In the frenzy to build links, most people forget about the goose that can lay golden SEO eggs: Competitor research.

So what is competitor research in SEO and why should it be a vital part of your link building strategy?

Well, no matter how much time you spend building links, you never find all the really juicy ones.  An awful lot of people also get lazy and go for massive volumes of low-quality links.

The main point is that you should always be looking at the sites above you in the SERP’s.  Once you rule out the sites that have powerful, trusted domains, then the playing field is simplified and leveled.  It becomes about links and content.

So what are those sites doing that you are not when it comes to the links they have acquired?  The easy answer is of course to look at what they are doing, and then copy it.

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Competitor Research Is Your SEO “Edge”.

As an example, I was looking at a SERP the other day that I was targeting for a page I had written.  I could see a site in third position, which had virtually no content and no authority.  So it had to be the links that it had obtained that was propelling the site into that, and several other, competitive searches.

So I fired up a research program (I will not give the name out here, I want you to be “self sufficient” in link building, this means learning to do things manually first, so you understand the mechanics before moving onto using tools).

I sorted the results by PR and found a PR4 URL that had given them an anchor text link and that had only 2 other outbound links on the page. On investigation it turned out to be a blog post that still had open comments.

I submitted a really good quality, relevant comment and waited. 2 days later, my anchor text link was on that page along with only a handful of others.  Another, unexpected bonus, was that the blog owner then shut comments!

So I got a link with anchor text on a PR4 page.  Yes it was “only” a blog comment, but it was the link that was giving my potential competitor a boost up the rankings.

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Do Things The Same, Then Do Something Different.

As you can see, it was pretty easy to mimic your competitors success in finding juicy links.  Once you have done that, you can then do your own link building . By then doing your own thing, you can outrank your competitors more easily after snatching the links they already have.

So the question I am asking you is, are you doing link building/SEO competitor research for the terms you are trying to rank for?  If not, then why not?  Is it due to laziness,  or a lack of awareness?

If you are researching your competitors SEO and link building, are you doing it enough?  Are you doing it every month, and in depth, so you can dig out the golden nuggets that will fuel your site up the SERP’s?

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So How Do I Complete Competitor Research To improve My SEO and Rankings?

The easiest way, without using paid-for programs, is simply to paste the URL’s that outrank you into Yahoo Site Explorer.

Then click on the “inlinks” button.  Then from the dropdown menu select “except from this domain”.

Now you have a list of most of the link external backlinks that point at the URL you are researching.

The next step is to run them through one of the many free online mass-pr-check tools.  Simply paste in the URLs you want to check to find their PR. Alternatively, although I have had mixed results with it, you can use the yoast link analysis firefox extension.

Once you have sorted them to find links with PageRank, you can start visiting those URL’s to see if you have a link building opportunity. Of course PR is not everything, and so do not stop there, look down the full list of links and see if you can spot highly-relevant sites that could give your site a boost.

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Conclusion.

Within your overall SEO strategy, competitor research to aid your own link building is a killer strategy.

This is especially true once you start hitting page two or the bottom of page one of a SERP.  Once you get to that level, you can guarantee that the sites above you are taking it as seriously as you are.  They have all done the legwork, and are now wringing every last drop out that they can to keep moving up.

You must do the same.  Match them, then do something different and better in your own link building to outrank them.

Click here to find out the benefits of LinkBuilders Bible Membership.

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Everyone needs more links pointing at their webpages.  No matter what anyone else tells you, I am telling you that link building is still the trump card.  If content is king, then link building is god.

If you spend time doing one thing every single day, make it building more backlinks.

Why?

Google’s “natural” link building mantra is something that is becoming increasingly empty in the modern internet world. Where even two years ago good content might be rewarded with a blog post or link to tell others about it, nowadays that does not happen.  The people who used to give you a decent one way backlink and a recommendation are now tweeting and sharing using twitter, facebook, digg and stumbleupon. So your chances of getting a decent amount of quality one way backlinks is diminishing all the time.

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Nothing Beats A Good Old Fashioned Backlink.

Although Google does take increasing notice of the links and interest in a webpage through establishing a popularity concensus, nothing beats a followed backlink with exact anchor text.

I am sure if you have done competitor research for a keyterm you are considering trying to rank for you will have seen a site that demonstrates the power of a few deep links to a site.

Basically they always look the same.  They rank on page one somewhere. When you visit the site you always find the same thing, little relevant content and hardly any mentions of the key term or related search terms, yet there they are. So you take a peek at their backlinks in something like yahoo explorer and you see a few dozen links listed.

Okay so digging a little deeper you fire up http://www.opensiteexplorer.org and you see that most of the pages of their site have a few, maybe just one followed backlink pointing at each page, with the anchor text of that link as the exact search term.

