Secret Google Search Footprints for SEO & Internet Marketing

Table of Contents

How many times do you use Google every day?? Are you satisfied with all search results you get? Do you actually get what you wanted?

Well, these were all random questions!!

Being a blogger or an Internet Marketer, I spend a lot of time searching for various business/SEO/blogging related queries on Google.

You might be doing the same.

We Bloggers and Internet Marketers use Google not only for simple queries but also for doing Keyword research, competition analysis, rank tracking, outreach analysis and a lot more.

And all these particular tasks can be quite tedious. It can take a lot of time and we may end up searching our solution between 100s of useless search results.

But what if I simplify every single search process for you!! Meaning that you won’t have to spend hours looking for outreach prospects, potential leads, etc.

You must have guessed it, I will be sharing my ultimate Google search operator footprints & tricks to help you improve your Google search experience.

But before that, you must be knowing what a Google search operator is and all logics behind each one of them.

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What is a Google Search Operator?

In simple words, Google Search Operators are special commands, characters or keys that you can use with your normal search query to get better and desirable results.

According to Moz,

Google search operators are special characters and commands (sometimes called “advanced operators”) that extend the capabilities of regular text searches.

For example, if you search inurl:”iftiseo”

It will show only those search results that contain the word “iftiseo” in the URL.

As you can see, it shows only the links that contain iftiSEO in their URL.

There are many other operators that you can use while performing a Google Search. With the above example, I’m sure your mind struck with some great ideas. 😉

Lets now have a look at various Google operators that you can start using.

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List of Google Search Operators for Internet Marketers

I don’t feel the need to explain each and every operator, so I am just listing the ones that are important for a blogger, SEO guy or an Internet Marketer.

The Google operators listed below comes handy as it has many uses related to the field of SEO, Blogging, and Marketing. Make sure you understand each one of them properly.

Note: You can combine multiple operators to get more precise results. 

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“” (Double Quotes Operator)

If you want exact match words or queries to be displayed, you can simply use the double quotes operator. It will show only those results that match exactly with your keyword/query.

How to use: Write any query/phrase/keyword inside double quotes.

Here’s a simple example:

If I search Sweet Steal Technique without double quotes Google shows me 26,000,000 search results.

And if I search the same in double quotes, it shows me 450 search results as shown below.

So what’s the difference?

By using double quotes I am telling Google to show results that match the phrase exactly. In both the snaps attached above, you can easily see the that after using the “” operator I got only pages that had “Sweet steal technique” written together. While if I don’t use it, Google will show pages that contain those 3 words (or synonyms/related words) anywhere in any order on the page.

Umm, what’s the benefit of this??

You can get precise results related to your query as it eliminates all those irrelevant results shown. Another use is that it helps you in Keyword Research (Specially in case of long tail keywords). Using the double quotes operator you can easily check the number of search results and understand the competition.

While Analyzing a Keyword for SEO Competition, There are no benchmarks or numbers to follow, but yes, it will help you get an idea about your keyword.

This was just one operator and you can reap so many benefits from it. Once you learn the art of using all the operators you can get wonderful results.

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Site: (Site operator)

Search Site:abc.com on Google

Shows all the pages of the abc.com that are indexed in Google. Replace abc.com with any URL and see all the pages/posts indexed of that site.

It will help you check whether your domain is indexed or not, it will help you find out the number of pages indexed of a particular site.

You can modify this a lot to get more broader results, for example, You can just enter the TLD and get related results.

  • site:.edu SEO

This will show all .edu website pages with SEO word.

Let’s move onto the next one.

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-Site: (Minus Site Operator)

Search -site:abc.com any keyword

It excludes the specified site and shows all the results related to your keyword or phrase. The below example shows all those results that contain the word “iftiseo” without any results from the site iftiseo.com.

It can be used to find brand mentions, Amazon research and for spying purposes.

For example, if you want to see all the mentions of your site on the internet, you can simply use this operator as shown above in the snapshot. You can sort the results by date to see all the latest mentions that your blog.

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Related: (Related Operator)

  • related:url.com 

This shows a list of sites or articles related to the mentioned URL.

This operator is however not so powerful.

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intitle: and allintitle:

It shows only those results that contain the specified word or phrases in the title of the indexed pages.

How to use:

  • intitle:sweet
  • allintitle:sweet steal technique
  • intitle:”sweet steal technique”

Here’s a quick follow-up example:

As you can see, now it shows only 9 results. This means only 9 pages are indexed with the title containing exact phrase “sweet steal technique”.

