Org & edu citations or links

[SCW]

One of my clients is a physician and I have achieved excellent SERP positioning for multiple targeted terms, but need to build a bit more domain authority in hopes of climbing one or two more positions and bumping a strong local competitor.

I am segueing into the the off-page SEO work  and was wondering if anyone would be willing to share their favorite search queries or tips for seeking-out potential citation or back link sources on .org or .edu sites which are relevant to my client's area of expertise?

Thanks!

[Marcus_Miller]

Well, the obvious one is to identify all the relevant candidate sites and look at what kind of resources they are linking out to. Then, create something that is either missing or substantially better than something they already link out to and do the outreach to request the link.

That is like a view from 10,000 feet but that is basic way to go about earning these kinds of links.

If you are clever, this approach could be used to not only get these specific links from .edu and .org sites but to generate a whole bunch of links and social activity.

In a nutshell: create something amazing and then tell the world about it.

[SCW]

Hi Marcus,

Thank you for the response. I am looking for methods to find the candidate sites other than the obvious search queries (e.g. intitle: "key phrase" )

As for the the suggestions offered once the candidate sites have been identified; I agree completely, and have already branded prominent social accounts in anticipation of  "spreading the word" so to speak

Dino

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey Dino

Sorry, my bad, I kind of misread that.

Right, there are various options and some tools that can help. It's hard to know the very best way without knowing the industry and keywords your client targets but I would start with those keywords and some basic inurl searches so.

<keyword>inurl:.org</keyword>

<keyword>inurl.edu</keyword>

Then, you can play with that in several different ways. There is a great cheatsheet of search queries here so you need to tinker and see what works for your clients industry.

search-engine-query-cheatsheet.pdf

Then beyond that, the following tools and blog posts make for some interesting reading.

Citation Tools

http://ontolo.com/

http://citationlabs.com/

Blog Posts

nonintuitive-search-queries-resources-for-link-building

21-link-builders-share-advanced-link-building-queries-29848

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Let me know how you get on!

Marcus

[SCW]

Hey Marcus,

Thanks for the thoughtful response - much appreciated!

I was aware of WhiteSpark's citation tool, but wasn't aware that they had collaborated to form citationlabs - very cool - I am experimenting with it at the moment. Naturally, many leads arrive at dead-ends, but no one said link prospecting was easy - right?