Link building strategies: Social media

Posted by Ken McGaffin on 21 March 2012

There’s a lot of link building opportunity in the big name social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and so on. But there’s also a lot of link building opportunities on less well known niche social media sites.

Wordtracker’s Link Builder tool helps you easily find such sites and keeps them all in one place.

Of course, many of the links from social media sites are ‘no-follow’ but that’s not always important. Because:

• Links on social media sites can bring a huge amount of traffic to your site.
• Becoming active on such sites is one of the best ways to encourage inbound links to your site.
• There’s evidence that no-follow links do bring some search engine benefit - they’re a clear signal of involvement in your online community.

Here’s how Link Builder helps:

• You see all your competitors’ major social media pages in one place - and you can click to go directly to their page and see what they’re up to.
• You identify the ‘community element’ of large authority sites - eg, magazines and trade associations often have forums and discussions.
• You find valuable niche social media sites that you may not have previously come across.
• You get to understand the strategies your competitors are actively using to drive social traffic to their sites.

Let’s look at some examples:

1) See your competitors' major social media pages in one place

So how well are your competitors embracing social media? It takes quite a bit of time to go from social media site to social media site looking for your competitors' pages. So instead, just go to the social media strategy in Link Builder and you’ll see the sites, large and small that they have a presence on:

Click on the ‘Top link’ URL in the right hand column and you’ll be taken right to the page. In the example above, my ‘competitors’ were Threadless.com, Bonobos.com and Candlesoffmain.com

This means that you get a very quick picture of what your competitors are up to.

Now of course, you’d expect that any decent competitor would have a presence on the large social media sites. But they may not have a presence on the ‘community facilities’ of magazine sites, or trade associations. Extra points to you, if you have!

2) Identify the ‘community element’ of large authority sites

Large authority sites often have a substantial community element and that can be a neglected area in many link building campaigns.

But the rewards from having a good presence on these sites can also be substantial - and you can find those just by scrolling through the ‘prospects’ that Link Builder has found for you.

For example, Taste of Home is the world's leading food media brand and publishes four magazines, over 40 special interest recipe collections and dozens of cookbooks. They have a strong community element:

This community shows up as a prospect in Link Builder:

And the link in the right hand column will take you right to the page:

This looks like a very active community that your competitors might just have missed. By playing an active role in such relevant forums you can establish your brand and attract additional traffic to your site.

Even better, if you make good meaningful contributions on a regular basis, you’ve got a good chance of being noticed by journalists and writers and that might lead to some very nice coverage and links.

3) Discover niche social media sites

But what about smaller sites, which might be just as valuable as the major social media sites? Well, Link Builder makes it easy to find these too.

Here’s a prospect that appears while building a campaign in the fashion market:

Follow the link, and you’re taken direct to the forum:

4) Understand your competitors’ strategies

Where are your competitors investing their time and effort? You can really get a good idea from Link Builder. For example, Threadless.com is using Groupon:

Summary

‘Social media sites’ does incorporate the major sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and so on.

But importantly, it also includes niche opportunities. While they may not get the same media attention as the major players, niche sites offer perhaps even greater rewards for the savvy link builder.

Try Link Builder free for 7 days

So there really is a tool for link builders that will help you research and find social media prospects, plan your campaigns, and monitor targets.

It’s Wordtracker Link Builder. You can register now for a free 7 day trial