One of the most important parts to your SEO campaign for your websites should be the building of backlinks. Finding quality backlinks has always been a tedious task, sifting through search results, finding blogs and forums and social media sites with relative content to your niche.

Recently though I have been automating the process and using the power of google to send me backlink opportunities to my inbox everyday for free. I have set up a program using Google Alerts to keep track of all of my topics on the web, and tell me when new content is available that I can backlink.

I have so far found it an excellent way to keep up to date with what people are saying about my own domain, as well as keeping track of the different market niches that I have sites in.

AN EXAMPLE
An example is that if you have a site on “yoga advice” then you would create a Google Alert for these keywords. Google will then send you an email when a new link or content related to this is published on the internet.

It’s a fantastic way to be informed about your area, BUT it is also a great way to find potential linking partners to set up backlinks with.  With Google Alerts you will easily get 10 – 30 links per day, depending on how popular your niche is.

BLOG LINKING STRATEGY

I have found that an even better way to find blogs that allow you to leave a comment is to setup a google alert specifically for blogs and set the alert to search for “yoga” “leave a comment”. This will send a list of all blogs in your niche that you can leave a comment straight to your inbox. You can set the alerts to be sent to you daily, weekly or as they happen (as google indexes the page).

There are a few considerations to take into account when commenting on blogs as a back linking strategy. The first is the search relevance of the site that you are linking to. I recommend installing the SEOQuake plug-in as it provides information on Alexa Ranking, Google Pagerank and Number of Backlinks to a site, plus heaps of other relevant information for you to decide if it is in your best interest to backlink to a site. This great SEO plug-in can be attached to your browser and will give you helpful SEO information on the link or links you’re viewing.

Use the SEOQuake plug-in in conjunction with Google to sort through the results and find the ones with the highest PR, traffic and backlinks. The more knowledge you have the easier and more effective your link building will become.

Keep in mind that finding quality backlinks is one of the most tedious jobs in being a webmaster. It can take a long time, and a good deal of patience. By using this google alerts system you are taking a lot of the legwork out the equation, which will allow you to focus on backlink creation more consistently. Persistence pays off in this area, and soon your site will get noticed and start to rank higher.