Keywords are a gateway to understanding how a market thinks, acts and
buys. They’re also the common language for most SEO and PPC teams, and a
clear way of connecting revenues with their work in the eyes of upper
management. This all makes keywords a natural place to begin discussing –
and designing – a link building campaign.
First, a note on the disctintion between money keywords ($KWs) and
market defining keywords (MDKWs). Most SEM teams are familiar with $KWs –
those are the terms that they bid on and optimize for because prospects
use them when looking for solutions to their pains. However, $KWs are
not always as useful when analyzing a market for its link building
opportunities. This requires market defining keywords, which are the
highest-level terms used to describe a market. So, for an online golf
retailer, the money keywords would look like [brand name, model number,
driver]. The market defining keyword is, simply, golf and possibly
golfing.
1) Identify Your MDFK and $KW SERPs Dominators
SERP dominators are the websites that consistently rank well in the
SERPs for your $KWs as well as your MDKWs. Though you may think you know
your primary search competitors, you’ll be surprised at the true SERPs
dominators when you do a comprehensive analysis. Start with reading our guide to SERP dominator analysis here >> We created a worksheet and occurrence counting tool to help out (there’s also source code available for a tool that automates this process).
The SERP dominators in your keyword market space are also excellent
places to start pulling competitive backlink data, should you choose to
develop a link prospect list that way.
2) MDFKs for Industry Link Opportunity Analysis
What link opportunities exist in your market? Your market defining
keywords are an excellent place to start gauging opportunity. You can
look for blogs: [MDFK blogs], news sites: ["MDFK news"], guest posting
opportunities: [MDFK "guest post"], interviewers/ees: [MDFK
intitle:interview], niche directories: ["MDFK Directory"], niche forums
and community sites: [MDKW community], and industry associations if
you’re in the B2B space: [MDKW association]. Search for each of these in
Google and compare the number of relevant hits in the top ten. The
query with the most relevant hits could be an area for you to query more deeply and begin developing a specific campaign.
3) MDFKs for Competitive Link Analysis
While surveying your industry for opportunities, keep an eye out for
your competitors, as well as any of the SERP dominators you previously
identified. Are their hostnames appearing in any of your result sets?
Are they mentioned in the news sites you find? Are they the subjects of
interviews? Track them carefully and you’ll uncover the PR and
content-based link building moves of your competition. Most importantly
you’ll get some great ideas on what’s working.
4) Connecting Existing Linkable Assets to Keywords
We wrote recently on link Building Assets
which are pages and resources on your site – and people within your
organization – that are the most linkable to your market. This could be a
PDF collection, a jobs listing page, coupons, or even your CEO (for
interviews). The important thing is going from assets to the keywords
that will help you turn up link opportunities. Start with your list of
assets and then brainstorm their keywords. Then combine these keywords
with your MDKWs and you should start to turn up some places to submit
your assets or request that someone check them out for consideration.
5) MDKWs + Link Building Query Operators
MDKWs are crucial when conducting a thorough dig for ALL the link
prospects in your keyword space. You conduct this dig by combining your
MDKWs with link building queries, designed to root out opportunities
based on their "footprints." We recommend the following tools for this:
The Ontolo Link Building Query Generator
6) Getting Your Money Keywords in Anchor Text with Guest Posts
One way to use your money keywords in linkbuiding is when you’ve
decided on a guest post campaign, in which you write articles for
publication on relevant sites that accept content submissions. In most
cases you’re allowed a snippet of description, along with a link or two.
Depending on your relationship with the publisher, you may be able to
have more control over the anchor text. In some occasions they may allow
you to even add links within the body text, especially if there’s a
value-add reason for the links to be there.
7) Getting Money Keywords in Anchor Text with Outreach Requests
When conducting outreach you can request that people link to you with
particular link text. However, unless you’re paying them, it’s not
highly-likely that people will respond to your requests. It doesn’t hurt
to ask, though you’re probably better off focusing on building
high-trust editorial links to your site and letting your onsite SEO
handle the rest!
