Link prospecting is definitely one of the most critical parts of targeted link building, as this is the process that initiates your campaign’s goals, specifically in acquiring valuable links from high quality and relevant websites.
Setting a plan in finding opportunities for link acquisition is important, since this helps your link development campaign grow its own strategy, in ways such as:
- The methods that your campaign will most likely involve to acquire links (based on your link prospects).
- The approximate amount of links that you can acquire in a certain period of time (based from your industry’s online competitiveness, demand and activity).
- In segmenting high priority and low priority prospects (that can help elevate your campaign’s productivity and results).
These past few months, our team has used several link building tools, like Raventools and Citationlabs (and they were really awesome), to semi-automate our link prospecting efforts. However, there’s this one method that actually helped us gather hundreds/thousands of highly targeted link prospects in just a few minutes – that I did enjoy abusing as well – through SEOQuake’s SERP overlay feature.
Here are some of the things that I really liked about this link prospecting method:
- Returns highly relevant link prospects
- Fast
- Free
The things you need to execute this method:
- Google Search
- SEOQuake for Chrome (you can download it here)
- Microsoft Excel
Step 1: Google Search Settings
First off, you’ll need to let Google show at least 100 search results instantly. You can easily configure this through Google’s Search settings, on the upper right corner of Google’s webpage.
On Google Search’s preferences, disable Google Instant and modify the number of search results by allowing Google to display 100 results per page.
Step 2: Start Searching for Prospects
Once you have configured Google to display 100 results per page, you can now then start looking for link prospects by using keywords that specify your link targets (“keyword + determiner”; ex: “gardening blog”)
Pro tip: Be as specific as you can with your search queries for Google to return highly relevant pages. You can also use advanced search operators to ensure that you’ll get what you’re really looking for (such as allintitle:, inurl:, site:, etc…)
Step 3: Scraping/Exporting Search Results and Site Data Using SEOQuake
On the top part of the search results, SEOQuake has a feature that will allow you to view the results in CSV format.
Copy the entire thing and paste it all in an excel spreadsheet.
You can actually save the data directly through the plugin’s SERP feature, though it will ask you to send the request via SEOQuake’s server (so you might as well want to do it this way).
Once you have pasted the data to an excel spreadsheet, it will look something similar to this:
Ok, so the list looks like crap, and you will have to fix it by separating the contents of each cell into several columns – and here’s how:
On your excel spreadsheet, go to “Data” and choose “Text to columns”.
Click on “Text to columns”, then choose “Delimited” for your data’s file type and click Next.
Check on the “Semicolon” option, as it is the delimiter used in the data, and then click Next.
As you can see above, it will let you see a preview of the outcome of your data when choosing for the delimiter to be set.
After clicking the next button, click on “Finish”, and you will have a better looking list of link prospects that will look something similar to this:
The list of the URLs of your possible link targets will include site metrics such as the number of pages indexed by Google, Pagerank, Alexa Rank and many more, just like how SEOQuake’s SERP feature shows these metrics through Google’s SERP display.
You can also configure SEOQuake to only display parameters that you’ll want to use when prospecting for link opportunities through its browser settings (on the upper right corner of your browser).
You can choose the parameters you only want to show up on Google search results:
Step 4: Expanding your List
Creating your initial list of link prospects will only take you a few seconds (based on what I’ve done), and of course you’ll also have to segment/sort that list out (which I will be explaining on the latter part of this post). Moreover, expanding your list is not really hard, as there are many options to choose from to make the most out of this method, such as from:
- Other semantically related search terms that your campaign is targeting to rank for.
- 2nd to 5th page of your initial keyword search (which means 100 – 400 more possible prospects, though these sites may be of low relevance or quality).
- Through Google’s suggested “related searches”, which you can see below the search result pages (this could give you hundreds or more prospects to your list).
Just repeat the process by copying the results’ CSV data and pasting them to your list, and you’ll eventually have a larger list of highly relevant link prospects.
Step 5: Segmenting your list
The easiest way to sort your list is through segmenting your data through the Alexa Rank’s column, as it provides unique set of numbers that will allow you to classify highly authoritative sites (single to 4 digit numbers) from average websites in your industry.
This area of your list will also allow you to determine high priority prospects, low priority prospects, duplicate domains and irrelevant authority sites (Facebook, Youtube, authority news sites, etc…).
In filtering your excel list, you can first start by highlighting the Alexa Rank’s column.
Click on the Alexa Rank’s entire column (on “column G”), go to “Data” and click on “Filter”.
