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Many SEOs think that finding link prospects is a rather boring and tedious task because sometimes it takes days to select a reasonable quantity of good sites. In this guide I'll show you how to reduce the time spent on this activity from several hours to 15 minutes using Google and an Excel spreadsheet you can download for free below.

When it comes to finding sites for link or content placement, all SEOs can be divided into 3 main groups:

• Novices. They don't know where and how to search and filter results.
  Estimated time spent on the research is from several days to "damn, let's skip it and do something else!"
• Intermediates. They know what they need to do and filter the results using a couple of tricks.
  Time spent ranges from several hours to one working day.
• Professionals.  They know all the best practices of finding what they need, have a number of tools to help filter the data (quite often they develop the tools themselves).
  Time required is 15 minutes max.

By link prospecting I mean searching for appropriate websites which don't link to my site BUT will most probably place a link to it if I knock at their door.

Good news: after reading this guide you'll be able to do link prospecting at the velocity of sound.

The time you'll save can be spent on on-page optimization or watching a good movie, but on-page optimization is the better choice if you're at work, of course.

Understanding search types and advanced Google search queries

Let's assume you've already done keyword research. Just in case, the key phrases should be 1-3 words length and have medium to high search volumes.

In my opinion, there is no better tool for link prospecting than Google. The trick is that you can substantially improve the search efficiency by using advanced search operators.

Let's assume you have to find an opportunity to write a post about shampoo somewhere. An inbound marketing novice will, probably, type in Google write a post about shampoo. This may seem logical, but unfortunately in SERP you'll see only one or two results you're looking for.

Actually, in order to succeed in composing right and effective search queries you should always imagine a typical webpage which will host your link or a piece of content. Every webpage has "footprints" like:

• Generic words and phrases in the title: write for us, useful links, guest column, etc.
• Generic words and phrases  in the URL: example1.com/blog/guest-post, example2.com/our-partners and such
• Template phrases in text: guest post by, submit url and similar
• Other footprints like menu elements and site modules' names (sidebar sections, comments, etc.).

Going back to our shampoo example, an experienced internet marketer may use a query like this: shampoo intitle:"guest post" OR inurl:guest-post.

As you can see, this way you get relevant results only.

In fact, in most cases you will need only 3-5 advanced search operators:

inurl: or allinurl:                    intitle: or allintitle:                    site:

because if a keyword is included in the URL or in the page title, the webpage is most probably relevant to this query.

Still, there are some other operators you may find useful:

• Quotes "keyword" – to make sure the phrase in quotes will be present on SERP.
• Minus -keyword – to signal Google that you don't want to see this keyword on SERP.
• Wildcard keyword1 * keyword2 (or keyword_part*) – when you're not sure what words you will see among keyword1 and keyword2 (or know only a part of the word keyword_part).
• OR and AND operators – OR is used if you want to choose one or both keywords, whereas AND is used to only choose both options. These operators should be written in capital letters only. Otherwise they won't be treated by Google as search operators.

Now I will give you some examples of advanced search queries grouped by the types of link building strategies. You can find quite similar examples on other sites as this topic has been discussed a lot in SEO community but there are still many people not familiar with these queries. Copy them and replace [K] by your keyword.

Pro tip: Some words are usually ignored by Google while query processing as they don't bring much value to users. Check out the list of such stop words which can be omitted from the queries.

Guest posting and submission

[K] inurl:guest-post OR intitle:"guest post"
[K] inurl:write-for-us OR intitle:"write for us"
[K] "become a contributor" OR "contribute to this site"
[K] "submit * post" OR "add * post"
[K] "guest post by" OR "guest column"
[K] inurl:blog AND inurl:guest

Lists of sites, directories

[K] inurl:useful-links OR intitle:"useful links"
[K] inurl:related-sites OR intitle:"related sites"
[K] "submit * url" OR "submit * site" OR "add * url"
[K] "suggest * website" OR "suggest * url"

Sponsorship and partnership

[K] thank* "to our sponsors"
[K] "partner* list" OR "our partners"

PR

[K] "press release" inurl:contact
[K] "send * your press release"
[K] "send * product information"
[K] "send * your news"

Ideas for copy writers

[K] intitle:"top OR best * tips" inurl:blog
intitle:"ways to * [K]"
intitle:"check list *[K]"
allintitle:best [K] blog

I think these examples will be helpful in your understanding the principle of advanced query construction. Please note that there can be a unique set of such queries for every specific niche, thus I recommend you to experiment and invent queries which will work best for you!

