggerlinkup.com/

@dohertyjf

Search by Author

I created a bookmarklet a few

months back that allows you to

search for posts written by a

specific author. Use it to find

where they have posted, then

reach out and get a post yourself!

http://dis.tl/author-search-bkmrklt

@dohertyjf

Search ‘em, scrape ‘em, sort ‘em

By using Advanced search operators,

plus Advanced Search (set to 50

results), and Neils Bosma’s SEO

Tools, you can quickly find the

relative strength of sites to reach

out to.

Combine w/ Citation Labs for #win.

http://nielsbosma.se/projects/seotools/

https://seogadget.co.uk/amazing-seo-tools-for-excel/

Copy to Excel, run =GooglePageRank()

@dohertyjf

Problem:

“How do I find

influencers?”

@dohertyjf

@dohertyjf

FollowerWonk (Paid and Free)

Followerwonk is the best Twitter

social mining tool available. Both

paid and free. You’re limited with a

free account to how much data

you can pull. If you’re enterprise,

the paid is worth it.

If I was building links for a website with outdoors equipment, I’d go to Followerwonk

and search by keyword (like [skier]).

Pro tip – Sort by # of followers or influence.

@dohertyjf

FollowerWonk (Paid and Free)

Followerwonk will also help you

find the intersection between who

people follow. If you identify a few

influencers in a space, then run the

Compare Users report to see

who all of them follow.

Pro tip – Especially look for “choosy” people, as they are more likely to follow high

quality people.

@dohertyjf

Basically, you should follow all these people.

@dohertyjf

Twitter Scraping Then take the tool that I built, throw in a list of

Twitter usernames, and pull out their websites,

complete with Moz metrics (bring your own API

key).

http://www.johnfdoherty.com/link-prospecting-with-twitter-tools-and-apis/

@dohertyjf

Pro tip: When you find an influencer on Twitter, scroll to the bottom of who they are following. Those are the people they have been following the longest.

@rosshudgens

Sometime earlier this year

@dohertyjf

Alltop (Free)

Alltop has topics for many

different categories. These blogs

can be a good place to start to

find pretty reputable sites.

http://alltop.com/

@dohertyjf

Topsy Experts (Beta)

Topsy has an awesome beta tool

that lets you search by keyword. It

then returns you the Twitter

usernames of the influential

people. You might be surprised

who you find!

http://topsy.com/experts

@dohertyjf

Lists + LinkClump

Another good way to find influencers is to use high powered Google queries, and then scrape them.

Like: "influential" "cycling" "blogger" "list"

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-power-of-using-lists-for-link-building

@dohertyjf

Lists + LinkClump

Brought me this post:

http://extanz.com/2011/08/26/top-

50-most-influential-cycling-

bloggers-celebrating-the-cycle-

chic-movement/ with 50 cyclists.

Linkclump and dump. Boom.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-power-of-using-lists-for-link-building

Problem:

“I have way too

many contacts!

Help me sort

them?”

@dohertyjf

@dohertyjf

http://ontolo.com/link-building-search-prospects

Ontolo

@dohertyjf

Excel Spreadsheet

I built out an Excel spreadsheet

that allows you to put in your

prospect sites and their

information. Then, it divides your

prospects into DA “buckets”.

http://www.johnfdoherty.com/segmented-link-outreach/

@dohertyjf

http://www.johnfdoherty.com/segmented-link-outreach/

@dohertyjf

http://www.johnfdoherty.com/segmented-link-outreach/

Problem:

“Contact details are

hard to find! Can I

do it faster?”

@dohertyjf

@dohertyjf

Citation Labs (Paid)

Input a list of URLs (keep it under

1,000 for best results). The Contact

Finder returns you emails or the

page where you can find the email.

Combine with ToutApp for

maximum efficiency.

http://citationlabs.com/tools/

@dohertyjf

Buzzstream Contact Finder (Free)

Enter the person’s first and last

names, as well as their company

and website, and search.

You will receive results like:

“fred wilson” “@avc.com”

http://tools.buzzstream.com/link-building-email-research

@dohertyjf

Prospecting

@dohertyjf

People don’t just link. They have to have a

reason.

Why?

@dohertyjf

Find the content being created

So use this SEOgadget tool to

create the content that people

are asking about, according to

the keywords you want to

target.

https://seogadget.co.uk/content-strategy-generator-tool-v2-update/ via @dbseo

@dohertyjf

Answer the questions they’re asking

Oh hello Quora scraper.

Find your keyword’s URL on Quora, plug that into the RSS URL in the tool, and this tool returns you the most recent 20 questions about that topic.

http://dis.tl/quorascraper

Quora RSS URL: http://www.quora.com/(keyword)/rss

@dohertyjf

Quora Scraper

http://dis.tl/quorascraper

@dohertyjf

Ontolo Content Idea Generator

http://ontolo.com/content-marketing-research-successful-content

@dohertyjf

Ontolo Content Idea Generator

Brought me up this article with 55 backlinks: http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/twitter-

use-it-productively.html

55 linking root domains!

You should have these

links, not them!

@dohertyjf

Salesforce Should Have These Links

http://www.salesforce.com/uk/socialsuccess/social-media/

@dohertyjf

Content

@dohertyjf

Outreach

How?

Problem:

“How do I connect

with new link

prospects?”

@dohertyjf

@dohertyjf

NEW TOOL ALERT: ENGAG.IO (Free)

Engag.io is your inbox for your

social media conversations.

