Your team’s Link Strategist has just served up a campaign idea that aligns perfectly with the brand and fits within the budget. With management onboard, it’s time to celebrate! However, the Prospector may need to leave early; tomorrow, the team will require her insights and opportunity lists.
In this article, we define an opportunity as any writer (e.g., webmaster, blogger, journalist, subject expert, curator) who contributes to your campaign’s niche. If the Link Strategist sees the forest, it’s the Opportunity Prospector’s job to identify and name each tree. This may sound intimidating, but it’s actually the most exciting part of link building for me. Here, I’ll share our strategic and tactical Opportunity Prospector checklist.
If You Appreciate One Thing About Opportunity Prospecting In This Article…
…let it be that glorious sense of discovery when you find an unexpected vein of opportunity.
Prospector’s high is real, folks. I’ll show you how to get there.
Who Is This Opportunity Prospector?
Warning:
The Prospector should not be an intern or a virtual assistant, at least not solely. Here’s why.
Prospectors — if you have the right people on the job — discover BIG ideas and recognize content gaps. The Prospector may sometimes be the Link Strategist, or these may be separate roles, but she has a crucial seat at the campaign operations table.
Strategic Skills Necessary to Be an Opportunity Prospector:
- Ability To Recognize Opportunity While Staying Focused On The Task At Hand
The Opportunity Prospector needs to be creative and willing to explore diverse directions for content and outreach. However, she also needs to be focused enough to deliver usable results as directed by the strategist.
Opportunity = a linkable asset concept + number of potential linkers
The Opportunity Prospector, upon recognizing potential, identifies every single opportunity associated with that piece of content. She stays informed about all existing and in-development assets, such as:
- Discount codes
- Scholarships
- Nonprofit programs
- Authority content
- Partnerships
- Upcoming events
- PR developments
- New apps
- Internal subject matter expertise
And this is another reason the Prospector shouldn’t be an intern or a lower-level team member. If she’s not in the loop about company activities, she won’t be equipped to find every relevant opportunity.
- Ability To Spec Content For The Writer And Communicate Linkers’ Preferences
The Prospector works with the writer to clearly define content characteristics and specific topics that earn links. This includes providing potential titles, the goals of the new asset, and example pieces of content that exhibit linkability. In the later parts of this series, I’ll share more about our content spec process.
- Understanding Of Prospecting To Find Opportunities In Non-Native Languages
A good Prospector understands advanced operators, citation analysis, and opportunity footprints. With a translator’s help, she can develop a system for uncovering opportunities in non-native languages.
- Obsessively Thorough
The Prospector is relentless, always searching for one more query, and always finding new URLs to pull backlinks from. Her goal is to find ALL the potential opportunities, working tirelessly to ensure everything is as good a fit as possible.
- A Gut Sense Of When To PIVOT
Despite thoroughness, sometimes the Prospector must recognize when a concept isn’t working. Prospectors live and work outside the box, so they can’t be afraid to discard certain ideas.
Technical Skill Tool Belt For The Opportunity Prospector
People and strategy skills are only part of the job. Finding thousands of relevant opportunities requires specific technical understanding.
The Prospector’s Technical Side — A Quick Overview:
- Advanced search operators
- Backlink graph repositories
1. Advanced Search Query Prospecting
Advanced operators enable systematic prospectors to find every single possible permutation of a specific opportunity. They help to isolate organization types, topics, interest areas, page types, locations, and audiences.
For example, you’re promoting a summer education guide and want public libraries with pages for kids? Try this search query:
site:.us inurl:lib intitle:"for kids"
Want only kid-specific links pages from public libraries? Try:
site:.us inurl:lib intitle:"for kids" inurl:links
2. Backlink Prospecting With Link Graph Tools
Once you identify an authority resource related to the document or asset you’re promoting, use tools like Majestic, Ahrefs, or Open Site Explorer to find potential linkers. You can uncover these resources on any qualified links pages found during your search query prospecting.
3. And Then Do It All Over Again
Using advanced operators and backlink repositories isn’t a one-time process; it’s a continuous cycle that becomes more refined with each iteration.
Conclusion
Eventually, the Prospector should be so attuned to search processes that she can find relevant opportunities like sales link opportunities, local festivals, or blog partners for outreach. Every concept from the Link Strategist should spark the Prospector’s mind on “How do you find that opportunity with advanced operators?”
And for her sake, let’s hope the Prospector loves her job, as management will never say, “Okay, that’s enough opportunity — no more explosive growth please.”