Pro tip: If you're looking for potential link donors from, for example, the UK you can try adding site:.co.uk to each query. Also, if you represent a well-known brand and think your content is good enough you can consider looking for links from .gov and .edu sites by adding site:.gov and site:.edu.

Google search and browser settings

So, you've learned advanced queries and your "Googling" skills have improved greatly. You can be proud of yourself, but if you start visiting dozens of sites from SERPs, manually analyze the relevance and quality of each of them, and write e-mails to website owners, you may face:

• Déjà vu – you visit more and more sites you've seen before (quite often you may not be sure whether you've already visited them, or not.)
• Facepalm – you find a website, thoroughly analyze it, search for contacts and write an outreach letter just to realize that it already links to you. (in some cases it's OK though)

This is not my way of doing link prospecting.  Let's learn how to select link donors QUICKLY!For this matter we need the following:

1)    Install an add-on which lets you copy a group of links with anchor texts or titles from a page. Personally, I use Multilinks for Firefox. If you use Chrome, Linkclump is a good solution, but you need to change settings after the installation. In Chrome Options go to Tools/Extensions. Then in Linkclump settings in the field Actions press Edit and set the Selected links should be… copied to clipboard.

2)    Go to Google, log out (we don't need results distorted by our personal search history, right?) and  click on Settings, go to Search settings in the top right corner, switch off Instant search and set the search depth greater than 10 (I usually use 30-results SERPs).

Excel link prospecting template

It's time to open Excel. I created an Excel template which can be used for link prospecting.

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Make a backup copy so that you can return to the starting point if something goes wrong.

1)    Type in your first advanced query into Google search box and then click and hold the right mouse button selecting all URLs on SERP as shown at the picture below (this is what Multilinks or Linkclump allow you to do):

2)    Thus, all the links from SERP are copied to your clipboard. Paste the results into the table (first time – start from the B7 field) on the Link Prospects worksheet in the Excel file . Also, copy your query into the first column and extend to the last row with the results. Repeat these steps for all your search queries, pasting the copied data below the last record of the table into column B (Title). As a result, your table will look something like this:

In the D column (Root domain) you may see the following formula:

=HYPERLINK(IFERROR(LEFT(C2,SEARCH("/",C2,9)-1),C2))

It extracts root domains from URLs and inserts a hyperlink to the homepages. Please do not edit any formulas, as the magic will vanish straight away! You see, the sites which appear several times on different search results pages are marked pink. It means you can avoid visiting the same sites several times. Moreover, if the same site appears in SERP twice or more times, this means it's really worth examining.

3)    These easy-to-replicate steps will already save you a lot of time. However, I suggest you go further and exclude websites which already link to your site. Download the list of backlinks to your site, for example, from Google Webmaster Tools and insert the data from this list to the column A (Backlinks) on the second worksheet of my template. No doubt, removing dead pages and missing backlinks from the list is the right move.

4)    Done? Return to the Link prospects worksheet and look at the column E (Links back). All sites linking to your site are marked as Yes and the rest as No data. This step is useful if your site has hundreds or thousands backlinks.

Now, after removing duplicates and filtering out all the websites linking to yours you can start opening pages and making decisions.

Pro tip: If you find super-relevant sites, I suggest you looked up for similar websites at www.findsimilarsites.com or www.similarsites.com.

If you are a happy owner of link building management software license you can import the list of link prospects to the software (or service), check SEO metrics, get contact details and send out outreach emails in bulk.

If you have your own lists of useful advanced search queries or know any other breakthrough methods to search for link donors – do not hesitate sharing your experience in comments!

Preannouncement: Our team is currently rebuilding Link Assistant so that the above listed features (and many more) will be included into the fresh version of this piece of software. Stay tuned!

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So, whether you are an individual blogger who makes a living blogging or you work for a company, you're probably concerned about the image you cut in the cyber space at least to some extent. Thus, here is my list of 5 online reputation slips to avoid, which could save you a lot of headache afterwards.

Annulling Other People's Values

They say that a good bartender never talks religion, politics or sports with his/her visitors. In these subjects, there's no middle ground and chances are you're going to hurt somebody's feelings. The same applies to other sensitive topics that can get people heated up.

