Need Links? Make Up For Your Competitors Shortcomings
Now that I have my first blog post under my belt, I am starting to feel a little more confident. So much so, I decided to take my small amount of industry knowledge and start up my own coconut water company. Okay, Im only joking, but lets just say I wasnt. Lets say I was so into coconut water that I wanted to start up my own company and I wanted to gain exposure. My site has already been created and my products are all ready to be shipped. Theres only one problem nobody (and by nobody, I mean the search engines) knows that I exist. Without saying one word to anybody about my business, how do I get people to come to my site and buy my coconut water? The answer is linkbuilding.
Here is a (simplified) overview of how linkbuilding works
- I have a site
- I promote it
- People see it as a valuable resource and then link to it
- The more quality links I get, the more the search engines like my site
- The more the engines like my site, the higher I should rank
- The higher my site ranks, the more traffic/conversions I should get
Okay, so now I have my site, my tasty products and the above information that the SEO fairy whispered in my ear. Now, all I have to do is get some quality links, but where do I start? I dont know any bloggers that I can reach out to. I dont know any directories where I can submit my site. All I know is that I want to compete in the coconut water industry and that I have access to some cool SEOmoz tools.
The first thing that I do is type in coconut water in Google to get a list of competitors. Im pretty familiar with the industry so I know that Zico, VitaCoco and O.N.E are the big boys/girls in the space. So, lets see what they are (or are not) doing that I may be able to learn from. Running each of these competitors through the top pages tool, I can see that I caught each of these competitors sleeping a little bit.
VitaCoCo 404 Pages
Zico 404 Pages
O.N.E 404 Pages
- VitaCoCo is not getting credit for (at least) 3 links since the linked to pages return 404 status code
- Zico isnt receiving credit for (at least) 5 links
- O.N.E isnt receiving credit for (at least) 16 links
- I use at least here because there were more examples of these types of pages for each one, but I couldnt screenshot multiple pages
So, the easy part is done. I know that my competitors have links pointing to pages that dont exist, but how do I take advantage of that? I know if I had a website and I was linking to a page that didnt exist, my readers would be upset with me and may not read anything else on my site. So, are you thinking what Im thinking? What if I contacted the sites that are linking to these pages as a courtesy and said something like, Hey blogger, I noticed that you were linking to a page about coconut water that doesnt exist. Since you will already be editing that post anyway, I wanted to let you know that I also have a company that sells coconut water and the product is delicious and nutritious. Would you mind linking to my site instead? Now this wont work all the time, but it sure beats the heck out of hey blogger, can you link to me, Im neat-o?
So, you are probably saying to yourself, thats a cool idea, but how do I know which pages are linking to these 404ed ones. For that, I will be using OpenSiteExplorer (OSE). Lets take the O.N.E example since the most links are pointing to that one:
- I copy the link location of the 404ed page that has received 8 external links
- I drop that into OSE to find out which sites are linking to it
- I filter the results to only include the followed external links pointing to this page only
- I take the top result and I end up on this page
Coconut Porridge Recipe
It looks like this blogger has included a link to O.N.Es coconut water site as part of a recipe. Think about how upset I would be as a reader if I was making a Coconut Date Porridge for my in-laws and I couldnt access the page to see which coconut water I should buy. I would be devastated. So, I would shoot an email to this blogger and say hey, youre readers cant view that page because it no longer exists. You should update it and, oh, by the way, I sell coconut water and its freakin sweet. Would you mind linking to mine instead? I would recommend going down the top pages list and compiling a spreadsheet of all of the 404 pages for each competitor. Once you have that, you can start digging. Even if you dont get all of them, you will still get a few and you will at least make the web a better place.
Now, this strategy wont work every time, of course, but when thinking about where to start your linkbuilding, its always a good idea to take a look at what the competition is or isnt doing. You just may learn something. Do you have any other ways that you use competitors for linkbuilding? Feel free to tell us about it in the comments section!
Posted: 04.13.10
Mark Kennedy:
Great post, Napoleon. You did a good job of explaining things. It’s a smart strategy and a good example of thinking outside the box. And who knows, maybe a free sample or two could help convince some to link to you as well.
Zander Chance:
Great post Napoleon. If you’re not a SEOmoz subscriber, is there another way to do this? Sounds like a great tactic to use, but an SEOmoz sub just isn’t in the cards for me right now. Thanks!
todd:
this is horrible advice. there’s also a much better solution for taking advantage of competitor’s 404 pages and that is to BUILD MORE LINKS TO THEM. increased exposure on these pages will hurt your competition. that goes for other “mistakes” competitors make as well.
no one cares if a link they are trying to access goes to a broken page and contacting blogs/sites to ask nicely if they will update their links…with yours is just plain stupid and a waste of time.
Napoleon Suarez:
@Todd Hey, thanks for taking the time to read the post and thanks for the comment. I agree with you, there are multiple ways that we can capitalize on a competitors missteps. This way is one that works for me. I am also an advocate of making the web a better place, so even if the blogger/webmaster corrects the link and does not want to link back over to my site, the reader of the post now has a more pleasant web experience.
@Mark GREAT addition! Our past experiences have shown that bloggers respond a lot better to giveaways then just a plain email.
@Zander I don’t have an alternative to the top pages tool, but I do have an alternative to OpenSiteExplorer. I would go with the Yahoo Site Explorer for the second portion.
@Nuttakom Good call! In the example above, if I had an article speaking about different recipes using my coconut water, it would be a lot easier sell. Thanks for commenting!
David Ostendarp:
Napoleon, You have now surpassed Wil as my favorite Seer Blog to read lol…however I am a link builder therefore I may have a slight bias towards your posts (Wil, I still love to read yours tho!). I really appreciate the advice, as a starting point I always go after sites that DO link to my competitors, but I never thought about going after the ones that have broken links. Do you have an idea of how often this has worked for you (like a %)? And do you only go after blogs with broken links or do you attack sites of all kinds?
Napoleon:
Wow! That is great to hear, David. I am pretty flattered. Especially since I get a lot of my inspiration from reading Wil’s posts:) I do not have the conversion data of this technique, however. It is something new that I have just started using, but I may be able to write a post a few months down the line with more information on that. I think you just inspired a blog post for me. I would apply this technique to any and every type of website that has links, such as directories or news/informational sites. This can also work very well for your own site to be sure that you are not missing out on any links that you may have already generated. Thanks for following the blog!
Jean:
Toppages is no part of opensiteexplorer, something is wrong?