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Build Great Backlinks has posted a new item, '31 Link Building Tactics
Discovered From Competitive Analysis'

Posted by CliquekailaThis post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the
main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The
author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz,
Inc.
On the Moz blog there's always been a large discussion around competitive
analysis. From how to conduct competitive analysis using Google docs to in depth
articles about competitive link analysis using Excel, or even just the fact that
Moz has Open Site Explorer, one of the ultimate analysis tools for competitive
backlink analysis. The fact of the matter is competitive analysis can be a very
worthwhile exercise to help you determine the best strategy for your online
efforts. This is especially true with link building.


Over the years, I've seen hundreds of thousands of backlinks while analyzing
for opportunities (as well as looking for bad links to disavow or prune). Most
recently, my analyses have inspired me to write this post, because common
opportunities continue to reveal themselves, and they're worth sharing. Have you
discovered some great link building gems in addition to those listed below?
Share them with us in the comments.

Contests

It's no secret that giveaways, contests, and sweepstakes are great ways to
attract links. Some of the recent contests I've observed driving links for
authoritative sites include the "Draw My Favorite Teacher" contest by
StorageMart, a competitor of a storage chain client of mine. Natural links from
news organizations and authoritative blogs are often a result of a contest that
is unique like this.


A hacking contest by Rackspace, a competitor of our global hosting provider
client, also drew in quite a few links we observed after they partnered with
this NFC Ring kickstarter project. The NFC Ring partner then helped promote the
contest too for some added link juice. These are both great examples of
contest-driven link earning.


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Running Giveaway Competitions for Links and SEO
How to Build a Great Contest
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EDU link building strategies



Some of the most authoritative links my team and I have ever built are on
university and college websites. When conducting competitive analysis be on the
lookout for your competitor's .edu TLD earned links. Expert tip: Do a find &
replace for the characters ".edu" in Excel, and format it to fill any cell with
a color that has ".edu". See the screenshot below for more information.


Related articles

How to Gain Natural and Valuable Links From Universities
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Housing and residence life "helpful links"

Recently I conducted some competitive analysis on three separate industries:
storage facilities, national cable providers, and automotive insurance. In all
three of these industries, I discovered a plethora of link opportunities on
housing and residence life FAQ pages for students. Students who move into campus
housing often have to find extra storage, thus the storage links. Additionally
students moving to a new state or country for school may need to find cable
providers/utilities or new insurance providers, thus the cable TV and auto
insurance links. Some example opportunities are provided below. Be on the
lookout for these types of link building opportunities.

School of the Art Institute of Chicago Housing & Residence Life: FAQs
Yale School of Medicine "Living in Connecticut" helpful links
South Dakota School of Mines & Technology useful links section
University of the Incarnate Word helpful links
University of Florida College of Dentistry helpful links for students

Scholarship listings

The need to find help to fund education for students is in high demand. A
reoccurring link building strategy I've seen used includes creating a
scholarship for students and having the listing added to scholarship pages on
.edu sites. Virginia.edu has an authoritative scholarship page along with KU.Edu
and Davenport.edu. These schools don't just post their own scholarships, they
post other institutions' scholarships as well as brands offering scholarships.
Expert tip: Try the search command inurl:scholarship site:edu to find .edu
domains with scholarship pages.




Related articles

Link Building with a Scholarship
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Student resources and minority resources

When thinking about ways you can convince a University's webmaster to place a
link to you or your client's site, specifically search for student resource
pages. These pages are often similar to those found in campus life or
residential sections of a University site. They are always treasure troves for
link opportunities.


What are students looking forand in need of while in school? Awesome student
resources exist on .edu sites like UKY.edu, as well as dedicated resources such
as UniversityParent.com. See if a list exists that your site should be listed
on.


Additionally, minority resources are prevalent, especially for Hispanic
students. On MSState.edu this Hispanic business primer was developed and not
only acquires a lot of links but also links out to great resources for students.
Seek out these resources and ask to be added if you can develop a program,
content piece or promotion relating to resources for minorities. Expert tip: Try
using advanced search commands like this one to uncover these pages:
inurl:helpful-links site:edu.

