The art of building backlinks is nothing new to SEO experts around the world, and successful SEO campaigns have been proven to rake in millions of online dollars. But, there’s another side to backlinks: They provide a secretive, covert stream of information on the person or company that’s building the links. Not just a snippet of info, I mean a lot.
By analyzing strategies/actions through which backlinks were built, especially backlinks generated via blog comments, one can gauge the following:
Interests
The types of sites used to build backlinks provide a wealth of information on the backlink builder. Are they commenting on phone blogs? Celebrity blogs? Seeing a backlink from a low-ranking site that has no relevance tells me the site was targeted for personal reasons, not for SEO. And, by seeing such, I can tell what a person’s interests are.
Employee Hours
Through analyzing backlinks to websites of SEO and marketing companies, one can see which employees work on SEO and when. Many times when leaving blog comments a marketer will stumble upon a site they’re interested in and will therefore leave their real name in the comment field. Or, the site has strict commenting policies and the marketer decides to attempt a link by leaving their real name as opposed to targeted keywords. After a comment has been submitted by a particular individual, their work hours are revealed. For example, if ‘Sir Shmohawk’ always leaves blog comments from 7am to 4pm we can assume he works these hours. Perform a quick cross-analysis between his hours and the types of blogs being commented on (interests mentioned above) and you will be provided with a brief profile of Sir Shmohawk. To put a cherry on top, search for his name in Google Images and put a face to the profile.
Sleeping Patterns
By analyzing backlinks in blog comments, one has the ability to compare a variety of comments, and the time they were submitted, to get a feel for the sleeping patterns of the ghostly backlink builder. Compare their address (time zone) with the time the comment was submitted and bam!
Goals
The anchor text to which backlinks are attached tells me the overall goal(s) of the company at hand. For example, if a company is building links for the words “Los Angeles Clothing Store” then they are obviously targeting Los Angeles for the sale of clothing. This part isn’t rocket science just a little SEO science.
The above are just some of the ways backlinks allow us to read peoples’ minds over the internet. There are many more, but I’m unfortunately not at liberty to divulge them.
Aaron Schoenberger
The Brainchild Group