13 Search Operators for Ultimate Link Building
Every once in a while and depending on what website I’m working on, I’ll use different search operators to find easy links relevant to the keywords I’m targeting on the SERP’s. There are many search engine query cheat sheets and SEO Blogs that give huge list of search operators to use when doing link building. So I’ve composed a list of all the search queries I could find to help you build a nice list of relevant sites to get backlinks from.
(You can copy this list to an excel spreadsheet or edit pad text editor and replace “keyword” with your targeted phrase)
- add comment “keyword”
- allinanchor:keyword
- allintext:keyword
- allintitle:keyword
- allinurl:keyword
- directory keyword
- favorite links keyword
- favorite sites keyword
- intext:keyword
- intitle:blog keyword
- intitle:directory “keyword”
- intitle:forum keyword
- intitle:group keyword
- intitle:keyword
- intitle:post keyword
- intitle:tag keyword
- inurl:add-link
- inurl:submit-link
- inurl:blog)s)
- inurl:blog keyword
- inurl:directory “keyword”
- inurl:forum(s)
- inurl:forum keyword
- inurl:tag(s)
- keyword “add a url”
- keyword “add site”
- keyword “add url”
- keyword “add website”
- keyword “add your site”
- keyword “advertiser testimonials”
- keyword “favorite links”
- keyword “favorite sites”
- keyword “leave a comment” / “leave comment”
- keyword “no comments”
- keyword “notify me of follow-up comments”
- keyword “powered by wordpress”
- keyword “recommended links”
- keyword “recommended resources “
- keyword “recommended sites”
- keyword “related sites”
- keyword “related URLs”
- keyword “submit a url”
- keyword “submit site”
- keyword “submit url”
- keyword “submit website”
- keyword “submit your site”
- keyword “suggest a url”
- keyword “suggest site”
- keyword “suggest url”
- keyword “suggest website”
- keyword “suggest your site”
- keyword “wiki” (site:.edu)
- keyword blog
- keyword bookmarks
- keyword directory
- keyword discussion boards
- keyword donate
- keyword donations
- keyword donors
- keyword forum
- keyword group
- keyword join
- keyword members
- keyword resources
- keyword sites
- keyword sponsor charity
- keyword sponsors
- keyword sponsorship
- keyword tag
- keyword websites
- list keyword
- list keyword sites
- list of keyword sites
- post comment keyword
- post comment keyword
- recommended links keyword
- site:edu
- site:gov
- site:org
But check this out, all of these search operators can be used together. You can mix them up. You can use 2 of them, 5 of them or even all of them (for keywords like web, site, page etc. ;).
Imagine you are a webmaster for a hotel in New York city and you’re looking for more ways to obtain links from sites relevant to yours. Here are a few examples and explanations of how link building search queries would look if you mixed them up and played around with them.
allintext:keyword site:.edu – allintext:new york hotel site:.edu
- This will bring up all the .edu sites that have “new york hotel” anywhere in the site’s text.
allintitle:keyword “links” – allintitle:new york hotel “links”
- This will bring up all the pages with “new york hotel” and “links” in the title tags.
directory intitle:keyword – directory intitle:new york hotel
- This will bring up all the directories with a page that has “new york hotel” in the title tag.
intitle:keyword “favorite links” – intitle:new york hotel “favorite links”
- This will bring up all the “favorite links” pages with “new york hotel” in the title tag.
intext:keyword site:.edu – intitle:new york hotel site:.edu
- This will bring up all the .edu pages with “new york hotel” in the title tag.
intitle:keyword inurl:keyword inbody:keyword – intitle:new york hotel inurl:hotel inbody:new york hotel
- This will show all the the web pages with “new york hotel” in the title tag, “hotel” in the url and “new york hotel” somewhere in the body content.