This can be used for Keyword Research, Competition Analysis and to get a precise and targeted search result.

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inurl: and allinurl:

These 2 operators are used to search for words (or word) in the URL.

How to Use:

  • inurl:keyword
  • allinurl:keyword phrase

The above example shows all 56 results that contain both iftiseo and blog word in the URL.

There can be many ways by which you can use this operator. However, once you get the idea, you will be able to use this with no issues.

This operator is quite Helpful in Finding affiliate offers, guest post & backlink opportunities and a lot more. Keep reading for all those advanced dorks. 😉

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allintext:

It searches for specified keyword or phrases in the body of the indexed pages ignoring the title and the Url.

How to use:

  • allintext:”keyword”

There’s not much use of this after knowing the above operators.

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filetype: or ext:

Using this operator you can search for files with a specific extension or file type.

How to use:

  • keyword filetype:pdf
  • keyword phrase filetype:pdf
  • keyword ext:pdf

There can be more variations. You can replace pdf with any file type that you want to look for.

The above shows all indexed PDF files containing SEO word either in the pdf title or in the pdf itself.

Uses: Find various files that otherwise are hard to find.

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That’s it !!

You don’t need to learn any other operator. The above-listed operators are enough for you to do wonders.

So, time for some powerful footprints and search phrases that I myself made in order to get various targeted results.

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Powerful Search Footprints for Bloggers & Internet Marketers

Ever heard of the site Dropmylink?

What does it do?? It simply applies a set of footprints to help you find backlink opportunities.

What if you want to explore more??

That’s when the following Footprints will help you.

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Footprint to Find Amazon Niche Blog Scholarship Pages

How many of you are running Amazon Niche blogs? In the recent years, there has been a huge spike in Amazon Niche blogging specially due to the amount of profit one can make from just a single blog.

With various case studies (Do read after finishing this article) in the market, more and more bloggers are now coming towards creating Amazon niche blogs. This has increased competition exponentially and now it’s nearly impossible to rank an Amazon niche with just basic links like Comments & web 2.0.

Links from Authority sites matters a lot and one of the most common forms of such link building is, “Scholarship Link Building”. I’m sure you must have heard about it on the internet. Almost every ranking Amazon Blog has done or tried this form of link building.

And it works !!!

So Here’s a simple footprint to find scholarship pages of all indexed Amazon Niche blogs. 

Simply copy-paste the following footprint on Google.

“Amazon” “scholarship” “reviews” “associates” -inurl:”Amazon”

[mks_button size=”medium” title=”Check Now” style=”squared” url=”https://www.google.com/search?hl=&site=&q=%E2%80%9CAmazon%E2%80%9D+%E2%80%9Cscholarship%E2%80%9D+%E2%80%9Creviews%E2%80%9D+%E2%80%9Cassociates%E2%80%9D+-inurl%3A%E2%80%9DAmazon%E2%80%9D” target=”_blank” bg_color=”#1e73be” txt_color=”#FFFFFF” icon=”fa-reply” icon_type=”fa” nofollow=”1″]

Hmm, what do you???

The snap shows all those Amazon Niche blogs who have made scholarship pages for Scholarship link building. And if you notice, I took the snap of page 10 of Google. Even on Page 10, I got all relevant results.

Pretty amazing right?

After knowing this footprint you will be able to

  • Get ideas on How to create Scholarship pages
  • Find some new Amazon Keywords
  • Steal Backlinks from all these Scholarship pages (By Approaching the same University and Govt Sites)
  • Analyze On-page and Off-page SEO from a huge collection of Amazon Niche blogs.

So !! By just a single footprint you can get these amazing benefits.

You can always add new words or phrases to get more specific.

The footprint I shared is very simple, I just asked Google to show all indexed pages that contain the word “Amazon”, “Reviews” and “Associates”, also I added a filter that removes all pages with the word Amazon in its URL.

I picked the 3 words from the basic fact that these 3 words are present on all Amazon niche sites. The word Associates is a part of Disclaimer that every Amazon blog put in the footer. The URL filter was used to avoid getting results from Amazon.com (or other Amazon country specific domains).

Intelligent right 😛

Anyways, do add your own keywords and play around with it.

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Footprints to Find Sites that Accept Guest posts

Guest Posting and Guest Blogging has always been a popular link building technique and due to that, it is very common to see people roaming around social media to find sites that accept guest posts.