GOV link building strategies



Just like University domains, government pages are often extremely
authoritative and very relevant. Helpful links pages, resource pages and more
information is available on .gov TLDs you just have to find them. Common pages
include those listed below. This is just scratching the surface of
opportunities!

Foreign nationals

Helpful links for foreign nationals such as general information, banking and
credit institutions, local news organizations, programs for foreign nationals
and ESL scholarship opportunities. The National Renewal Energy Laboratory's
helpful links for foreign nationals was a site that was discovered during
competitive link analysis.

Employment opportunities

Employment and career opportunities are often shared with visitors of .gov
sites. The Iowa Human Rights department provides such resources to its readers
on authoritative pages.

Non-profit partnerships

Non-profit partnerships also provide for great link building opportunities.
This economic development program showed up in a competitive link analysis
report listing private sector partners.


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Offering a job

Job boards exist all over the internet. From news publishers to industry
association job listing pages, if you're hiring there are opportunities to get
your site listed. Attending a career fair is also a great way to get a link.
UIowa.edu has a great career site which was discovered during a competitive
backlink analysis for a new school offering engineering programs.


Job boards are also on non-profit sites such as Python.org in your industry.
Think about the types of sites that industry professionals frequent; I'm sure
you'll find a job board or career center with links to job listings. Just have
to look.

Green eco-friendly causes



Anything eco-friendly, carbon footprint-lowering, green, or renewable presents
an opportunity for generating links. Our team developed a resource page for
green printing resources for a client InkTechnologies.com after looking through
competitor resources and finding Go Green resource pages on an .edu and on
non-profit sites. These pages existed and linked to third party sites so we
figured we could ask to be listed as well after developing the content. We
succeeded and got some great links; you can too!


Education programs that focus on renewable energy can uncover green links.
While conducting research for a new engineering program one of our client's
offers we uncovered this Energy.gov link. Engineering related programs often
study technology to help reduce our dependence on non-renewable energy sources.
Other green educational resources and initiatives exist that might attract links
such as: green internships, clean energy jobs, green competitions and related
private and non-profit programs.


Pull backlinks to "green" educational programs, conduct advanced searching to
uncover these sites and think about the opportunities at your organization or
client's company that have an environmentally friendly angle to acquire links.


Related articles

12 Scalable Link-Building Tactics
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The Complete Guide to Link Building with Local Events
Sponsorships



Sponsorship has been a "bad" word in the world of link building. Using a
sponsorship to try to increase your rankings with a dofollow link can be against
Google's Terms of Service. However, there are exceptions which make sponsorships
not so bad after all. After conducting some competitive analysis, the following
six sponsorship opportunities were uncovered. Expert tip: Watch out for
sponsorships that put your link sitewide on every page or allow anchor text
specific links. These are links that often signal nefarious tactics, and should
be avoided at all costs.

Sponsoring an event often garners publicity and brand visibility. For companies
that decided to become an event sponsor of a recent Arts and Crafts Fair in
Scottsdale, Arizona, their sponsorship also landed a link with their company's
logo on ScottsdaleAZ.gov.
Sitewide sponsorships were a popular tactic just a short time ago. Be very
selective about these types of opportunities. Did you know StatCounter.com
accepts sponsorships? We discovered a competitor of a client uses the site for
sponsorship.
A Podcast exists for just about every topic under the sun. Consider sponsoring
a Podcast or a Webinar, as you might just earn a link or two out of it. Take for
example this Podcast sponsored by Go Daddy, InlandBank.com and others.
Conference sponsorships have many benefits including getting you in front of a
niche audience. Juicy links are a result as well such as those found on
http://mashable.com/connect/ and http://debconf13.debconf.org/ which were
uncovered after a recent competitive analysis of Rackspace for a hosting
provider client of ours.
Non-profit sponsorships provide funding for a great cause while also achieving
an authoritative link. A few noteworthy companies sponsor food banks such as
this one http://www.safoodbank.org/, another opportunity uncovered while
scouring competitor Rackspace's backlinks.
Exhibitors or vendors at a Tradeshow or an Expo often receive listings and
information on exhibitor pages. The Green Building Expo held in Scottsdale has a
nice PR 3 page listing for exhibitors such as Wells Fargo, a competitor of a
bank client for which we were researching strategies.
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Content earns links

