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Competitive SEO Research with Blekko

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Competitive SEO Research with Blekko

For many years now, anybody looking to analyze their competitors’ backlinks simply had to launch Yahoo Site Explorer, type in a URL, and dig away at the mounds of free link data. Since YSE closed its doors in November, seasoned bloggers, amateur web masters, and professional SEOs have been scrambling to find a replacement for what was once such a pivotal tool in their link research arsenal.

There are a number of viable replacements on the market, some of which are free and others that require monthly subscriptions, namely Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO, and Link Research Tools. With each passing month, however, more and more people are starting to discover a nifty new search engine named Blekko, which, aside from its ambitious goal of bringing editorial curation back into the search engine world, offers an astounding amount of free SEO information to users.

What is Blekko?

Blekko is a new type of search engine, one that rejects the algorithmic approach that other search engines have relied upon for the last decade. Instead, Blekko looks to revive the idea of human curated, editorialized search engine results that place a greater emphasis on the source of content and less emphasis on link authority. Part of Blekko’s philosophy is remaining open and transparent, the product of which is an abundance of great SEO data – if you know how to access it.

Competitive Research with Blekko

Take a moment to type your blogs URL into Blekko, followed by the command /SEO. What you will find is an incredible amount of available data. Not only is Blekko able to output the same sort of inbound link data that we once relied on Yahoo Site Explorer for, but it offers much, much more. Inbound links are able to be sorted according to date, and users can pull up nifty graphs and pie charts showing all sorts of data including geographic sources of links.

And that’s just where Blekko gets started. The search engine is also able to show:

  • Domains that have duplicated your content
  • Detailed crawl stats
  • Your landing pages ordered by strength
  • Your outbound links on a page level.

There are some limitations. Blekko’s link index is not yet as strong as Yahoo Site Explorer’s was, nor does it yet match companies like Majestic SEO that have been indexing the web for years. This aside, Blekko is still a very good source for competitive link data, and certainly a useful tool for anybody starting a link building campaign for their blog or website. Moreover its data is offered completely free – a price that none of its competitors can match, given the extensive amount of data offered by Blekko.

As you retool and reboot your blogs’ link building campaign in 2012, Blekko is a great place to start looking for sneaky link opportunities and high quality, actionable metrics to track your campaign’s progress.

Image © rubysoho – Fotolia.com

About

Anthony Mangia is an SEO and digital marketing expert working and residing in New York City. He is the CEO of Mangia Marketing, an NYC SEO company that offers nationwide campaigns as well as local SEO services.

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{ 17 Responses }

  1. Benedict says:
    As one of the largest publishers of UK websites (only by number 2142 / 109,000 pages) I can't recommend Blekko enough for domain back link authority. We buy a lot of domains and cannot One little known secret is that Blekko will send you a free t-shirt which I received all the way from the states thanks Blekko!
  2. Rahul Kangjam says:
    I don’t have any idea about Blekko but whos blog is face hard time seo need to look forward ...even i had note this post! it awesome @Mangla
  3. dylan says:
    Thanks for this post. Actually I don't have any idea about Blekko but thanks to you Anthony,you have added new info for people but I guess you should determine the pros and cons in detail and elaborate it further each so that people will be able to justify if this really works or not.
  4. Carl Donovan says:
    What about complaints of malware and hijacking? I'm reluctant to install Blekko on my main machine but may try it out on a second.
  5. Jason says:
    To check inbound links I use Majestic SEO, despite requiring monthly subscriptions; I find it is the most accurate piece of software around. I'm certainly going to check out Blekko seems like a nice concept.
  6. Archie Ward says:
    Those are all good tools for checking backlinks. I think maybe you should have added the SEO Moz tool in there as well though, it's always handy to have multiple SEO tools on hand.
  7. Bishwajeet says:
    Frankly speakly, I don't think I ll use it. Seoquake and SEMrush works quite well in researching SEO>
  8. Sara says:
    Thank you for sharing this post.I had no clue about Blekko before this article and I am glad I read it.Some things like detailed statistics, chart pie ,etc can be presented by Google Analytics, but link data of course are not supported..I will create an account to see how it works.It seems really interesting!
  9. Don says:
    Hand edited links? I'd imagine that would take a lot of time to manage. Who determines what links get put in and which don't?
  10. Larry says:
    Thanks for the info on Blekko, it looks very interesting. I have created an account, and I am going to have to learn how to access the SEO research tools they have.
  11. Kimberly Gauthier says:
    Thanks for sharing! I'm always looking for new tools to help me with my SEO. I'm looking forward to seeing what I learn about each of my blogs. And I love "free." Kimberly
  12. Mani Viswanathan says:
    Blekko sounds interesting. Haven't tried it yet, will have to check it out.
  13. DiTesco says:
    Not very often that I see articles talking about Blekko. I for one have been using it for a while now and I have to admit that it has got some hidden gems in there, to "spy" on your competitor :) "Slashing" the web using Blekko is indeed interesting and used properly, as I said, can "reveal" some information that "other search engines" don't.
  14. Chris says:
    Yeah, you can find a wealth of information using the /seo tag. I wish there was a way to download the link data to your computer though. That would make it comparable to services like Majestic SEO and Ahrefs.
  15. Dave Lucas says:
    I am impressed! Everybody should check out Blekko! Thanks for the tip!
  16. Amrik Virdi says:
    Thanks for sharing this awesome post. meanwhile I would like to share some pros and cons of Blekko ;) Pros: Simple, minimalist home page. Related slashtags pull in accurate information. Cons: Suspect search results. Social networking and slashtag features complicate the search experience. Wonky toolbar install. Bottom Line: This search engine upstart aims to improve search results, but it's bogged down by extraneous features that complicate the experience.