Link Building Basics: Research Tools

A little planning and research goes a long way with link building

We’ve been covering the basics of a successful link building campaign, based on an excellent guide from SEOmoz. Now, it’s time to start applying what you’ve learned to your firm’s site. There is a little more prep work to do, however, as link building research is still needed.

Consider employing these useful link building tools:

1. Yahoo! Site Explorer Reported Inlinks – Set up your site with Yahoo! Site Explorer. With this link building research tool, you can determine the popularity of a site and find pages that link to that site. A site with powerful links will pass pages of greater value through their links.
2. Number of Links Per Page – The PageRank formula states that the value of a link is decreased when there are other links on the same page. Thus, it is better to be linked to by a page with fewer links on it. Something to keep in mind as you search for link possibilities.
3. Possible Referral Traffic – In your link building research, try to pay attention to potential referrals, not just the search engines. Remember this is a giant referral system! You can gain a lot of traffic through links from strong, important sites. Google Trends can give you a general idea of a site’s traffic.

This is just the beginning of link building research, but if you master these tools, you will be off to a good start. Keep checking in at CaseDetails.com for more information on website structure, using authoritative outbound links and more!