I keep seeing virtually the same articles posted on SEO sites that describe using advanced Google search operators to find backlinks, but none get down to actually showing useful examples. Finding backlinks by advanced search operator is something I've been using for the past 5+ years and I can say that it undoubtedly works, especially when consistently acquired over time.

Winner Update: Holger from Wakefiles.com won this contest. We had to spend some time testing to see if many of the social media site submitted were valid and actually provided a back link from a profile or similar page. One of my link builders confirmed this today, so congratulations to Holger on making a quick $500! I'll repost the full list after they are all confirmed.

Contest Post: Let's make this into a contest. Whoever adds the most social media and/or online profile-type sites other than the ones already listed in this post wins $500 in cash.

Rules - Sites submitted must offer back links (anchor text with URL or URL link only). The contest ends May 15th at 5pm EST. You can come back as many times as you wish and add more sites in a different comment post (of course using the same username/email in your comments so we can tally up your total links submitted over the next two weeks). Good luck!

Building Links Through Social Profiles

One of the fastest ways to build backlinks and cast your net wider on the Internet is through social media profile building. However, not all profile sites are created equally in terms of SEO value. Some profiles don’t allow any links back to your site while others offer URL links and anchor text.

I’ve done some digging into a the profiles of a few top rated social sites to find which ones offered links in the public profile:

Definition: Hosted marketing pages (HMP) aka presell pages are unique pages purchased on relevant, non-competitive web sites that allow links within the content, aka contextual linking "under the radar."

Hosted marketing pages are becoming a popular trend and can be very valuable if you can land your content and links on the right web sites. It's essential to spend some time analyzing each potential prospect and know what to look for using a basic approach.

In this post I'll highlight some tips on how to research, rate, and make the offer on hosted marketing pages. Search engines despise this as much as any kind of link building, but if you can purchase HMP's effectively enough, you'll almost always receive a huge ROI and quite possibly not have to pay for the recurring monthly fees associated with presell pages. Here's how you can get started...