Connect up Twitter and Facebook

and track your conversations.

http://www.engag.io/welcome

@dohertyjf

http://www.engag.io/welcome

These people love Engag.io

@dohertyjf

Rapportive

A Gmail plugin that allows you to connect broader

socially with your contacts. Also useful for finding

email addresses if you know the domain. Or check

when they last tweeted.

http://rapportive.com/

http://www.johnfdoherty.com/rapportive-linkbuilding-tool/

@dohertyjf

Give them something.

@dohertyjf

Coffee (a couple bucks)

We sometimes forget that our best linkbuilding

tactic is building relationships. Try taking a blogger

out for a cup of coffee. Or send them a custom

flash drive. If you’re not making the connection

via email, get in front of them in real life.

Brought to you by: your friend, “hustle”.

Problem:

“Need more links,

have no time. ”

Aka how do I

achieve scale?

@dohertyjf

@dohertyjf

None of this

@dohertyjf

Buzzstream (Paid)

Buzzstream makes your life as a linkbuilder so much

easier. When you find a prospect, buzzmark it. They’ll

find the contact details for you if they can. It will also

pull in other important metrics. And you can keep

track of the relationship as you go to verify if they

are linking or not. And it integrates with

Gmail/Google Apps.

http://www.buzzstream.com

@dohertyjf

Keep your prospects organized, assign prospects to other team members, verify the

status of links, get an email when links drop off so you can reach back out to recover

links.

@dohertyjf

Canned Responses + Buzzstream = WIN

@dohertyjf

Streak (Free Beta)

http://www.streak.com/

Use it for linkbuilding: http://www.maplenorth.com/2012/03/27/link-outreach-tracking-gmail/ via @maplenorth and @pointblankseo

Streak is a new in-your-Gmail

CRM that you can adjust to help

you track your linkbuilding efforts

using custom states.

@dohertyjf

ToutApp (Paid)

http://www1.toutapp.com

Justin mentioned it here: http://justinbriggs.org/18-tools-to-speed-up-link-building

ToutApp allows you to template emails and email people from your own email address and directly from the page.

You also receive statistics around open rates.

$30/month (for serious linkbuilders, worth it!)

@dohertyjf

If I was going to email Rand, I’d go to a profile page that might have his email. When an

email is found, the Chrome extension lights up with a number. Click it, click the email

address you want to use, and an email window pops up.

“Can I scale

passively as well?”

@dohertyjf

@dohertyjf

Zemanta (Paid and

Free)

http://www.zemanta.com/

And it’s whitehat! Rand wrote about it here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/4-valuable-

link-building-services

Zemanta is an in-blog content

recommendation that passively

helps you build links. It integrates

with Wordpress, Blogger, Tumblr,

TypePad, Posterous, Movable Type,

and Drupal.

@dohertyjf

Buzzstream

http://www.buzzstream.com/

Buzzstream will send you a report

of your backlinks weekly with

statistics about them, such as how

many have fallen off, new, etc. No

more worrying about losing good

backlinks.

@dohertyjf

Ontolo

http://ontolo.com/link-building-backlink-monitor

With Ontolo, you can mark

certain links as your most

important. If anything changes

(aka they drop off), you will

receive an alert.

Reclaim those important links!

Problem:

“How do I

remember to follow

up?”

@dohertyjf

@dohertyjf

FollowUp CC (Free to start)

Pick when you want the email to

be returned to your inbox (9

hours, a day, a week, etc). Bcc that

amount of time and don’t worry

about forgetting to follow up.

http://www.followup.cc/

TheNextWeb loved it: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/07/19/in-depth-with-followup-cc-reminders-calendar-and-task-list-in-one/

@dohertyjf

Boomerang (Free)

Boomerang will return your email

to your inbox at the chosen time

so that you can follow up.

Pro tip: Select “Only if nobody

responds”.

http://www.boomeranggmail.com/

@dohertyjf

Outreach

@dohertyjf

Tracking

@dohertyjf

Excel

If you don’t have budget, you have

to organize yourself. You can track

your progress and relationship

stage in Excel with this

spreadsheet (we use it internally

at Distilled).

http://dis.tl/progresstracking

@dohertyjf

Google Docs (Free)

Or use Google Docs to do it. When I worked in-house, we used a similar sheet to the one in the post below. You can use it to track relationship stages with multiple people working on the project.

(Credit: @ethanlyon)

http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2011/09/01/scale-linkbuilding-with-google-docs

@dohertyjf

Linkstant

Emails you every time you get a

new link. For smaller clients that

would be able/willing to install it,

perfect solution.

http://www.linkstant.com/

@dohertyjf

OSE or Majestic

If you can report monthly, and not

on individual links, use

OpenSiteExplorer or Majestic for

your monthly numbers if you are

building at scale.

http://www.opensiteexplorer.com or http://www.majesticseo.com

@dohertyjf

Sometimes, we need to sit back and think about what we need and not rely on others

to build tools for us. Sometimes tracking IS as simple as writing down EVERY link you

get.

@dohertyjf

Tracking

John Doherty

SEO Consultant at Distilled NYC.

Traveler.

Rock climber.

Company Blog: http://www.distilled.net/blog/

Personal Blog: http://www.johnfdoherty.com/

SEO Consultant – Distilled john.doherty@distilled.net

http://twitter.com/#!/dohertyjf

@dohertyjf

JOHN DOHERTY

Thank You

Questions?