What the common forward link tool does

The common forward links tool finds those super authorities that a bunch of other authorities or important sites link to.
And you then just go out and get links from those!

This means if you have a set of valued authority sites (e.g. the top 20 marketing blogs) you just ask the tool where these sites link out to in common and try to get on the linked-to sites… thereby having all the inbound trust from the initially entered authority sites.

How the common forward link tool works

1. Enter a list of authority sites that you have researchede well, and already believe are authorities in your niche, i.e. the top 20 SEO blogs
2. Tool looks at all the forward (outgoing) links those sites link to and finds common patterns
3. Tool lists the commonly linked to urls and domains (along with JUICE, Age, Inbound links, Cache date and other important metrics)
4. You go out and try to get links from these super-authorities that are linked from what you considered an authoritive site already…

So by using this tool to extract the sites linked FROM all those sites you entered we find a common pattern of sites aka super-authorities that are important to ALL the sites you entered. And obviously Google & co will love the inbound links you get from these super-authorities,but you need some upfront reserch to find the input list.

Nice that after having the idea in October 2006, we finally got to implement this using MSN’s linkfromdomain command

This is another twist to finding common backlinks of your competitors and trying to get on those, but I like it so much better, because it actually makes your competitors link to you – indirectly.

MSN’s linkfromdomain

Almost two years ago MSN introduced their “linkfromdomain” operator and I came up with three great uses for the linkfromdomain command

Today, after reading Gab’s post on Cheaply retargeting I realized that what he was doing was looking for common forward links (i.e. links out of a set of authority sites) and try to buy ads on those sites. Which in effect are authority sites in that niche to improve your brand visibility.

Well, apply this to good ole link building and you come back to the “common forward links” tool that I mentioned 2 years ago.

What do you think about this approach to get on super-authorities?

Please note, this is a post about the methodology,

this tool is not (yet) public

as we only use it for our own work and premium consulting services just like our JUICE tool and Ad Network detector

But with enough people interested (i.e. links, comments) I might let the one or the other guy allow to test it for his own stuff if I get to hear a great reason to do so

PS: You can even even enter all YOUR competitors (hint hint) and make them indirectly link to you !

Let me know your thoughts!

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Update 2009-09-01: The Common Forward Links Tool AKA COLT (Common Outbound Link Tool) is now finally available to the public in the Link Research Tools by CEMPER.COM - check it out today!

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