by Dave Ingalls
Digital Marketing Tutorial Blog
We ALL know how important backlinks are to the ranking of our Web pages by the major crawler-based search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc.). Backlinks, also known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links, are links from Web pages on other Web sites to pages on your Web site.
And I’m sure MANY of us have felt the frustration of searching Google and Yahoo with our keyword phrases and finding that one or more of our competitors rank HIGHER than we do for that phrase!
So what do you do about it? I just had what an old boss of mine called a “BGO” (Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious) on this very subject!
Here’s a neat little trick I recently pieced together (I’m sure I’m not the first to do so!) while I was updating the “Linking Strategies” information on my Digital Marketing Tutorial Web site:
Go to GOOGLE, enter one of your keyword phrases, and note the top search results of your COMPETITORS.
Now go to YAHOO Site Explorer and enter the Web page address (URL) of your competitor’s top ranking Web page in Google for that important keyword phrase.
Unfortunately Yahoo Site Explorer is no longer available. Try Cognitive SEO as an alternative (14 day free trial available).
Go thru the backlink list generated and look for likely candidate Web sites that might also be interested in linking to a page on your Web site.
Also, before sending your backlink request, be sure to find the link to your competitor’s Web page from the target Web site so you can craft your request in a similar fashion to what already exists.