Now it’s time to go over the 3-step process in detail.

MOVING MAN METHODLINK BUILDING CHECKLIST

The Moving Man Method is one of the most powerful white hat link building strategies on the planet.

Because The Moving Man Method is an advanced SEO technique, the steps in the process aren’t super-straightforward, like “submit your site to directories” or “publish a press release”.

That being said, it’s not rocket science.

Just follow the steps in this checklist and you’ll find yourself with more link building opportunities than you know what to do with.

FIND AN OUTDATED RESOURCE1Your first step is to find a web resource – like a brand, tool, guide or service – that no longer adds value.

For example, you can use a resource that recently:

Changed names

Moved to a new URL

Stopped offering a service

Stopped updating a resource

Shut down

As long as the resource doesn’t provide value anymore, it’s a good fit.

For example, when SEOMoz rebranded to Moz (and changed their domain from SEOMoz.org to Moz.com), I knew there were thousands of links still linking to the old domain name.

So in that case, SEOMoz.org was the outdated resource that I used.

THE 3-STEP MOVING MAN METHOD PROCESS

STEP 1 STEP 2 STEP 3

Find an outdated resource

Find sites that link to the outdated

resource

Reach out and get your links

Google News is a treasure trove of information about companies that close, rebrand or change domain names.

Just head over to Google News and use one of these search strings:

“Chapter 7” (Chapter 7 means the company dissolved. Chapter 11 means the company is restructuring)

“Business closes”

“Has closed”

“Out of business”

“Rebrands as”

“Bankruptcy”

Sometimes — for one reason or another — a business shuts down a feature on their site (like Google recently did with Google Reader).

Here are some search strings that you can use to find them:

“service not available”

“page no longer exists”

“this website is no longer updated”

“this page is no longer updated”

“no longer available”

“website closed”

“service no longer available”

TACTIC #1: SEARCH GOOGLE NEWS ABOUT BUSINESS CLOSINGS, REBRANDS AND MERGERS

TACTIC #2: SEARCH GOOGLE NEWS ABOUT BUSINESS CLOSINGS, REBRANDS AND MERGERS

Another example:

You probably heard that movie rental giant Blockbuster closed its doors late least year.

Because Blockbuster Video is a household name, their site — Blockbuster.com – generated A LOT of quality backlinks over the years…

That’s just one of several thousand authoritative links still pointing to Blockbuster.com.

If you’re in the entertainment niche, Blockbuster.com is an absolute gold mine of Moving Man Method link building opportunities.

How can you find these outdated resources?

Here are two simple tactics that you can use… and 2 bonus tactics that I don’t mention in the post.

WEBSITE CLOSED

And if the closed business had a website, Yelp lists the URL here:

You can find parked pages using this search string:

“This page is parked FREE, courtesy of GoDaddy.com” + ”domain is for sale”

This brings up parked GoDaddy sites that are for sale.

When a business shuts down, Yelp keeps the page up. But they add “Yelpers report this location has closed” to the page.

For example, if you wanted to find closed book stores in Philly, you’d search for:

Just use this simple search string to find them: site:yelp.com intitle:closed city + business type

TACTIC #3: MINE YELP FOR LISTS OF LOCAL BUSINESSES THAT HAVE SHUT DOWN NEAR YOU

TACTIC #4: PARKED PAGES

BONUS

BONUS

FIND SITES THAT LINK TO THE OUTDATED RESOURCE2

This step is important:

Now that you’ve found a site that recently re-branded or a site feature that’s no longer there, it’s time to find the links pointing to that page.

Just grab the URL of the outdated resource and put it into your backlink checking tool of choice.

(I prefer to use ahrefs.com, but Majestic SEO and Open Site Explorer also work well)

And export all of the backlinks pointing to that page or site to an Excel spreadsheet or Google Doc:

When you do, you’ll have a spreadsheet with fistfuls of link opportunities:

And you’re ready to move onto step #3...

You also can find niche-specific opportunities with the search string: “domain is for sale” + inurl:keyword.

Most of the results will be sites that are for sale, like this one:

REACH OUT AND GET YOUR LINKS3

At this point you’ve found an outdated resource in your industry…and the sites linking to that resource.

Nice work.

Now it’s time to email the people that are linking to the outdated resource.

Here’s the exact word-for-word email script to use:

And you’re set.

Subject: Question about (SITE)

Hi (NAME),

I was searching for some information on (TOPIC) today when I came across your article: (ARTICLE TITLE).

Great stuff!

However, I couldn’t help but notice that you mentioned (OUTDATED RESOURCE). You may have heard that (REASON THE PAGE IS OUTDATED).

You may want to remove that link from your article.

Also, I recently published a (BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF YOUR ARTICLE):

(YOUR URL)

Might make a nice addition to your page. Either way, keep up the awesome work!

Cheers,

(YOUR NAME)

HERE’S WHAT TO DO NEXT

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