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How to Use Search Footprints To Supercharge Your Linking Campaign

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The latest updates in the Google algorithm has meant that link building from high authority websites is now more important than ever.

Gone are the days of automated link building and mass submissions to directories and article syndication websites. Google has upped the ante and I’m going to give you the tools to play high-stakes link building.

Link building is quite often seen as a manual chore, the takes a significant amount of time and is often outsourced to countries that are willing to do repetitive tasks for lower than standard salaries.

With Google’s latest updates, please often arduous strategies will no longer make the grade and sites that fail to keep up with ever advancing link strategies will fall behind the crowd.

Here is how to use search footprints to supercharge your link building campaign.

 

What is a Search Footprint?

Image source

A search footprint is a phrase or sentence that may show up on multiple sites, based on the platform or CMS that they using.

If one is searching for forums, then using the following search footprint “Powered by phpBB”, you can find a number of forums that use phpBB.

Using this particular example, if you wanted to find forums to share the latest Dreamcast homebrew or modification, you could use the following search footprint to find related forums: “Powered by phpBB” Dreamcast“.

Now with that in mind, there are a huge number of different search footprints you can use to find anything from blogs to comment on, to guest post opportunities and so much more.

 

Basic Link Prospecting With Footprints

Blog Commenting

You need to form your search footprint around the type of backlink that you’re looking to acquire.

For example, if you’re looking for blogs to comment on, a frequently used footprint would be “leave a comment” (this search alone returns over 761 million results):

Obviously, you’re going to want to drill down into this data and try and acquire some topical backlinks rather than commenting on everything out there.

Let’s say, you have a website that sells lawnmowers and you want to create a number of backlinks from blogs. By adapting the previously mentioned search footprint, you can find gardening, DIY and related blogs really easily.

Example of Footprint:

“Leave a comment” gardening blog

Now, I highly suggest that you don’t go crazy with this strategy, as most of the blogs will have Akismet enabled and spamming them will result in permanently blocking any future link building activity for your domain on the WordPress platform or any other sites that utilise Akismet.

Try to build relationships, not backlinks.

This guest post is a perfect example of how a few comments left on relevant blog posts, quickly resulted in a guest post opportunity. Engage the webmaster and offer real input.

Pro tip: “Hi Nice Blog / Your RSS feed isn’t working / Good Point” are perfect examples of how to get quickly smashed under the ban hammer of an admin.

 

Blog Commenting Footprints

  1. “Add New Comment”
  2. “Leave a comment”
  3. ‘Leave a Reply’ ‘Name “(required)”‘ ‘Mail (will not be published) “(required)”‘ ‘Website’
  4. “Reply or Comment”
  5. “Post new comment”
  6. “Add Comment”
  7. “Login or register to post comments”
  8. “Sign in to comment on this entry”
  9. “Write a comment”
  10. “Leave a Reply”
  11. “Comments (You may use HTML tags for style)”
  12. “blog comments powered by Disqus”
  13. “Comment on this Post”
  14. “Comments on this entry:”
  15. “Notify me when new comments are posted”
  16. “Reader Comments”
  17. “You must be registered and logged in to leave comments.”
  18. “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail”
  19. “Enter this code to prove you are not a robot:”

 

Guest Posting

Acquiring guest posts can be surprisingly simple, and as a result of the recent destruction of a number of well-known blog networks will soon be a very sought-after link acquisition strategy.

 

Guest Post Footprints

There are hundreds of excellent footprints out there, but some good ones are:

  1. your keyword “guest blogger” OR “guest post” OR “guest article” OR “guest column”
  2. your keyword “become a contributor” OR “contribute to this site”
  3. your keyword “write for us” OR “write for me”

These tend to spit out a number of amazing quality sites that willingly accept guest posts. It’s quite simple to separate the bad blogs from the good.

There are a number of excellent posts regarding the best way to contact these webmasters to ask for a link.

 

Taking Footprints to The Next Level

Now that you know what some of the basic footprints are, take a look at your favourite websites and try to find a phrase that appears on each of these sites and create your own footprints that will help you in your link building endeavours.

 

What are some of your favourite footprints and which one’s do you have the most success with?

Please share your tips in the comments below, thanks!

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Comments

  1. Hello Erik,,
    Amazing article to read…. creating links through footprints was really unknown to me,.. after going through your article i come to know about the matter and it is really helpful for the marketers to create links
    Thanksfor sharing

    Reply

  2. Hi Erik,

    Great tips on link building. While I really don’t focus on building links, my main purpose of commenting on other people’s blogs is to start building that relationship and networking.

    If it helps my link building then so be it. You’re definitely right though, the comment needs to be useful and helpful. Otherwise, what’s the point of spamming someone’s blog.

    People come to my blog and post “nice post appreciate the information” or some type of one liner. You know they didn’t actually read the blog post. I won’t publish their comment.

    I don’t want my blog filled up with a bunch of spam comments. Just my personal rant.. 🙂

    Maybe people will read this article and will learn how to actually comment on people’s blog. Thanks for sharing this information.

    Have a great day!

    Susan

    Reply

    • Hi Susan,
      completely agree.

      Do you want to know some numbers?
      This blog has more than 8,000 comments, but Akismet has protected my site from 67,985 spam comments
      already!

      Thanks for visiting and sharing your thoughts here.
      Have a good day there!

      Reply

  3. Hey Erik,

    It is really very informative post and I totally agree with your points. Primarly, we should always try to improve relationships with audience instead of practicing backlinks. Comments on other blogs are absolutely a great idea to build relationship as well as backlinks. Eventually, thanks for sharing these valuable tips with us.

    With best wishes,

    Amar kumar

    Reply

  4. Hello Erik,
    Great writing.. your article is really amazing and informative about the matter and i too believe in building relations with the others rather than just to create links as we can learn more new things from each other by making good relations with each other.
    Thanks for the worthy article

    Reply

  5. Hi Erik,
    Great point about knowing your footprints. I’ve noticed high in my traffic are a couple of blogs I have either guest posted on or left comments on. It’s interesting to see which do that. I haven’t checked the words or keywords though. I will have to look deeper at that. Thanks for sharing this with us Erik.
    Are you using the wordpress commenting system? CommentLuv has had some hiccups and am wondering about it. Thanks! Have a wonderful Wednesday.

    Reply

    • Hi Lisa,
      blog commenting still works very well, even nowadays!
      Are you referring to my CommentLuv? Are you experiencing troubles?

      Reply

      • Hi Erik, Yes, CommentLuv on mine and I’ve heard others having issues with it. I learned from my tech wizz to shut off the gasp and then turn it back on. It seems it have worked like a charm. I have the premium version. You?
        I guess Andy got sick and the plugin has not been updated in 10 months now. I wonder if it’s for sale?

        Reply

        • I’ve the premium version too, and so far, never had any issue.
          Yes, I knew Andy got sick, but I’ve heard any news about him or the plugin since several months….
          I even noticed his big blog Comluv.com has disappeared. Now it’s redirecting to a spam site.

          Reply

  6. Erik!! footprints are really amazing way to find new link building opportunities.
    Thanks for sharing this list of footprints.

    Reply

  7. Isn’t it better and more effective to use Google operator search than to use search foot prints? We can literally find out almost anything using operator searches and results will be much better than using foot print searches. That’s my experience want to know yours.

    Regards
    Soumya Roy
    Founder & Lead SEO Coach
    PromozSEO.com

    Reply

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