Article by Justine

Getting backlinks for your website is a task of a different level. I know, because I’ve been having headaches at days end in getting decent backlinks for my blog and for my client in my outsource web content writing work. Fortunately, I have found a way to get links, and it involves turning your citations into a real backlink.

Citations?

It is defined as a reference to an unpublished or published source that the writer used in his article. This is used to maintain intellectual honesty and also as a nod to the authors whom you cited. In the internet, most articles still cite their sources, and in many cases, they will cite your articles. And most of the time, these citations are not made in the form of links. That’s why you must do everything in order to turn these citations into a backlink to your site. You will be surprised that this is just a simple tactic, and it will only take a few easy steps that you can follow. Believe me, I used to think that turning citations into a backlink a difficult task, but after learning the steps below, I’ve been smooth sailing since.

Look for the citations

If you are going to turn citations into links, you will need to find them first. Believe me, there may be people in the other side of the world talking about your web site as you read this, and you need to find them as the happen! Searching them across the web one by one, will take you forever, that is why there are tools that you can use to search for those citations so you can turn them into a full-fledged link.

Google Alerts

Yep, you heard me, this is another trick from Google’s already-big-bag-of-tricks! Google Alerts is a free listening tool that enables you to set up as many key words as you can, and track their editorial citations across blogs, forums, social media, and other kinds of web sites that can be found across the web. It’s interface is so simple that even my eight-year-old nephew could do it! If you don’t believe me, here’s a screen shot of how really simple Google Alerts is.

All you need to do is fill up these values and you will receive an email on how many web sites cited your site.

BuzzStream

This powerful link management tool will not only monitor the citations done to your web site across the web, it will also observe every internet conversation about your site! Do not forget that BuzzStream is also a tried and tested link management tool for hardcore link builders. So don’t forget to get one for yourself too, for best results!

And you will get something as comprehensive as this:

Brandwatch

This link builder tool is a comprehensive media tracker that will not only track your site but can also track your competitors. It has its own crawler to find relevant data from your queries, enabling it to track every nook and cranny of the internet, from blog posts to brand mentions in social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Once gathered, you can even make a presentation of it so you can easily make an analysis of the current state of your brand. The data presented by this tool can also be exported in other formats like excel for the raw data and JPEG for graphs and charts for further analysis.

Brandwatch is so hardcore that it will even measure the user sentiments for your queries.

SEOprofiler

SEOprofiler is another application that allows you to gather competitive information about your web site’s SEO capabilities and your competitors. All you need to do is get a copy of this app and click to the link optimizer option in the link building tools section and maybe get yourself a nice cup of coffee so you can read the pages that mentions your site without linking you while drinking a nice cup of coffee.

This tool is so great that you will have everything you need at the click of these buttons.

Once you find the citations, ask for a link

This is where your people skills will come into play. When you contact those site or comment owners, be sure to remember the following.

Thank them for their appreciation to your web site

One way or another, you owe them for mentioning your web site. So in order to please the people who cited your web site, you thank them for the honor of citing your site. This is to befriend them and to ensure great future relationship, because one way or another, you will need friends if you want to be successful across the internet.

Mention the topic of the content where your site is mentioned or cited

This is to show that you have also carefully read their articles or comments when they mentioned your site. This is important because it will give an impression that you are not just shamelessly looking for possible links across the net. I do this to people who have cited me so that they will be at ease that there are actually people who are interested to their content.

Use your real name and your website/company’s name

When communicating, ALWAYS use your real name. Trust begins with you giving your real name. Remember, you are the one trying to communicate, so you have to be as understanding as you can be. And what better way to gain the trust of somebody than giving out your real name to the one you’re communicating with.

If you do these steps, you can be sure that you will not only gain links, but a great network of friends who will be more than willing to help you out in your quest to link building prominence! So whether you are doing this for your personal blog or for your outsourcing job, always remember to look for citations, and once you found one, ask nicely to link them to your web site.

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Sources:
How To Turn Citations Into Real Backlinks
Link Building Magic: How to Turn Citations into Links
Netiquette Of Sending
Product Review: Using Brandwatch For Social Media Monitoring
Brandwatch Tracks Your Brand’s Online Reputation