Well, that is okay, but if you look for Guest posting sites via Google, you can end up with many positive leads and contacts.

Here are some simple Footprints to find all those blogs that accept guest posts.

  • intitle:”submit” inurl:”guest-post”

[mks_button size=”medium” title=”Check Now” style=”squared” url=”https://www.google.com/search?hl=&site=&q=intitle%3A%22submit%22+inurl%3A%22guest-post%22″ target=”_blank” bg_color=”#1e73be” txt_color=”#FFFFFF” icon=”fa-reply” icon_type=”fa” nofollow=”1″]

  • intitle:”submit” inurl:”guest-post” “health” 

Replace Health word with any niche or keyword to find targeted opportunities.

  • intitle:”write for us” inurl:”write”
  • intitle:”submit your content” inurl:”submit”
  • intitle:”submit article” inurl:”submit”

Following are some more footprints that you can find on other sites as well. I want you to not get confused with so many footprints. You now know the operators and how they can be used to refine your search results. So instead of using a very simple footprint, try making some advanced footprints that shows only results that are useful to you.

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  • “Submit Design News”
  • “Community News”
  • “Submit Blog Post”
  • “Suggest a Guest Post”
  • “Contribute to our Site”
  • “Become a Guest Writer”
  • “My Guest Posts”
  • “Submission Guidelines”
  • “This guest post was written”
  • “This guest post is from”
  • “Now Accepting Guest Posts”
  • “The following guest post”
  • inurl:guest-post-guidelines
  • inurl:guest-posts
  • inurl:write-for-us
  • “Add blog post”
  • “Guest Post Guidelines”
  • “Want to Write for”
  • “Blogs that Accept Guest Blogging”
  • “Blogs Accepting Guest Posts”
  • “Submit Tutorial”
  • “Suggest a Post”
  • “Become an Author”
  • “Become a Contributor”
  • “Places I Guest Posted”
  • “Publish Your News”
  • “Guest post by”
  • “Guest Contributor”
  • “This is a guest article”
  • “Add Articles”
  • “Add Guest Post”
  • “Guest Bloggers Wanted”
  • “Guest Posts Roundup”
  • “Blogs that Accept Guest Posts”
  • “Blogs that Accept Guest Bloggers”

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Footprint to Find Email IDs of People Looking for Guest Posts

It becomes much easier if we directly get the email id of those site owner who happily accept guest articles on their blogs. So here’s a simple footprint to find those blog owners.

“@gmail.com” “guest post”

[mks_button size=”medium” title=”Check Now” style=”squared” url=”https://www.google.com/search?hl=&site=&q=%22%40gmail.com%22+%22guest+post%22″ target=”_blank” bg_color=”#1e73be” txt_color=”#FFFFFF” icon=”fa-reply” icon_type=”fa” nofollow=”1″]

Just copy-paste and you will get all pages where the site owners directly mentioned their email Id to contact.

Play around with such footprints and get many email leads.

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Footprints to Find Authors from Top Authority Sites

“Guest Post on Forbes for 500$”, “Buy Guest posts from Lifehacker at 200$” !!

Don’t get mad at me. I am not selling those.

But you must have seen such ads/posts all around social media. There’s a huge craze for backlinks from authority sites and sellers are charging unbelievably high prices for a single guest post on such sites.

Facebook groups, Fiverr, and other marketplaces can be found spammed with such offers.

And people are buying it.

But, do you know that most of the authority sites accept guest posts for Free. Many big sites even offer their author accounts for free. The only requirement they put forward is Good quality articles.

So if you are someone who writes quality and unique articles that provide some value then you can easily become an author on most of the authority websites.

But with the increase in demand for such links and accounts, it has become really hard to contact the site owners or admins.

In that case, we are left with limited options. And one of those is to find a proper author or writer of the site and contact him with your requirements.

It is really important to find those authors who are not selling links/ guest posts but rather are providing regular quality content to the site.

I’ve made some Google and Social Media footprints through which I am able to find authors of such sites.

Footprint to Find Twitter Profile of Various Authority Site Contributors

  • ~author “Huffington post” “Joined” site:twitter.com -inurl:status -inurl:statuses

[mks_button size=”medium” title=”Check Now” style=”squared” url=”https://www.google.com/search?hl=&site=&q=~author+%22Huffington+post%22+%22Joined%22+site%3Atwitter.com+-inurl%3Astatus+-inurl%3Astatuses” target=”_blank” bg_color=”#1e73be” txt_color=”#FFFFFF” icon=”fa-reply” icon_type=”fa” nofollow=”1″]

Looks complicated but it isn’t !!

