For every SEO there’s a different link-building process. All of the good ones have a research phase.
In my work, the research phase typically comes AFTER the agonizing and brain busting strategy phase in which me + client determine who our target audience really is. It’s the difference between trying for links from gizmo bloggers and kitchen gizmo bloggers in the metro Atlanta area.
Then we create content that will resonate with the target audience (sometimes this is as simple as rewriting a press release; sometimes not).
Once we’ve got it figured out, the research phase starts.
(Some SEOs encourage folks to START with a research phase rather than audience identification – this is a great idea too because you’ll get some great brainstorms out of digging into a space.)
Here are some resources to help you along in your link building resource phase.
Link Building Research Links:
Long List of Link Searches
finding links your competition is using to rank well
Finding Link Sources & Building Topical Authority Links
Ten Ways to Earn an .edu Link
Finding the Most Powerful Links
Link Building Research Tools:
Hub Finder
Technorati Rank and Linkcount Greasemonkey script
Strongest Subpages Tool
Link Building in General
Linkbaiting or Link Baiting?
link building category in SEOMoz
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That’s an excellent list, we use some of those research tools ourselves.
We also found that many marketers and website owners do not have the time to write and distribute their own articles. That’s why we created a new article marketing and link building service called Internet Marketing Auto Pilot.
We do everything – write articles with links to the client’s site, submit them to article directories and then post them to a blog all with text links pointing back to their site. Works out great.