Now I know a lot of our readers are hyped for this post after I promised in Part 1 that I would reveal search queries that would help you find .edu and .gov backlinks as well as dofollow blogs that you can comment on.
Well, after much debate I realized that I can’t exactly just give away all the secrets in the toolbox. As a result, the goal of this post is to open your eyes to the power of search queries by training your mind to focus on finding authoritative sites that are do-follow and will accept your comments. It’s now come time to unleash the power of search queries! Link builders of the world: Get ready, set, go!
How to Find the Links?
Once again this is where the power of search queries comes into play. By simply entering in a few search queries you can literally discover hundreds, if not thousands, of blogs that support the dofollow movement; you can comment on them and get a free backlink. Here is a couple of the most effective search queries to effectively target both do-follow blogs and .edu sites that you can comment on:
Do-follow Blogs
"KEYWORD HERE" "powered by wordpress" "leave a comment" -"no comments"
“KEYWORD HERE” "Remember my personal information" "Notify me of follow-up comments"
Simply replace your keyword in the “KEYWORD HERE” section and enter this query into Google to find thousands of blogs that you can comment on! (Notice how I said comment and not spam?)
Now these blogs aren’t guaranteed to be do-follow. But these search queries do help filter out the majority of the no-follow blogs since they are targeting special phrases that are found on do-follow blogs. Take this strategy further and you can search for do-follow blogs based on “do-follow images” that are usually found on the homepage of the blog. This topic has already been covered extensively, so if you wanted to read more about it then check out an older post from SlightlyShadySeo here.
.edu Links
student blog topic site:.edu
linkdomain:wordpress.org site:edu student blog (in Yahoo)
"blog site:.edu"
"forum site:.edu"
site:edu wiki
These queries will help you find .edu sites and blogs that are open for commenting as well as Wiki’s that are editable. Once again not all of them will be do-follow, and a good majority will probably be school-specific, but at least you’ve done the hardest part and actually found a couple of high-quality .edu blogs that you can comment on. To find more niche-specific blogs simply add your keyword into the query, just make sure that it’s in quotations. From there you will need to focus on getting your comment approved.
How to Get Your Comment Approved?
There's lots of different theories out there but what I found to be the secret touch is= to be friendly! You’d be shocked if I could share with you some of the great link deals and relationships that have evolved from the simple lines of “Hey where you from? I’m from Toronto and … I like hockey/I live near a park with lots of dogs/the sky is blue over here what’s your weather like?” Catch my drift?
These responses are unique and don’t mirror the spammy comments these bloggers receive on an hourly basis. Just goes to show that sometimes you need to think out-of-the-box when it comes to link building: especially if you are trying to stay ahead of the game.
When trying to comment on dofollow blogs you need to remember my favorite word= EFFICIENCY! Don’t just waste your time submitting comments to every do-follow blog. You need to get your comment approved from niche relevant sites with authority.
Now keep in mind that the queries mentioned in this post are still relatively basic! They are merely examples of how you can search for certain terms and phrases that are associated with do-follow blogs. In case any of you were hoping for the magical link building solution within this post then I’m sorry if I disappointed you, but to make it up to all of you I have a couple of great freebies on the house.
Awesome Freebies 🙂
Here is one of the best do-follow blog lists currently in circulation; there are many available but most are just duplicates and aren't categorized by niche like this one. Or you can try using a dofollow search engine like this one, but be warned that the results are somewhat limited (some other ones are better but cost $$). However, if you use SEOQuake it has an option to place a line through the nofollow links; saving you a considerable amount of time.
By now I think you’ve gotten the vibe of my posts and hopefully figured out that my main focus here at SEP is on link building. That being said if you have any burning questions or topics that you would like to see discussed please feel free to post your ideas and suggestions and I will certainly respond and take them into consideration for future posts!
I typically add “-blogspot.com” to my search query. I do this with all the blogger domains because they all use nofollow.