Or course, if it's your private Facebook page, it feels just right to speak your mind there - your friends are likely the people who share your views. However, if you're a public figure or you represent a company in social media, you probably want to be more diplomatic.

For example, you probably shouldn't do what Bollywood actress Sonakshi Kapoor did: after India won an important cricket match, she posted a morphed image of a Pakistani player being hit by an Indian player on Twitter, which angered a lot of the star's Pakistani fans.

In fact, the best way to make sure you never hurt anybody's feeling is to do 2 things:

• Learn to really respect other people's views and values. Just live and let leave.
• Keep your private and you public lives separate. For instance, I know many people who use Facebook for private communication and lead their public lives on Twitter, Google+ and other networks.

Making People Feel Bad about Themselves

One of my favorite authors of all time, Fyodor Dostoevsky, once said it was easier for people to forgive those who did them harm, than to forgive those they harmed. People will forgive you if you slip, but they will not forget it if you make them feel like the bad guy.

So, avoid making people feel bad. You're not the voice of their consciousness - leave it up to the latter. To a certain degree, this is just another way of saying "the customer is always right". Well, sometimes the customer is plain wrong, and you shouldn't let it slide. But you shouldn't publicly bash or mock the customer either.

Others may feel that, God forbid, they do wrong by you one day, too - and get publicly humiliated. As my father usually says, "a cultured man is not the one who didn't spill that sauce, but the one who didn't notice".

Ignoring Negative Feedback

Sometimes people post defamatory stuff about other people (or a company) on the Web. How does one deal with negative feedback? Now, the worst thing you can in this case is just ignore it. So, don't do it, ever.

If your first instinct is to just let it be, it's because of your fear of losing the online conflict. Better think about this way: if you don't respond to the person slamming you on the Web, you may as well consider it a lost battle.

So, don't let your psyche trick you into believing the conflict is not worth dealing with (an exception is when your opponent is a complete loony). This is a typical trick our mind plays when it wants to save energy/take a shortcut.

Instead, just follow 2 simple rules - and your will be able to flip pretty much any situation in your favor:

• Never respond to criticism when you're angry. This could make you look like a troll yourself. Respond when you feel you can be clear, composed and argumentative.
• If you're really at fault, but your critic twists the facts - set the facts straight, admit your fault and then say how you’re going to deal with it.

Wondering what others say about you online? Here are some easy-to-use reputation management tools that let you stay informed 24/7/365.

Pretending to Be Someone You're Not

In plain words this is called lying. Sometimes people lie about who they are; sometimes they lie about how they feel or what they think about things. Again, people mostly lie out of fear. When we're little, we learn that lying is one of the ways to avoid punishment, and continue clinging to it as adults to avoid criticism.

But this behavior is often a time bomb that can go off at a very inappropriate moment. In the long run, honesty always works best, even if it may seem that it’s impossible or wrong to be honest in certain situations.

Well, of course there are some exceptions. There are situations when it’s much better to tell white lies (if you're really being pressured for an answer) or not to say anything at all. But we're talking rather about instances when you have a choice: to tell lies or to speak the truth.

Some things to encourage you to speak the truth:

• In most cases, your fear of being criticized is based on assumptions. You assume how people will react to you speaking the truth, but these could be just that - your assumptions.
• Besides, remember that other people's view of you is just their subjective vision of the situation, and even that tends to change with time. Think about whether their opinion will matter to you, say, in 3 year from now.

By the way, don't forget there are such things on the Internet as the wayback machine, facesærch and other tools that really help people expose liars. Conclusion: honesty comes cheaper in the end.

Being Afraid to Show Your Human Side

In a way, this drawback is linked to online lying, but is rooted in slightly different grounds. Thing is, some people do not understand the specifics of the Web, the social Web in particular.

Nowadays, much of the communication is happening on a more personal level than decades ago. This is something very appropriate these days. Before, seeing what the CEO of your rival company had for lunch was quite incredible, today it’d be plain ordinary.

So, as more barriers are taken down by the very nature of the Web, people expect to see more of your human side. A good example of how being transparent benefits your online (and offline) image is President Obama's election campaign. Now, if it's OK for the President to demonstrate his human side - it's OK for you, too.

So, I've just shared 5 reputation slips to avoid when taking part in different online communities. Do you agree these should be avoided? How else can one create a positive image for themselves online? It would be great to hear your thoughts in comments.

