Link building can be one of the most tedious and annoying chores an SEO will face. Here’s a little shortcut for those of you who dislike this task as much as I do.
Webconfs has a tool called Backlink Builder that can be used to easily build backlinks and reciprocal links. This tool searches for websites of the keyword you specify that contain keyphrases like “Add link”, “Add site”, “Add URL”, “Add URL”, “Submit URL”, “Add Article” etc.
What I’ve developed to be one of the most efficient methods of handling this tool and implementing it to work for me:
- Open the backlink builder page
- Insert the keyword or keyphrase that you’re looking for
- It’s possible to build this list to as many potential submission pages as needed using different keywords/keyphrases
- E.g. cheesecakes, “blueberry cheesecakes”, “new york style cheesecake”, etc.
- More than one keyword, e.g. herbal supplements, should be put in quotes (“ “) to search for pages with more exact results
- It’s possible to build this list to as many potential submission pages as needed using different keywords/keyphrases
- On the backlink builder results page, highlight the entire list of results (including the text) and copy it to the clipboard
- Open a new Excel spreadsheet
- Paste this list into the spreadsheet
- Scroll down toward the bottom of the list and delete the links that were generated with the keyphrases “submit article” and “add article”, unless this was the intention
- Go to Edit -> Replace, and type in the following:
- Find what: * http
- Replace with: http
- This will remove the numbers before each URL
- Insert a new cell above the existing top cell in the appropriate data column and type “Links” in the new cell
- Highlight the column where the data exists and go to Edit -> Filter
- Sort the column A-to-Z
- This will allow you to quickly browse through the list for inappropriate links
- Remove all of the non-link titles, e.g. “Finding sites with keyphrase…”
- Highlight the column where the pasted list is and go to Data -> Remove Duplicates
- This will remove all the duplicate cells
- Glance through the links and remove any links with:
- Usually less ranking TLDs, e.g. .info .biz etc.
- Inappropriate language
- Unrecognizable directories
- There are millions of sites out there, remove anything that is not relevant to what you’re looking for. Do not waste time looking through a site if there is a slight chance that it might not be relevant.
- Label new column headings for PR, Submission Date, etc
- Start going through each relevant link and checking PR and possible link submission opportunity
- If possible reciprocal link opportunity, label as such and come back to it after you create a reciprocal links page
Note: there are many other opportunities here for automation, but development and further research is needed in order to do so. The preceding is a human-touch approach and should suffice for link building opportunities in the low hundreds.