Tools Of The Trade - Linklove Boston

Best in Show:
Tools for Building Links
AKA: Solving Problems with Tools
JOHN DOHERTY
DISTILLED NYC

@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

Track Why

Who/Competitor
Scale
Research

Outreach

@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

Starting a campaign with a new client (or as a
new in-house SEO)

@dohertyjf

Problem:
“What am I, or my
competitors,
ranking for or
targeting already?”

@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

@dohertyjf

KeywordSpy (Free and Paid)

@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)
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.

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

@dohertyjf

SearchMetrics Essentials

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

@dohertyjf

Rank
Checkers/Trackers

@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/

@dohertyjf

Problem:
“What links do I
need?”

@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

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)

@dohertyjf

Problem:
“Where are my
competitors getting
links that I should as
well?”

@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

Who?
Link Prospecting

@dohertyjf

Problem:
“I just need more
contacts!”

@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)


@dohertyjf

Problem:
“How do I find sites
interested in
content?”

@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
Insert your

Ontolo Results
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/

@dohertyjf

Copy to Excel, run =GooglePageRank()

@dohertyjf

Problem:
“How do I find
influencers?”

@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

@rosshudgens

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.

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

@dohertyjf

Problem:
“I have way too
many contacts!
Help me sort
them?”

@dohertyjf

Ontolo

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

@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

Problem:
“Contact details are
hard to find! Can I
do it faster?”

@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

Why?
People don’t just link. They have to have a
reason.

@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

55 linking root domains!
You should have these
links, not them!

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

@dohertyjf

Salesforce Should Have These Links

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

@dohertyjf

How?
Outreach

@dohertyjf

Problem:
“How do I connect
with new link
prospects?”

@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

 These people love Engag.io

http://www.engag.io/welcome

@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”.

@dohertyjf

Problem:
“Need more links,
have no time. ”
Aka how do I
achieve scale?

@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)
Streak is a new in-your-Gmail
CRM that you can adjust to help
you track your linkbuilding efforts
using custom states.

http://www.streak.com/

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

@dohertyjf

ToutApp (Paid)
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!)

http://www1.toutapp.com

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

@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.

@dohertyjf

“Can I scale
passively as well?”

@dohertyjf

Zemanta (Paid and
Free)
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.

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

@dohertyjf

Buzzstream
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.

http://www.buzzstream.com/

@dohertyjf

Ontolo
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!

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

@dohertyjf

Problem:
“How do I
remember to follow
up?”

@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

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

John Doherty
SEO Consultant – Distilled
john.doherty@distilled.net
http://twitter.com/#!/dohertyjf

SEO Consultant at Distilled NYC.
Traveler.
Rock climber.
Company Blog: http://www.distilled.net/blog/
Personal Blog: http://www.johnfdoherty.com/

Thank You
Questions?

JOHN DOHERTY

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