Image credit: xyno via iStockPhoto

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Before you look at the comics and then hurry up to close the tab with this article, I just want to confirm it's not a WWBD (what would Buffy do) post (WWND - what would Neo do - in our case). We're trying to dig deeper and suggest you on applying feasible solutions to your ambitious SMM month plan that looks usually like this:

You know multitasking, I know multitasking and Neo is the king of multitasking, but who cares if you just don't have time for everything? Aha, you think that this is what to-do lists are for: to help you manage your activities. But before we talk about your activities, let's focus on your goals first.

Your Monthly SMM Goals: Thomas Anderson Perspective

They may differ. No joking, I have really just written that. Your goals differ on your internal marketing strategy, your SMM strategy, your industry, audience, etc. There are too many ifs and which is why I suggest you having a look at your Social Media presence like you've never ever seen it before.

Let's assume you know your audience and know they hang out on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and, say, YouTube. What are your goals there? They are probably very straight-forward:

1. Get more targeted fans, followers, friends, subscribers for both personal and corporate accounts;
2. Increase engagement and I bet that you measure engagement by a number of likes, shares, re-shares, views, comments. It's a somewhat naïve and fatal mistake, but let's leave it for another blog post;
3. Increase traffic.

Let's assume that you have to write for your corporate blog, also contribute to the guest posting efforts of your team and count Social Media ROI.

Goals -> Activities Transformation: Thomas Anderson becomes Neo

Here we gotta think what activities typically lead to goal 1, 2, 3 executions. You might have your own special recipes, but I'd love to specify the basic ones that normally work regardless of your industry or previous SMM efforts.

Below are very basic activities with nothing extra:

OK, now let's try to find out what things from this list are humanly possible to do within a month.

Time execution boundaries: it's 2199 not 1999 any more

My calculations are performed assuming that Social Media management is your full-time job and we have at least 40 hours per week for our chores.

Firstly, you have to make a distinction between live conversations and ''content curation and Co''. What's more important for your brand at this stage? If you're a well-established brand then people dive into conversations with you themselves, but normally we have to buy our fans a scuba set, dive computers and the ticket to the Maldives to make them really dive into engagement with the brand.

It's a very important part and I would give 2 hours a day for live social media conversations because if you don't speak – you're dead according to Social Media Bible. Please note that 2 hours are not only allocated for speaking on behalf of your brand only. You are responsible for maintaining your personal accounts too. It's silly to specify how many comments you should write and how many answers give – you just do it as long as you see anything you can contribute too. It's like reading your personal Newsfeed on Facebook and liking cat photos of your grandma. It should come as a natural activity and feel natural for your readers too.

Content curation is however also an integral part. If you've ever curated content you know that the hardest parts are search and presentation. Search is harsh because internet is a huge garbage bin and presentation is harsh because you gotta make fans believe this content is quality before they even read it. I would say that the most feasible time boundary is 4 hours. Yes, 4 precious hours every single day.

Theoretically there's a time amount of 2 hours left every day. What could we potentially spend it on? I personally call it self-improvement and ideas generation time. Everyone curates content, most brands talk on Social Media, but you also need time for creating your own content (writing blog and guest blog posts), generating ideas for your contests, video tutorials, answering your emails and just browsing the web to see what other folks are doing.

Let's draw the line:

Live conversation: 2 hrs per day -> 10 hrs per week -> 40 hrs per month

• Answering people's questions to your brand on Social Media (this may be typical support questions or just some requiring your expertise);
• Leaving comments to interesting discussions, blog posts, etc;
• Answering industry-related questions and contributing to the theme tailored discussions;
• Monitoring brand mentions and specific keywords;
• Managing ''holy war'' consequences if any;
• Answering comments to your posts on Facebook, Google+, Twitter or to videos on YouTube.

Content Curation: 4 hrs per day -> 20 hrs per week - > 60 hrs per month

• Reading your newsfeed, influential magazines, journals, blogs and the like;
• Choosing content that can be the most beneficial one for your target audience;
• Presenting it in an ''eatable'' format tailored for the specifics of every social network (i.e. adding related hastags on Twitter, using text formatting on Google+, extensive use of images, etc.);
• Assigning tasks to other team members: visual content creation for designers, video ''montage'', some pages coding, and so on.

Idea generation and self-improvement: 2 hrs per day -> 10 hrs per week -> 40 hrs per month

• Content creation: writing blog and guest posts;
• Creating contests, video ideas;
• Monitoring competitors;
• Reading industry and smm news;
• Testing waters on new (old) social networks;
• Keeping an eye on stats (e.g, Google Analytics, Facebook fan page statistics, etc.);
• Meetings, emails and other time consuming holes;
• Report preparation.

