When you're link building, you want to find high quality link prospects.
Yet, you also want to find prospects where there's a good chance of actually getting a link.
Ken McGaffin shows how such prospects can be found in the 'magic middle' ...

Subscribe to our SEO Youtube Channel

Explore the magic middle - for free - with Link Builder

You can find your industry's magic middle by registering for a 7-day free trial of Link Builder. 

Sign up today and you'll get a free 50-page e-book, Link Building Basics. Plus you'll benefit from our 30-day money-back guarantee; if you're not successfully building links within a month, we'll refund every penny of your subscription. So, you've absolutely nothing to lose.

Yes, I'd like to register for a Link Builder free trial

You can cancel your subscription at any time. 

Here's the transcript:

Why the ‘magic middle’ is so good for link building

When you’re building links, you need to find quality sites to target.

You also want sites where you have a good chance of getting a link.

A perfect place to find such links is in the ‘magic middle’ made up of sites that are not quite A-list, but still have a lot of authority to pass on.

I’m going to explain the magic middle and show you how Wordtracker's Link Builder tool makes it so easy to find such sites.

A-list sites get inundated with pitches (people asking for links). Which means your pitch must really stand out – it needs to be something special even to be considered.

That takes a lot of effort. Of course it’s well worth it when you get the pitch right, but not everybody has the time to put that effort in.

What is the magic middle?

Back in 2006, David Sifry of Technorati.com defined the magic middle as sites that had between 20 and 1,000 inbound links. That was five years ago and the number of blogs and the number of links to them has grown rapidly during that time.

So don’t worry too much about the absolute numbers, just think about good, well-written blogs that you can get links from.

What impressed Sifry was “how interesting, exciting, informative and witty these sites often were” and that they “were more topical or focused on a niche area”

Instead of pitching to the A-list sites, you could find the best return for your link building efforts comes from the magic middle.

There are literally thousands of such sites that offer:

… an audience,

… an opportunity to submit articles and guest posts

… and a great opportunity to get quality links.

Magic middle sites are focused and passionate about what they do. They’re usually easy to contact, and may even be flattered to be picked out.

And the people behind those sites can be fantastic people to build a relationship with.

Let’s look at some examples of the magic middle

In Wordtracker's Link Builder tool I built a campaign on the keyword ‘sports cars’ in the US market. I found over 30,000 prospects.

So what value can I find in the magic middle?

I've skipped the top sites. After all, it's probably going to be difficult to get a link from The New York Times or the BBC. Instead, I went deep into the results - to page 11: there are clearly some gems in the list – I picked out calcars.com:

I had a quick look at the site and it certainly fulfils my criteria for what makes a quality link prospect.

Here’s the home page:

They’ve got a prominent ‘contact us’ page:

They’re very clear about how and when they want to be contacted – preferably by email but also by phone if…

… you’re a reporter (or writer)

… you’re making a generous offer (think commercial!)

… you have important news (think creative!).

That’s fantastic information for a link builder.

So if any aspect of your website fits their requirements, you know when and how to approach them.

Let’s look at another example:

I've taken another look at my link prospects in Link Builder. 

This time I see that DesignMom.com is listed as a prospect – in other words we’ve found a story with a good link to a car manufacturer.

I’ll click on the top link to see the story: What would design mom do? at http://www.designmom.com/2010/09/what-would-design-mom-do/

So I can see that it’s a good, well-written story and it’s a good-looking blog.

And the author makes it easy to get in touch at http://www.designmom.com/about/.

That’s certainly worth an approach.

How do you find the magic middle?

At Wordtracker, we liked the results of the magic middle so much that we added the ability to filter Link Builder prospects according to their rank (the number of linking domains that link to a prospect).

Just pick a top limit…

And a bottom limit…

And there you have it – the magic middle revealed!

You've unearthed 2,496 link prospects. You know many will be high-quality, authoritative sites and there's a good chance they will link to you.

The magic middle allows you to dig deep and find link prospects that your competitors won’t have taken the time to discover.

Explore the magic middle - for free - with Link Builder

You can find your industry's magic middle by registering for a 7-day free trial of Link Builder. 

Link Builder will help you find quality link prospects, organize them into campaigns and keep track of the people you contact.

Sign up today and you'll get a free 50-page e-book, Link Building Basics. Plus you'll benefit from our 30-day money-back guarantee; if you're not successfully building links within a month, we'll refund every penny of your subscription. So, you've nothing to lose.

Yes, I'd like to register for a Link Builder free trial!

You can cancel your subscription at any time. 

About Ken McGaffin

Ken McGaffin is an experienced internet marketing consultant and has worked for major pharmaceutical companies, advertising agencies, government bodies and non-profit organizations.

Ken unveils the secrets of successful link building in his 384-page e-book, Successful Link Building

You can watch recordings of his extremely popular (and free) Link Building Webinars

And you can read Ken's articles about keyword research and link building throughout the Academy.