Wow.  So that site is up there purely because of the topical relevance being passed from the anchor text in the links, just a few followed links.

That is why link building is important.

So yes you can submit to social bookmarking sites and listen to the people who tell you to build content and that manual link building will put you in hell, or you can rank well.

Keep building those bridges.

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Click here to buy the authority,  real-world link building guide, “The Linkbuilders Bible”, which has now sold over 2000 copies.

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Why?  Because I have noticed that a lot of the people who are saying these things have either tried and failed with their linkbuilding, or they are forum, blog or site owners who are trying to play down their effectiveness.

So what is the reality?

In my own testing, I have ranked sites using only profile links and followed blog comments and continue to do so.  So they still work for me, but does anyone else agree?

Well, how about Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz, will he do as an authority on SEO and linkbuilding?  Yes, I thought you would agree he will.

This is what he posted a week ago:

“On nearly every commercially lucrative search results I pull up these days, I see bad links pushing sites into the top rankings at Google.”

So Rand of SEOmoz agrees with me.  Profile linking and followed  blog commenting still works as part of your link building strategy.

Now I am not suggesting using these types of links exclusively, nor am I saying that they are good or bad links.  Personally I do not subscribe to the opinion that they are offensive to the site owners, as along as you do not make them offensive.  If you comment on a blog with a polite, relevant comment then is that spam regardless of the motivation?  If you  create a profile on a membership site that, amazingly, allows you to create a public profile, is it wrong to put a link in it?

To me no.  That is what a profile is for…for you to add a profile and links in the places they allow you to place links.

As for blog commenting, of course the morons still submit automated “good post boys, bookmarked.  Viagra” but these rarely get through and its just a waste of everyone’s time.   But if you visit a blog and you ADD VALUE to that post with a relevant comment, regardless of your motivation for doing so, then is there harm in that?  Of course not, unless you subscribe to Google’s whiter-than-white “build it and they will come” mentality (which incidentally even well-respected SEO’s like Gray Wolf are now questioning) then you will be clicking away from this post right now.

So in terms of one way backlinks, profile links and blog commenting do still add value.  If you are believing the dis-information, then you are only hurting your own rankings.  Your link building strategy should be “whole of world”, and like it or not, the rest of the the world is still ranking above you because they use profile links and blog commenting as part of a fully developed strategy for their link building.

If the experts are telling you that sites are ranking for “spammy” links, then unless you run a church website, why are you not still using these link building methods? A successful site will have a good mix of a few big links, under-pinned with lots of less powerful ones.  By leaving this to chance, ie, by hoping someone will link to you, then you are only hurting yourself.

Forget relevancy,  ignore the propaganda.  Just build links.

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PROFILE LINK POWER – My Guide To Building Unlimited FREE Profile Links.

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The ultimate guide to building profile links.

Of course you have read about building profile links, sometimes known as “Angela Edwards Links”.  This is where you create an account on a site that allows membership.  Then within your personal profile page you create anchor text links to your own sites, sucking off some of that lovely linkjuice for your own benefit.

The problem is that these sites can be difficult to find and once you do find them, how do you know if it is the right kind of site?

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This is why you need Profile Link Power!

I spent a year selling profile link packets online.  I have developed a simple step-by-step method to harvest, test and use thousands of sites to create profile links on. I am well known on the biggest marketing forum on the internet – The Warrior Forum, where I sold profile link packets to hundreds of people who benefited.  I know what I am talking about, and now you can learn the secrets of building efficient profile links.

If you want to build more backlinks to your sites but are unsure what a profile link is or how to build them, then this guide is vital reading.

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Not only do you get a step-by-step process on finding sites and placing your links written by an expert that is packed with insider and little-known tricks,  but you also get some exclusive bonuses.

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2. A list of over 1000 “simple machine forum” sites you can start placing your links on -and the list includes the PageRank of each site so you can target those high PR sites straight away! PR’s range from 7 down to 1, with hundreds of PR5+ potential sites!

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This is a complete guide on how to build hundreds of links to your sites through finding profile sites and blogs you can build links on.

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• This guide contains a step-by-step guide to finding an unlimited number of sites to put your links on through searching for “footprints”.  This is GOLD-DUST method.

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Within the broader process of “search engine optimisation”, building one way links is definitely the second most important.  The most important is of course to have relevant content to point those links at.

Put simply, through a variety of methods, you either create your own links or inspire people to link to your content, through such strategies as linkbait.

So in terms of importance within your overall SEO strategy, linkbuilding is asolutely vital to your website’s success.

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Improve Your Link Popularity.