Click on the arrow placed on the Alexa Rank column’s right corner, and then choose “Sort Smallest to Largest”.
You will now have your list sorted based on each domain’s Alexa Rank. In this ordered list, you can separate high profile sites as well as sites that wouldn’t be that relevant for your campaign, wherein you can just start working on the sites that you can realistically build relationships with or acquire links from (probably sites that have 4-6 digit Alexa rankings).
Bonus Tip: Reverse Engineering Competitors’ Links
You can also use this method through Google’s Blog Search to find blogs linking to your competitors (by simply using the search command “link:www.yourcompetitor.com”) and include these results to your list of link prospects.
Again, you can use the process I’ve mentioned above and continuously improve your list of link prospects by scraping sites linking to your competitors.
If you liked this post, you can subscribe to my feed and follow me on Twitter @jasonacidre.
{ 92 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post. Might have to add it to my compulsory reading list for new starters! Question though:
I’ve never found the Alexa numbers reliable enough to use in any useful way. I know that your usage above doesn’t really require much accuracy, but was wondering whether that would still have been your first choice of metric before the demise of YSE.
Thanks for dropping by Mat.
About your question:
I don’t really use Alexa rankings as a metric when gauging quality prospects, I just chose it for the reason that domains (your prospects) – on your list – will definitely have a unique Alexa rank, which would make it easier when used in segmenting the list
In terms of site metrics, moz’s page and domain authority (PA & DA) seems to be the most efficient ones to use.
Wow Jason, you really out did yourself on this one! I’ll be putting this into play ASAP.
Also, do you use the mozbar’s stats for the SERPs?
Hey man, thanks for the awesome comment!
I do use mozbar’s SERP overlay when prospecting for link opportunities, and Justin Briggs just discussed it on his recent post (on how you can scrape search results with each URL’s PA and DA):
http://justinbriggs.org/18-tools-to-speed-up-link-building
The great thing about SEOQuake is that you can create your own parameter (and I’m still at the process of making moz’s PA and DA show up on my SEOQuake bar instead of the defunct YSE link data), I might share it next time any way
Hi Jason, big thanks for such a detailed post.
We’ve been using a very simmilar algorithm for link prospecting, however I have found some really good tips within your article.
I think it can be quite useful for the readers to know that SEOquake developers added Open Site Explorer parameters. They could be found here http://addons.seoquake.com/params/?per_page=20&page=3
Jason, thanks so much for explaining how to export and organize the CSV file! I’ve always been a big fan of SEO Quake, but I never figured out how to get the data into Excel properly.
Thanks for the comment Ben, and glad that you found the instructions useful
Hey Kaiser,
Even though the updates of yours are that slow, I am still that so eager to read and utilize them all out since it is from a professional coach. And it worth my effort,time and waiting, since I gained a lots of plans and strategies. Thanks.
Thanks Lew (for the solid support)
Been busy lately with clients and other stuff
but I’ll try my best to keep this blog alive with more solid posts – before the year ends.
Thanks jason for so amazing link prospecting technique.
I have been using some basic search queries for finding links from a long time.
Now this seems to be really wonderful which can help me out a lot to build quality links.
Thanks Sansar!
Hi Jason,
Another great article, I have been waiting for your new post for so much time and finally waiting get paid with such an amazing article.
I know the value of seoquake but never been able to use it with full capacity which you just mentioned in your article. I’ll certainly try it now. thanks a lot for your useful and informative post.
Glad that you liked the post and that you’ll be using the technique too
Thanks for the comment Aaron!
My question is also related to Alexa. You think they data can be considered to try to measure whether a site is even relevant?
Great tutorial! Thank you so much! I really needed to learn how to do this!
I like how you search and gathered all the link prospects with the SEOQuake tool and organized them in an excel sheet. However I think most of these links will not allow a dofollow link back to your site.
Maybe there are some exceptions for certain niches that will bring a good amount of dofollow blogs but most of the time you won’t find the right blogs.
Am I right or am I missing something?
wow! is great to find a blog that is sooooo helpful and easy to follow the tips, off now to configure Google to display the 100 results per page…thanks so much for your help..you`re great
What a great step by step tutorial.
Got a work to work on right now.
Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.
Hayup! Great walk-through Jason. Keep it up!
Thanks man!
Cool din nung recent post mo!
This is awesome! I have been doing something like this for a while now, but manually, which takes forever. I just tried it out and it easily cut off a couple hours from what I have been doing. Thank you so much for this!
