If you search online, or read forums, you’ll see lots of techniques for how to do link building. Everyone likes to talk about exciting things like link baiting, social media, article directories, and even plain buying links. Those techniques all can work. But it surprises me that so many people don’t do the most basic link building technique. I see it discussed so infrequently, that I wonder if it’s supposed to be a hushed secret that no one talks about.
Actually, the reason that this technique is not talked about so often, is that it doesn’t have a simple and catchy name. It’s a just a systematic process, which needs to be followed.
Step 1. Do the search that you want to rank your target site for.
Step 2. For each result in the SERP, run the google link: operator for that domain.
Step 3. Look at every one of the results for the link: operator search. Ask yourself, can I get a link on that page?
There are a few reasons why this is such a valuable process. For one, it really opens your eyes to all the different places on the web where you can get links from. When you run the link: operator search, you’ll see parts of the web that you didn’t even know existed! You’ll come across interesting old forums, directories, news sites, organization sites, etc.
Another reason this is valuable, is that you’ll get a feel for which links Google feels are more valuable. It’s common knowledge that Google withholds results from the link: operator search results. A website might have several thousand backlinks, but Google might only show a hand full of those when you run the link: operator search. Google values links differently, but I think it’s a safe bet that the links that do show up with the link: operator search are counted.
So, to let this make more sense, here’s a concrete example, following the 3 steps outlined above:
1. search google for “online merchant account”
2. the first result today is MerchantExpress.com – so, we’ll then run this search in google –> link:merchantexpress.com
3. as of today, Google shows –> About 186 results (0.27 seconds). We’ll go through all of them, and evaluate if we can get a link from the same page.
Again, sometimes you’ll be surprised by the links you’ll find. You definitely will see some free for all links pages. In the online services industry, you’ll often find footer links. For instance, a design company might put a ‘designed by XYZ Studio’ in the footer.
You won’t be able to get a link on every single page. Maybe from doing a search, you might only uncover one or two good links. But, that’s just part of link building. It’s a slow process, and you have to take a long term view about things.
In general, you should avoid building links too fast under any circumstances. It could show that your site was being aggressively SEO’d. If your site was banned or blacklisted from the index, all of your hard work would go to waste.
Following a system like this, you should be safe building 2 to 3 links per week to a site. Over a few months, that should be enough to help you to rank for some less competitive search phrases. Over the course of a year, that would be enough to help you to rank for some moderately competitive search phrases.
If your site is new, don’t expect to rank for very competitive search phrases for the first year or two. Again, if you try to push things too aggressively, you might just get your site banned from the index.
Also, here are a few additional tips to find more links for your site, using the same exact technique.
1. Go deep. Obviously, you want to check the links for the top 10 domains in a SERP. You could go as deep as 20 or 30 domains, and still find some pretty decent links that way.
2. Go broad. Do other searches related to your main phrase. In addition to ‘online merchant account’, you could phrases like: online merchant account bad credit, online merchant account services, online payment gateway, online shopping cart. For many searches, Google will show you a list of related searches at the bottom of the page.