Building link popularity will give your site a real boost in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Link popularity is nothing more complicated than how popular your site in terms of other sites linking to it.  Building or improving your link popularity means getting more links from other people and building them yourself.

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Effective Link Strategy = Website Success!

Having an effective linking strategy is key to your website gaining visitors.  Build content and then build links to it, do it all the time, and make sure you are aware of the latest strategies that work, and also those that are now out of date.

It is also vital to be aware of things such as the use of the nofollow attribute, and the recent news from Google that they are downgrading the effects of most blog comment links.  You need the best information so you do not waste your time on an outdated or ineffective linkbuilding strategy.

For a comprehensive guide to linkbuilding, check out The LinkBuilders Bible 2010 – Over 600 other people already have their copy!

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The key thing to remember is that even though you build, say, 1000 links in a day, it does not mean Google is going to find all those links the same day, all in one day, or even at all.  Links you build now will be found in small groups over the coming WEEKS and MONTHS.

So how many you build in a day is completely irrelevant.

What you do need to be aware of is link velocity however.  Link velocity is the long term link growth profile of a website.  Most sites will acquire links at a pretty steady rate, with the odd spike in links mostly linking to a specific great bit of content the site puts up.  That is common sense and to Google will look “natural”.

If however, you build 10,000 links in a day, then leave it for three months then build anther 10,000, Google will see that it suddenly starts finding a ton of links to your site, not usually to one specific page, and that the rate at which it finds new links peaks and quickly drops right down again.  This type of pattern makes it obvious a large quantity of links has suddenly appeared “out of the blue” and is not directly related to one piece of content (unless you are clever enough to only linkbuild to one page at a time).

So keep your linkbuilding steady.  Grow links at a steady rate.  It does not matter what that rate is as long as every month you are growing roughly the same amount of links from a variety of sources.  This is a key thing to grasp as part of your linkbuilding strategy.

For more information on link velocity grab a copy of The Link Builders Bible 2010 >>>

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So, to save you the pain of having to read the top five asked questions over and over again, or to stop you asking them yourself, here they are, in no particular order….

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1. The links I build to my site are not showing up in (insert name here) backlink tool.

Remember that the search engine can take days, weeks or months to find the page with a link to your site on.  Also, some of these tools simply cannot find all your links.  Yahoo Explorer for example only shows 1000 link locations in its report, as do many backlink checkers.

My advice is to forget about checking that your links are found, its a waste of your time.  Make sure that when you build links that you use the methods outlined in the LinkBuilders Bible to get your links indexed.  Other than that, spend the time building more links rather than worrying about the ones you already have built. The only result you need to monitor is if your link building is raising your site in the SERP’s, so focus on that.

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2. Should I only build links to my main index page?

You need your linkbuilding to appear natural.  People linking naturally link to specific content, not to homepages usually. This is called “deep linking”.  So build links to all of your pages.

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3. Should I only build relevant links?

The current info, from testing and SEO experts concensus (including Rand Fishkin over at SEOmoz.org)  is that relevancy is not a factor, however trust and authority are. By all means build relevant links, but do not ignore links from non-relevant sites, as they are of equal value.

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3.  My site was ranking well but has now dropped down the SERP’s and is moving all over the place.

This is called the “Google dance”.     It effects new sites and sites, and those who suddenly start gathering a larger than normal amount of new inbound links. A new site will usually get an initial “boost” in the SERP’s for a couple of weeks.  This is believed to be Google’s way of helping new sites get an initial boost of interest to help them start attracting those natural links Google always talks about as the ideal.

After the initial boost your site will drop to its true ranking.  That’s when the work begins.  You need to gain trust to start moving up the SERP’s then, which mostly involves getting links to your site.

The Google dance can also effect sites whose Link Velocity suddenly changes, ie the rate at which they normally gain inbound links. So you need to be aware of link velocity and trust,  both of which are covered in the LinkBuilders Bible.

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4.  What is a backlink?

Simple I know to many, but it is asked all the time on forums.  A backlink is a link to your site.  It can be a reciprocal (two way) link as well, because it still links back to your site.

The most valuable links you can build are one way backlinks, ie a link to your site that you do not reciprocate.

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5. How can I get backlinks?

Again, asked all the time on forums, and always the same anwers come back:

• Directory submissions (only relevant, quality directories)
• Social bookmarking (Digg etc)
• Articles submissions (ezine articles for example)
• Forum signature links
• Blog commenting

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All of the above are low-quality links, because anyone can get them and Google does not give much weight to them.

If you want to learn how to get links, and find out the link building information you will not be told in a forum, then the LinkBuilders Bible 2010 is essential reading for you. If you want to know about how you can benefit from link velocity, trustrank, topical relevance and also learn several tricks people do not talk about, then you need to grab a copy now.

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