It is great to finally find a blog that explains these sorts of advanced techniques in such a clear and detailed manner. Too many blogs skip bits and make assumptions about the readers knowledge. I had played with SEOquake but gave up on it. Having read this I will definately be giving it another go. Big thanks
I’ve never realized that SEOquake could be powerful as this one. I only used it to determine DF and NF and PR. Thanks for the wonderful tutorial!
Awesome, detailed post! This is really good stuff. The visuals go a long way.
I’ve done a lot of reverse engineering as you described at the end, but the scraping technique using SEOQuake is new to me. Thanks for getting me started and helping me learn something new!
hands down the best post I have read in ages, I’ll definitely be putting this to use. I also like the use of Google Blog search to grab the guest post opps your competitors have gotten, another good thing about using this method is you know their posts are actually being indexed by Google. Bravo.
Michael
I use SeoQuake, yet I had not thought of looking for me ervir links. Excellent post!
Haha, dude is back in style! Now I can understand why you haven’t been blogging for a while
Truly epic post that should be included in the end of year posts.
Keep working hard man,
Sean
I am amazed at the thoroughness and quality of your tutorial !
That is gold man !
I did run in to a snag (it’s November and Yahoo Site Explorer has shut down) the SEO Quake plugin for Chrome was not available for me.
Is there something I am missing here?
Leif
This post was awesome, easy enough for a beginner like me to understand.
I do have a quick question, is this the sort of thing that hiring an expert would bring better results than a beginner following these instructions?
Great post, thank you. I’ve been a long-time fan of SEOQuake but had no idea you could scrape results like that. I’ve been using Scraper for Chrome but think I’ll switch to this and see the difference. Thanks for the info!
Thanks for the info. I’m reading up on SEOQuake.
Awesome post here. I have of course used SEO quake before, but I had no idea how to import it to excel. Great tips here man! thanks!
Steve
Link prospecting has been one of the hardest parts of my job, love the article and it will help. Thanks.
This is a great tutorial, I haven’t really used SEO Quake before, but I will look into using it to find links.
Linkbuilding is increasingly becoming a difficult task, and such methods help greatly.
Thanks.
Hello Kaiser, Your post is packed with good information and really this is a great post of yours. I gain lots of new ideas on SEOQuake. A food for thought for everybody. Thanks for sharing this reliable post of yours.
Thanks for an insightful post. Good job!
Quick question though: The SEOquake (and numerous other plugins) overlay/scrapping the SERP’s aren’t that something inflicting with Google guidelines?
/Michael
after this post someone will take advantage to create seo software
thanks for the tips
Great article, I look forward to using this method on my next link building mission, thanks!
Excellent post with a great tip. I am using SeoQuake in my Google Chrome browser for a number of days but was never aware of using that in this way. I used it only for looking at site PR and Alexa rank. This is a great help for me. Thank you very much for sharing.
Good job buddy! I love how you clean up the messed list.. really cool!
Atleast, SEO quake still have some good use after the Yahoo retired their Yahoo Site Explorer.
cheers!
Let me first say that your awesome! Okay, back to the article, I just like what you have shared. I have been using SEOQuake which really help me find potent links. You have just given me another level on finding this prospect links. I’ll try it now, something that is just troubling me is that, if I set Google’s search result to 100, that would take time right? Then, I am sometimes being notice by Google of usual traffic, how am I going to fix this? Thanks in Jason!
Oh that’s great, it makes work easy. Thanks for the stepwise procedure, It makes easy to use it.
Jason, this is gold, thank you!
I’ve been using SEOQuake a bit recently but really haven’t tried the export feature at all, going to give this walk-through a go right now.
That is awesome and so glad to see it’s free! Thanks for the thorough tutorial!
I had been using the promotion tab of market samurai to find link prospects but it wasn’t bringing too many relevant results – this seems like a great method. Cheers!
That is gold man !
I did run in to a snag (it’s November and Yahoo Site Explorer has shut down) the SEO Quake plugin for Chrome was not available for me.
Great tips kaiser! I’m just starting a career as an SEO and those tips are of big help to me. Maraming salamat kababayan!
Thank you for posting such a comprehensive post, Jason. I have been using SEO quake for a few months already but I didn’t know about this feature until now. I think it’s amazing! I truly agree that careful choosing of your link prospects must be done first before jumping into any link exchanges.
Absolutely amazing! I’m using the SEOQuake plugin now for about 2 years, but I had no clue about all the amazing things you can do with it. Thanks for sharing this very detailed instructions on how to find great link opportunities.
