Your Daily SEO Fix: Link Building & Ranking Zero

Posted by FeliciaCrawford

Last week, we shared a series of four short videos intended to help you accomplish some easy wins using Moz Pro: Your Daily SEO Fix: The Keyword Research Edition. Week Two (that's this week!) is focused on link building, identifying opportunities to take over SERP features, and doing that all-important competitive research.

This time around, we're using a mix of Open Site Explorer, Fresh Web Explorer, and Moz Pro. Open Site Explorer has some free capabilities, so if you'd like to follow along...

Open OSE in a new tab!

If you're a Moz Pro subscriber, crack open your campaigns and settle in. If you'd like to see what all the fuss is about without committing, you can dip your toes in with a free 30-day trial. And now that that's out of the way, let's get started!

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Fix #1: Link building & brand building via unlinked mentions

"Moz" is an SEO software company, yes, but it's also Morissey's nickname and short for "Mozambique." All three of those things get mentioned around the web a bunch on any given day, but if we want to identify link building opportunities just to our site, it could get confusing quick. Luckily, Jordan's here to explain how to quickly find unlinked mentions of your site or brand using Open Site Explorer and keep those pesky Smiths references out of your results.

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Fix #2: Prioritizing and organizing your link building efforts

Link building requires more than just finding opportunities, of course. April shows how you can prioritize your efforts by identifying the most valuable linking opportunities in Open Site Explorer, then dives into how you can cultivate a continuous stream of fresh related content ripe for a link-back with Fresh Web Explorer.

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Fix #3: Ranking in position zero with SERP features in Moz Pro

If you have keywords that aren't ranking in the first few results pages, don't despair — there's hope yet. There are tons of opportunities to rank above the first organic result with the prevalence of SERP features. In this video, Ellie shows how you can identify keywords that need some love, track SERP feature opportunities for them, filter your keywords to show only those that surface certain SERP features, and more.

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Fix #4: Gleaning insights from your competitors' backlink profiles

Remember April from Fix #2? She's back and ready to show you how to get the skinny on your competitors' juicy backlink profiles using both your Moz Pro campaign and Open Site Explorer.

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One step beyond

That wraps up our latest week of fixes! We've got one last round coming at you next Thursday. As always, if you're curious and want to follow along, you can try it all out firsthand by taking a free trial of Moz Pro. We also offer several SEO bootcamp courses that can get you started on fundamentals if this whole SEO thing is pretty new to you.

If you're looking for some more meaty info on these topics, I've put together a short list of light reading for you:

• How to Prioritize Your Link Building Efforts & Opportunities - Whiteboard Friday - On par with some of the ideas in this post, Rand outlines how to simplify, streamline, and prioritize the link building process.
• How Long Does Link Building Take to Influence Rankings? - This case study sets a baseline for how long it may take for your link building efforts to bear fruit.
• Ranking #0: SEO for Answers - The inimitable Dr. Pete delves into everything Featured Snippet, from what they are, to why they're important, to how you can begin earning your own.
• Hunting Down SERP Features to Understand Intent & Drive Traffic - Next Level - Learn all about those mysterious beasts, SERP features, and how you can use your understanding of searcher intent to start winning more of them.

Thanks for reading along, friends, and we'll see you again for the last installment of the Daily SEO Fix series next week!

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