Linkbuilding Tool Tip – SEOmoz Link Intersect + Top Pages on Domain

Here’s a quick and handy (and headsmacking) link building tool tip you should try the next time you’re link building for a client by using competitor back links data as a starting point.

We know that the “Competitive Link Finder” tool (or, “Link Intersect Tool”) offered by SEOmoz Labs offers insightful comparison on your competitors most powerful back links, with a useful notification if any of those back links are missing from your link graph. My tip involves using two tools offered by Labs to get the most out of your link building strategy.

Here’s a search for the top 4 ranking sites for the term “Pears” with a comparision to a lesser ranking site:



Which reveals a report something like this:



Often a report like this can immediately expose valuable opportunities in contextually relevant, high value links. By expanding on the “# Linking Pages”, you get a quick summary of the urls on the linked from domain:



At this point, my advice is: don’t stop there! So often, an SEO would take this report and contact the owner of the site shown above to request to be included on any of the pages in the list. But, your job is to beat the competition, right?

Run that valuable new link opportunity through the Top Pages on Domain Tool

It’s no secret I’m the world’s biggest advocate of the SEOmoz Top Pages tool, and for good reason. It’s very, very useful. Copy your new target domain into the tool and run the top pages report:



Now you have a list of the most linked to pages on the domain target in question. To beat your competitor, if you’re going to be linked to from the same domain, get a more authoritative back link from them. Using these tools individually is powerful, but learning to use them together is awesome.