Hi Jason
Looking for link prospects this way sure beats doing it manually. You’ve made it very easy to understand and the bonus tip regarding using this method through Google’s blog search to find blogs linking to your competitors is gold!
G’Day,
Would you guys really recommend SEOQuake then? Because opinions range from very bad to super good. I love your beautiful clean overview, as others have commented as well, but then on the other hand it would be great to find out also if it’s worth to invest some money into that tool.
And how much time do you spend on it every day – as a one-man-business or a small business?
Do you guys pay different rates per month / or package?
Looking fwd. to some more insights & answers, thanks a lot and cheers from the Australian tropics. Matt
This is a technique that I haven’t used yet. Most of the time, I just check links with SEO Quake, but use advanced search operators and stand alone software for competitor link research.
Hey Kaiser,
Yesterday I have submitted a blog post reg. SEOQuake, but unfortunately you have removed it or you haven’t had the time to check, yet. Was it not okay to ask questions? I think it’s a great way to combine questions and comments together, let’s give it a second try
. Maybe I’m just to quick and you haven’t had a chance to check my previous comment.
I’m happy to be now one of your followers at Kaiser The Sage, let the good times roll and keep in touch via comments and blog posts. Have a great day.
Cheers from Cairns, Matt
Jason,
You continue to pump out some of the easiest to follow SEO strategies and I thank you for that. I have one question for when I actually go to contact my prospects. Should I be trying to get a guest blog post, a link exchange or something else entirely?
I have a golf travel site which I did some link exchanging but heard this won’t do much for SERP’s. It has given me a bit of a organic traffic but improvement in the SERP’s would be huge!
Cheers
Jordan
While we’re on it, how does one make part of the keyword linked? Like what Robert and Tana have done that I haven’t!
Cheers
Jordan
Too bad the YSE is now shutting down
Do you have any alternative way to see the number of backlinks? I found the new version of SEOQuake not helpful. It’s now using Majestic SEO database and whenever I click on the “PL” button it returns as “n/a” for all search results.
I’m relatively new to SEO. When you say “improve your list of link prospects” is this because you go back and contact these websites and request a link to your site? Or, are you looking for comment opportunities to leave links back to your site?
Thank you for a great post!!
Chris
Thanks for sharing this one Jason.
Is this what you said a newly discovered link building tactic? This is indeed a very useful tips for link building. I’ve been using SEOquake for quite a long time but i just stared on the figures reflected on the SERP. Never thought of them as useful link building figures.
Grabe to! Never thought of this before..Astig tlaga ng mga post mo. I’ve been a fan for like 4 months now. One of my colleagues introduced me to your blog and I feel inlove! Lol. Any way, keep it up. So proud to see a fellow Pinoy gets so much respect in the industry. Aydol!
Great stuff Jason. Just exactly what i have been looking for before i read a book that guided me to you Sphinn which i got your article. Did not know someone could do that with SEOQuake.
I use Traffic Travis and Affilorama. See you there maybe for other great contents.
Keep up.
Is this really working on Chrome? I tried installing this extension on Chrome but I just can’t get it to show up. Are there any other further settings needed?
Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! I have been wanting to do something like this for a long time! You are truly amazing!!!!
Jason, what should I say man! Just superb. People are paying for such scrapped list and you showed it here for Free! And it’s too easy. Awesome man. I’ve bookmarked this page for future use. Also understood why Philippine is dominating almost all the freelancing sites, just for Talents like you.
I just downloaded SEO Quake and used it to filter my search results in google by PR. It’s a great tool and I don’t think I would have come across it were it not for your blog?
This is such a great tool! I don’t have to manually search for blogs anymore
Thank you so much for the very detailed tutorial
I’ve used SEO Quake before but stalled out with its usage. This tutorial will most definitely kick it up a notch for me. I’d been using OSE on specific sites and obtaining a potpourri (unsorted list) of blogs, directories, etc. Having a clean list of blogs will be nice.
I know the value of seoquake but never been able to use it with full capacity which you just mentioned in this post. I will retry my hands on SEO Quake
Been using SEO Quake since the first time I started doing SEO. I never thought Extreme Link Prospecting can be done with SEO Quake. Thanks for this informative post. Some of the best SEO’s in the world can be found in the Philippines.
Hey Jason,
this is a really awsome post that clearly explain in a simple way how to develop a link building strategy. this will help me a lot. Thank you very much.