inurl:keyword site:.edu – inurl:hotel site:.edu
- This shows all the .edu webpages with “hotel” in the url
keyword “favorite sites” site:.gov – new york hotel “favorite sites” site:.gov
- This will display all the government sites with “favorite links” pages and “new york hotel” somewhere within them.
keyword “suggest url” intitle:keyword – new york hotel “suggest url” intitle:new york hotel
- This will display all the pages with the phrase “suggest url” somewhere on the page and with “new york hotel” in the title tag.
links “keyword” intitle:blog – links “new york hotel” intitle:blog
- This will show all the pages with “blog” somewhere in the title tag and the phrases “links” & “new york hotel” somewhere within the site.
intitle:keyword “forums” site:.edu – intitle:new york hotel “forums” site:.edu
- This will dislpay all the forums on educational sites with new york hotel in the title tag.
keyword “sponsors” site:.edu – new york hotel “sponsors” site:.edu
- This will show all the .edu pages with ‘sponsors’ and ‘new york hotel’ somewhere in it.
keyword “links” intitle:keyword site:.gov – new york hotel “links” intitle:new york hotel site:.gov
- This will show all the government sites with “new york hotel” in the title tag and with the phrases ‘links’ and ‘new york hotel’ somewhere on that page.
I wish I could tell you guys about some other good ones. But I’m afraid I have to keep some to give me that edge when competing with other link building experts. But, I’m sure some of y’all could come up with some good ones yourself. Maybe even ones I’ve never thought of. So mix those up, change them around and create ones of your own. Feel free to comment some other good SE operator combos if you have or made any.
Some operator combos can be a gold mine. You’ll see.
I would like to thank you for taking the time to read my SEO blog. I really do appreciate it. You can read another related post (found below) or subscribe here. Once again, thank you for visiting James’ SEO blog.
Read MoreOnpage SEO: Title Tags Change Search Engine Rankings
Recently I decided to blog more about SEO related topics. Mainly because I have a couple keywords I want to start targeting. I noticed one of my blogs (My San Diego SEO Blog) (<— not this SEO Blog) was getting traffic for terms relating to ‘SEO‘ and ‘San Diego‘. I’m pretty sure the love I’m getting from the engines come from my relevant link right here in my blog side bar because I never really had any San Diego content.
The title of the blog used to be
“SEO Competition – Blog 2.0 vs. The Website“
But now that I’m targeting the term San Diego SEO, I changed it to
“San Diego SEO, Blog SEO & Web 2.0 SEO“
Basically I gave the term I’m targeting prominence, plus I gave the keyword ‘SEO‘ more density. This blog is one of my fun blogs. I’m not really targeting any other terms. Normally, I wouldn’t recommend adding a keyword 3 times to the title tag (like I did with ‘SEO’). But like I said, it’s my fun blog.
I was getting traffic from Yahoo! & MSN, but NOT GOOGLE. As you can see in this snapshot I took (with the time & date) that my rankings for the term ‘san diego seo’ was horrible.
Before I made that title tag change on Thursday, August 7th 2008 Blog Optimizer was ranked #498 for the term ‘san diego seo‘
*Disclaimer – That Thursday night I wrote the post; Web 2.0 Tags + SEO = Search Engine Love
Now look at the change in ranking the next day.
The next day (Friday, August 8th 2008) BlogOptimizer was ranked #63 for the term ‘san diego seo‘
*Disclaimer #2 – Since that site is a blog, it has the ability to jump 400 spots AND fall 400 spots overnight (literally). If you search for San Diego SEO now, I’m willing to bet that BlogOptimizer is not #63 anymore. Blogs are very fluid in the SERP’s unless that blog has strong link strength.
In case you didn’t know how important titles were to websites, search a term in Google and see that 9 out of the top 10 sites have that targeted term in their the listing titles.
I would like to thank you for taking the time to read my SEO blog. I really do appreciate it. You can read another related post (found below) or subscribe here. Once again, thank you for visiting James’ SEO blog.
Read More