How to Use Advanced Search Operators to Find Link Building Opportunities

How to Use Advanced Search Operators to Find Link Building Opportunities

With Google no longer tolerating low-quality, spammy link building tactics like it used to a few years back, the SEO community is being pushed to shift their approach to a more advanced one focused on building quality links.

But as most of us must have experienced, getting quality links can be much harder. However, it can be made simpler if you know how to go about finding the right link building opportunities.

And we will talk about exactly that in this short post.

Competitor Research

Finding the link building techniques that your competitor has utilized and has worked for them can allow you to copy some of their links and get some good results right off the bat.

You can use this search operator to find their backlinks:

Link:XYZ.com -site:XYZ.com

So for example, if your competitor is SEO Optimizers, you would put the URL SEOOptimizers.com in this search operator and find the sites linking out to them.

You can learn about this strategy in more detail by attending an SEO class Los Angeles or across the country.

Guest Posts

Getting some guest posts up on quality sites in your niche can go a long way in helping you rank for some competitive keywords. However, finding these opportunities can be difficult, which is where the following search operators can come in handy:

Keyword/CompetitorName “write for us”

Keyword/CompetitorName “guest blogger”

Keeping the first part of the search operator same, you need to replace the other part with different terms that you can find in the infographic to get the most out of this strategy.

Resource Link Building

If you have a great link-worthy resource on your site – or plan to make one – then you can utilize this strategy to get some quality links.

It involves reaching out to established sites in the niche at scale that keep a list of all the resources in the niche, and asking them to add a link to your site (your link-worthy resource) as well.

Finding these link building opportunities can be a bit tricky, but the following search operators can help.

Keyword “top 10 resources”/”top resources”

Keyword “top 10 articles”/”top articles”

And many other ones you can see in the infographic.

Sponsored Posts

These aren’t the safest type of links to build, but they can be very effective if you don’t overdo it.

The concept here is to basically pay a webmaster to allow you to make a quality post on their website with a link back to your website.

If you would like to explore this strategy further, you can find opportunities in your niche using the search operators mentioned below.

Keyword intext:”this is a sponsored post”

Keyword intext:”this was a sponsored post”

Keyword intext:”this was a paid post”

And so on.

Link Reclamations

This is a fairly simple strategy to get some quick backlinks but it only works if you have a fairly well-known brand, and not a site you have started only recently.

It basically involves reaching out to the people that have mentioned your brand on their website but without linking out to you. You can just request them to add the link to your site, as they have already mentioned your brand.

Search operators for link reclamation opportunities:

Brand name –rd:sitename.com

Just putting your brand name without any spaces

Using the other ways mentioned in the infographic.