Thank you Jason. Your simplistic approach taught me a whole new way to utilize an already awesome tool. Your explanation into formatting correctly with excel was also very handy. I have only downloaded SEOquake recently and was yet to harness it’s full potential. I will now subscribe for any upcoming updates. Thanks again
Amazing! I’ve just read your post about Large Scale Link Building and saw this post, I never thought I could really check out my competitor’s link. This would be a good strategy for link building!
Jason, I’m also using SEOQuake to prospect back links to my site. However, what you should in this blog is totally new to me. And I admit that I’m STUNNED! Thanks for sharing, I will definitly use this tip.
By the way are you having problems viewing the SEOquake details if you’re using google.com or google.com.ph sites? I can’t seen to view the SEOQuake results using google.com.
Thanks in advance!
Louie Sison
Affiliate Blogger
Hai, great thanks for the detailed explanation on the installation and working details of the plugin. This plugin will be of great help for my blog in terms of comment posting and more over findings quality link sources. I had one plugin for Mozilla that worked well, but had none for Chrome. Now, got it!
Hi Jason, very nice post!Very worthy yung blog mo and a must read talaga. Please teach us more. Thanks so much!
This is truely one of my favourite ways of scouting for potential link outreach sites to contact at the moment. Once you’ve got your head around some advanced footprints it makes this strategy all the more powerful.
This sounds like a great technique however it is not working for me.. I downloaded the extension in Chrome (worked fine). I tried view as csv and only get this
“Url”;”Google pagerank”;”Google index”;”SEMrush links”;”SEMrush linkdomain”;”Bing index”;”Alexa rank”;”Webarchive age”;”Whois”;”Page source”;”SEMrush Rank”
“6″;”135″;”112″;”243″;”415″;”505909″;”October 27, 2000″;”154229″
“5″;”8,500″;”6″;”119″;”215″;”1179726″;”October 4, 1999″;”374218″
Can anyone help me?
Thanks!
Have you tried pasting that in Excel? You’ll need to paste it on the excel, and arrange and sort the list (the instructions are above)
Also you’ll need to wait for the results to completely load, so you can copy all the data given by SEOQuake. Let me know if it works.
Thanks for the prompt reply Kasier
Yes copied the data into the spreadsheet. No URLs are shown – only numbers under the Url column and Alexa rank column has dates to.. Confused!
Tried it myself too, looks like the recent update by SEOQuake caused the missing URLs from the CSV format of the SERP. I’ll try to contact SEOQuake and ask if they can fix this one
It doesn’t work anymore how sad, i need many more prospecting links techniques.
Hi Jason,
Thank you for trying to contact SEOQuake to update this.
Here’s how too many bloggers write a post:
they scribble it & forget it!
But you really care about your readers–
that makes you a real expert.
Hey Guys,
This link prospecting method still works, just use Mozilla Firefox!
Very detailed post Jason. Worth the read
I’ve never figured out how to organized URLs but with the help of your instructions I really does.
@Kaiserthesage Pinoy ka pala.
Yes it worked for me in Mozilla, How about if you only want to prospected .uk or .au sites?
The method is still working on both Mozilla and Chrome
For UK and Aus, just use Google.co.uk and Google.com.au when finding prospects
Great post…focussing on doing it step by step!
Great and most efficient way of using the seoquake tool. I have been using the SEO quake for sorting the list by High PR and alexa but you have taken the whole process to a new level. Thanks for putting up this excellent information.
SEO Quake is a pretty awesome little tool. Great tips on setting up your spreadsheets to organize all the scraped information. This was really helpful for me, as I am no pro at excel.
I finally have a reason to load firefox back in, i had been using the extension for SEO quake for a longtime but never realized all that you could do with it.. you can alternatively load in a dump for seomoz open site explorer and then dump the results into link detective, that does that same thing, but this is a good short cut.. thanks !
Hey, I must say that this is impressive technique!!
I use SEOQuake a lot to identify high PR page to comment on, using it alongside DropMyLink works wonder (at least for me).
Maybe sometime in near future you should create a tutorial on how to automate the commenting process. I mean, so that we don’t have to enter our name and email and stuff and just comment right away!
Very cool post.
For some odd reason I overlooked the fact that you can use SEMrush to export to a csv.
I am still new to some of tactics. I really like this particular one though. A very cool way of finding people to build relationships with.
Thanks again
you are genius, I will learn your technic. I will bookmart it. big thanks
Hi, I have recently started blogging and this post is very useful.
Old post but still valid and useful. Thanks.
{ 17 trackbacks }