Developing content can help you earn links? No way, what an unheard-of
concept! We've all heard about content marketing being used to attract links,
but what kind of content should you develop? Here are a few ideas discovered
after competitive link analysis with clients in the web hosting, banking,
education and engineering industries applicable across different industries.

Tutorials like those that Hostgator provides
Comparison pricing information on picking the right web hosting provider,
notice they used specific prices
Small Business Center like the one GoDaddy.com developed
Knowledge Center like Rackspace
MIT's "Ask an Engineer" content marketing strategy
Free resources offered to library visitors, students and others online
Resources for classrooms to get listed on sites like this Massachusetts
Technology Education/Engineering Collaborative
Find authoritative pages and develop the content to obtain the links your
competitor's content earns such as this small business resource center on
SBA.gov.

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Old tactics done right



The majority of manually built links you likely uncover during a backlink
analysis often utilize tactics from yester-year. Things like forum link
building, comment spam, directories, and spun articles are evident. After
reviewing a few recently, however, I discovered that even the bad tactics can be
done right, and here are a few examples:

Forum links: When placed on authoritative relevant sites they can be valuable.
Check out this Adobe Forum that packs a bit of punch from an authoritative
standpoint for a competitor of a tech client we were reviewing.
Directories: When placed on relevant sites that don't accept any site under the
sun, have strict submission guidelines and are authoritative sites directories
can still provide valuable. Sites such as BestoftheWeb.com and DMOZ.org are very
authoritative, but niche directories exist catering to a specific topic.
Foreign link building: Although caution is required, there are still
opportunities on foreign language sites that can represent link building
opportunities. They must be relevant and authoritative, such as this one on
Chinaz.com about web hosting providers.
Customer case studies: Although used in the past to be biased reports about
your company, many customer case studies have provided worthwhile for
competitors we've reviewed. Check out this case study we saw drew in a lot of
links for Hostgator.
Guest blogging: Sure it's overused today but if you have an opportunity to
guest blog on a partner's site or even a competitor do it! This guest post on
Rackspace is a good example for a competitor we uncovered.
Links pages: Discovering links pages with a lot of on page authority and
getting added is one link building tactic still valuable today. Consider this
SAE.org links list with huge on page authority, a great opportunity discovered
when looking through engineering school competitor's backlinks. Just because
there are a bunch of outbound links doesn't automatically disqualify these link
types as authoritative.
Local associations: Some brands went crazy with building a ton of links on
local sites. One tactic that still works today is finding local associations to
join. This NFPA.com link was discovered after reviewing competitors of a
University client of ours for a juicy link.
Bookmarking: Wanted to receive hundreds of links for low cost in 2008? Bookmark
links were a big hit, however today aren't the best when done unnaturally. But
did you know some sites exist today that allow individuals to create their own
bookmarking pages? When you discover bookmarking pages on .gov or .edu sites
they can be opportunities. Take for example this bookmarks page on the lbl.gov
site we discovered during competitive analysis. This page is a bit irrelevant
for the client we were looking for, but is a good example of bookmarking pages
that exist today with some on page authority.

Related articles

Are Forums Dead?
Directories
Five Steps to Finding (the Right) Guest-Blogging Opportunities
Top 20 Local Search Ranking Factors: An Illustrated Guide
Directories and Bookmarking

These are a few of the great opportunities we've discovered through
competitive link analysis. Hopefully you've found the opportunities worthwhile
for your industry. Tell readers your own observations from competitive analysis
in the comments below.
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