NB: I hate to see people working overtime. It’s unproductive, silly and unprofessional. Remember: you’re doing something wrong if you work late hours more than once a week. You’re a social media manager, not a goddamn surgeon. Stop extra drama and learn time management.

Activities Scope: ''a world where anything is possible''

Time limits are necessary for self-discipline but setting some figure targets can make you even more focused and responsible. But before we should really understand what social network works for your business better. There's at least one place that can give you a pretty decent overview – Google Analytics.

Just go to Standard Reports -> Traffic Sources -> Social -> Overview and you'll see a general overview that can guide you perfectly well.

We strongly suggest checking Standard Reports -> Traffic Sources -> Social -> Conversions because some social networks can suck at attracting visits, but can still rock at generating conversions.

By analyzing these stats you can decide which social networks deserve more time and which ones less.

Let's assume that your key traffic generators are Facebook and YouTube, however Facebook and Google+ convert better than anything else.  And just don't think about quitting Twitter immediately: if it works for your industry and your competitors then you're probably not trying hard enough or need a direction change.

Let's get down to some figures based on the info we've just got from your GA.

Content curation:

Facebook: 4 posts per day and 4 posts per week-end (2 on Sunday and 2 on Saturday). Sounds a lot, ha? However, it converts well and not all posts should be somebody else's content, it can be polls, contests/discounts/special offer announcements, company news, and so on – the variety will depend only on your personal calendar. Moreover, Facebook EndgeRank is pretty tricky and doesn't show fans all of your posts and 4 is the most optimal figure if you want at least one of them to be seen by the most loyal fans.

Google+: 2 posts per day and 2 posts per week-end (1 for Saturday and 1 for Sunday). G+ is algorithm free which means that your followers see everything you post unless you specify some circles to share with. 1 post is not enough because it'll target only a couple of time zones, 2 posts are better if published at a different time and with a substantial interval as they cover a bigger audience and more time zones.

Twitter: 2-3 scheduled tweets with links and 1-2 unscheduled tweets (real conversations excluded) per day 6 scheduled tweets per week-end (3 for Saturday and 3 for Sunday). The idea here is to show that you're not a bot and are involved into a couple of conversations, but you should also be careful about that too. People also need to see what you're curating at first sight to make sure you will not pollute their Twitter feed if they follow you.

YouTube: 2-4 videos per month (1 video per week ideally). Sharing your own content on YouTube is associated with huge development and time costs. Creating a video isn't a fast process. Adding other YouTube videos to your channel is somewhat dangerous and copyright sensitive. Please also note that Google hangouts can serve in a perfect way and enrich your YouTube account. What's more, they generate a higher level of audience engagement.

Thus, your activity list will resemble something of the kind:

Facebook – 76 posts

Google+ - 48 posts

Twitter – max.120 scheduled tweets

YouTube – 4 videos

Contests, giveaways, polls, funny images/comics and the like:

The major aim of these post types is to make your SMM strategy more comprehensive, diversified and effective. You should be viewed not only like a content curator, but also the brand that makes fun and is ready for a conversation.

Needless to say, contests with prizes like your products, discounts and services increase product life cycle.

How many activities of this kind should you perform weekly and monthly? Firstly check how well they fit into your Social Media success picture and start experimenting with a feasible minimal amount.

NB: this scope isn't the final one and is presented for your consideration only as a starting point in order to understand what works and what needs improvement. We would strongly suggest reviewing this monthly plan every month and every quarter to make the necessary corrections depending on your results.

Results: To be continued…

The most logical step after reading this article would be making a Social Media calendar where you will specify all your activities at least for the upcoming week. It's hard and doesn't always work as it was planned to, but it's always beneficial to have a to-do list in front of your eyes just not to forget something and to focus on priorities.

One more piece of advice is to align this strategy with your marketing team and ask for their calendar as too often marketing folks put us under great pressure with their planned endeavors that they forgot to tell us. I know that you get what I mean if you are a social media manager.

I wish you good luck and encourage you to share your monthly plans in the comments below.

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Easy as it is! The contest starts today, Tuesday May 28^th and will run till Thursday, May 30^th, when a post of closing the contest and announcing the winner will be published.

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