Sarahbabs
I had hoped that Market Samurai would take care of this (they have a promotion section), but have been largely disappointed.
Looks like I’ll have to go back to using this bulky code. Thanks!
I am curious about one thing… It must be easy for google to figure out that a certain page uses dofollow, and not nofollow… Based on the recommendation given from google 2005 regarding dofollow, isnt it possible that they would whey backlinks from sites (using dofollow) less…?
For external links Google seems to use nofollow as a way to find suspicious links, as a way to establish which link targets may be (too) commercial in nature, and to flag which sites are “into” SEO and which aren’t.
well landed here from “followlist” blog and i can say it was worth to read your article as i was not aware with the searching techniques used to find do follow links. thanx a lot
If you are looking for blogs, you can also use these on the google blog search (e.g. site:edu dog). The Advanced Search options also let you customize the query even more and will let to see exactly how they use the query.
Paul, as an seo specialist myself, I note that you don’t seem to touch on the need for inbound links to a target site to appear “natural” in Google’s eyes (although I am sure that you agree with the concept).
I find that as long as I generate a ’rounded blend’ of dofollow and nofollow links to my client sites (especially now that Google appears to give weight – even though no “link juice” as such – to nofollow links, too), a positive increase in rankings follows accordingly.
As an example, I am happy to run a keyword-rich link to one of my client’s sites (in this instance, a site promoting digital dictation and business process management products and service offerings) using digital dictation
as the anchor text — regardless of whether or not you allow it to be “dofollow” or “nofollow”.
It’s as much about being “natural” and having related content in the immediate vacinity of the link (see my reference to: “…a site promoting digital dictation and business process management products and service offerings…” as an example of exactly that) as it is to having a dofollow attribute to pass on “link juice”.
Love to hear your thoughts on this – especially now that three years has passed since you first wrote the above article.
I do SEO for a living as well. @Bruce, your point about “natural” is well taken. Lately, I’ve kind of adopted a natural strategy by pretty much randomizing my link building efforts. There’s something oxymoronic about “engineering” a natural link building campaign. I do have a set of resources for every client, but I apply them in pretty much a random fashion. There’s virtually no footprint. Even I don’t really keep track of what I did and when. I know that may sound amateurish to a lot of SEO people but I’ve been in the business for 10 years and get to page 1 for all my clients, or they don’t pay me a dime.
Its like I have been searching dofollow links all my life. Surely they are important.
I use footprint as :
“barcode generator” commentluv
“barcode generator” keywordluv
…
and so on replacing my main keyword(barcode generator) with other related keywords. I have even make a personal software for searching google my own way.
I look forward to checking out the list of “do follow” blogs. I typically add “-blogspot.com” to my search query. I do this with all the blogger domains because they all use nofollow.
By adding “keyword luv” or some variation of it’s footprint to your google searches you can find blogs where the owners are willing to exchange quality comments in exchange for a link. I have found that this help to get comments approved. Thanks for posting this information
Really great info, especially good for niche stores like mine trying to get noticed by search engines – its definitely hard to do. Thank you so much for sharing the comment luv search tips especially – never realized how many great blogs there were out there!
Though I’ve missed the first part of the tutorial but glad to get this one! I’ll try to check out the first one soon to get the overall and clear concept about advancing the rank. Thanks for the elaborate discussion.
The trouble is a lot of dofollow .edu blogs which do allow comments are full of spam comments. I would think that sharing a page with some of those links is more harmful than the gain related to the authority domain link.
All lists with do-follow blogs are outdated! There are guys who were at a moment do-follow, and after a while, they changed their blog structure again.
@Walter Spam is everywhere :), it’s hard to overpass it.
@paul,
The info you provided about Do-follow Blogs and .edu Links is really helpfull..
It is really hard to compete nowadays because Google became too strict on all the links. Google Panda and Penguin were already a nightmare and makes us hard to stand up again.