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The List
17 items
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Indexation errors
Use the "site:" search operator to check the indexed pages for your website - like site:zerotodigital.com. You can also check a specific URL like your blog "site:zerotodigital.com/blog" or subdomains "site:*.zerotodigital.com -www". If any pages appear that shouldn't, you should no-index them.
Misc
search operator
formula
08/08/22
2
Non-secure pages
Use "site:" and "-inurl:https" to find non-https (non-secure) webpages and make sure that they have active SSL certificates and are being redirected properly. For example, "site:zerotodigital.com -inurl:https" returns all non-secure, indexed webpages for zerotodigital.com (fortunately, this returns 0 results).
Misc
search operator
formula
08/08/22
3
Duplicate content
Use "site:" plus a section of text in double-quotations to find occurrences of duplicated text on a site. And then try "-site:" to find how many times this exact block of text was located elsewhere. If so, you've identified duplicated content and maybe even plagiarism.
Misc
search operator
formula
08/08/22
4
Odd/old files
Use "site:" and "filetype:" to find old or no longer active files on your site that might need to be cleaned up and removed.
Misc
search operator
formula
08/08/22
5
Guest post opportunities
Use "intitle:" and "inurl:" to find guest posting opportunities. For example, if you're in the fitness industry, try 'fitness intitle:"write for us" inurl:"write-for-us"'. You can also replace "write for us" with other phrases such as "guest post", "contribute to" or other phrases.
Misc
search operator
formula
08/08/22
6
Resource page opportunities
Use "intitle:" and "inurl:" to help find backlink opportunities from resource pages. For example, 'fitness (intitle:"resources" | inurl:resources)'. Or something like "allintitle:fitness 5|6|7|8|9|10 resources"
Misc
search operator
formula
08/08/22
7
Vet backlink sites
Want to vet sites for possible backlinks? First, look for related websites via "related:". Then, check to see the percentage of pages include keywords that you also focus on for your site. You can do this via "site:" to get all of the pages, and then "site:" and keyword. If around 50% or more of the pages contain your keyword then you know it's a relevant backlink prospect.
Misc
search operator
formula
08/08/22
8
Social profiles for prospect
Find social media profiles for a person or company that you want to reach out to. You can do so by using "site:" like this: 'tyler willis (site:twitter.com | site:facebook.com | site:linkedin.com)'.
Misc
search operator
formula
08/08/22
9
Internal linking opportunities
Use "site:" and "-site:" and your keyword or keyphrase to search your own site for internal linking opportunities. For example, if you just wrote a post about basketball hoops, you could search something like 'site:mysite.com/blog -site:mysite.com/blog/basketball-hoops intext:"basketball hoops"'. We're searching all pages on our blog except for the URL of the post.
Misc
search operator
formula
08/08/22
10
Competitor mentions
Find mentions of competitor sites as a possible way of getting your own mentions or backlinks from them. You could search for something like 'intext:"moz" -site:moz.com' to find all mentions of "moz" in page text while excluding their own website.
Misc
search operator
formula
08/08/22
11
Sponsored posts
Find sponsored post opportunities by searching something like 'fitness intext:"sponsored post"'.
Misc
search operator
formula
08/08/22
12
Related Q+A
Find discussions on Q+A sites related to your industry or content that you could participate in and provide answers for. Search for something like 'site:quora.com intitle:"basketball hoop"'.
Misc
search operator
formula
08/08/22
13
Posting frequency
See how quickly your competitors are posting new content. Search for something like "site:competitor-site.com" and view the number of results. Then update the date range using "Tools" and then change "Any time" to something else like "past month" to see how many new pages they added this past month.
Misc
search operator
formula
08/08/22
14
Competitor backlinks
Find out which sites are linking to your competitors by searching something like "link:competitor-site.com -site:competitor-site.com".
Misc
search operator
formula
08/08/22
15
link:
Use "link:" directly before a domain name to find the webpages linking to that domain. (This was deprecated in 2017 but still works with mixed results).
Misc
search operator
formula
08/08/22
16
Site down
If a site goes down temporarily but you still need to view a page from the site, use "cache:" to pull up the most recently cached version of the site/page.
Misc
search operator
formula
08/08/22
17
Similar posts
Use "related:" to find blog posts similar to yours and either compare or identify a backlink opportunity. For example, "related:zerotodigital.com/blog/web-dev-business-guide".
Misc
search operator
formula
08/08/22
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