Over the last few weeks I’ve been slowly hacking away during my free time (which barely exists as many of you might already know) at a new link building tool, nay, a link discovery tool! To be honest, I spent the last week purely trying to develop a name for the tool and adding to the list of features for version 2.0. Yesterday I was finally able to name and launch my creation. It’s called Chase the Footprint and there’s a few reasons as to why I’ve named it this. More on it’s name and what it does after the jump.
Original I was developing this tool to increase the speed of finding potential outreach targets for link building. Mostly to be used by my own team, but I figured why limit it to a small group when others may find it practical.
Why call it “Chase the Footprint”?
The name comes from two of my main passions: classic gaming and Search engine optimization.
Anyone who’s been in the SEO, inbound marketing, search marketing, digital marketing (or whatever we’re suppose to be calling it these days) industry knows the term “footprint” as a way to track something across the web. A footprint could be a username or alias you use on every website you sign up for.
A footprint can be that pesky “Powered by WordPress” stamp in the footer of your not so original designed WordPress site. Knowing how to use footprints to find potential link targets is a key way to build relationships and links. It’s also a good way to see how popular a specific subject is: how many forums or blogs are dedicated to a specific keyword?
Now the other part of the name. “Chase the” is part of a classic game title, often considered to be a holy grail for classic game collectors. The game is an Atari 2600 game titled “Chase the Chuckwagon.”
Quality, relevant links are often considered grail-like in the eyes of link builders.
One good link can change the World!
Sometimes it only takes one really juicy link to give you that bump you need to get above the fold in the SERPs.
Before I was even able to review and really announce the nuts and bolts of this link discovery tool, a fellow marketer from across the sea jumped on the opportunity and beat me to it, much props to Chris from Roots Web Solutions.
Upcoming Ideas for v2 of Chase the Footprint
- Add support for additional Google search sites
- Allow for Twitter connect to save custom footprints of your own
Check out Chase the Footprint and let’s hear some suggestions!
On another note, I will be attending Linklove in Boston on April 2nd. Flag me down and say hello!
Chase the Footprint was written by Dan Bochichio, a freelance Internet Specialist with over a decade of experience in web design. Dan specializes in taking new businesses from a web-zero to a web-hero by creating attractive sites which meet today's standards on the Web.
Hi Dan, I’m pretty sure you are already aware of this, but just in case: it seems that Chase the Footprint is not working anymore. At least, it does not work to me. All I get when I click on ‘Search for links!” is a search like this: search?q=[my-keyword]+undefined
I’m using Chrome v24 on Windows 8.
Thanks for the information. I’ll take a look to see what happened.
Works again. Was due to a recent jQuery update.