Well, I used ~author to include author and all the related words in the search result. Since I wanted to find contributors at Huffington post, I added it in double quotes. The word “joined” is added as I see that every Twitter profile page as that word written. The minus site operators are used to remove all status and tweet links from search results.

Beleive me, it takes not more than a minute to form such footprints. I play only with footprints so I am quite capable of finding footprints of almost every possible type of query.

Replace the word author with contributor or writer to get more results. Also replace the word Huffington Post with some other site name to get your desired results.

Are you confused on what to do with their profile links??

Well, build relationships with those people. They are not sellers, rather they are proper contributors with the intention of adding quality to the site. So even if you offer them a well-written quality article (with a relevant link to your blog), they can publish it under their name and you can a quality backlink. Or maybe a few bucks can help. Haha!!

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Footprints to Find Dofollow Commenting Blogs

I posted an entire article on How you can create powerful backlinks through blog commenting. Do check it out.

Anyways, here some footprints to find comment blogs.

Footprints to Find .EDU and .GOV websites to create Comment Backlinks 

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  • site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment”
  • site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment”
  • site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment” –“comments closed” -”you must be logged in” “keyword”
  • site:.edu “no comments” +blogroll -”posting closed” -”you must be logged in” -”comments are closed”
  • site:.gov “no comments” +blogroll -”posting closed” -”you must be logged in” -”comments are closed”
  • inurl:(edu|gov) “no comments” +blogroll -”posting closed” -”you must be logged in” -”comments are closed”
  • site:.edu inurl:blog “comment” -”you must be logged in” -”posting closed” -”comment closed”
  • site:.edu  says” “leave a reply”

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Google Footprint for Dofollow Comment Links

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  • “Notify me of follow-up comments?” “Submit the word you see below:”
  • “Blog Comments Powered by Disqus”
  • “Leave a new comment”
  • “Comment on the Post”
  • “Enter your comment:”
  • “Comments on this entry:”
  • “Sign in to comment on this entry.”
  • “Comments (You may use HTML tags for style)”
  • “Login or register to post comments”
  • “Login or register to post or rate comments”
  • “Leave a Reply” Name “(required)”‘ ‘Mail (will not be published) “(required)”‘ “Website”
  • “You must be registered and logged in to leave comments.”
  • “Sign in to Comment On this Entry”

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Google Footprint to Find CommentLuv Enabled Blogs

Most of the commentluv blogs give nofollow links but I still recommend you to create backlinks on such sites. 🙂

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  • “This blog uses premium CommentLuv”
  • “The version of CommentLuv on this site is no longer supported.”

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More Google Footprints to find sites to create Comment Backlinks

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  • ”if you have a website, link to it here” “post a new comment”
  • “By submitting a comment here you grant this site a perpetual license to”
  • “add comment” keyword / “add * comment”
  • “post comment” keyword / “post * comment”
  • keyword “leave a comment” / “leave * comment”
  • keyword “no comments”
  • Keywords “top commenter”
  • Keywords “Notify me of follow-up comments”
  • Keywords “You can use these tags”
  • “This site uses KeywordLuv ”
  • Top commenter Keyword(s)
  • Top commenters Keyword(s)
  • Top commentators Keyword(s)
  • Keyword(s) “Recent Comments”
  • keyword “notify me of follow-up comments”

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So these were some simple footprints that you can use. Just copy paste the entire Google footprint on google and search. You can also add your keyword in the Google-dorks to find out relevant sources.

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Footprint to Find Shopify Stores

Working on Shopify? Facing difficulties in finding products?

Well, then use the following footprint as it shows only shopify stores in search results. 

“Shopify” “Verified Secure Checkout”

[mks_button size=”medium” title=”Check Now” style=”squared” url=”https://www.google.com/search?hl=&site=&q=%22Shopify%22+%22Verified+Secure+Checkout%22″ target=”_blank” bg_color=”#1e73be” txt_color=”#FFFFFF” icon=”fa-reply” icon_type=”fa” nofollow=”1″]

Add your keyword or phrase to get a more precise search result.

With the help of various search operators, you can easily find new Shopify stores to get product ideas, store ideas, design ideas and more.

I’m not into e-commerce and that’s the reason I cannot add much under this topic.

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Footprint to Find Sites that Accept Coupon Submissions

There are many coupon websites that allows a viewer or logged in user to submit coupons. Well, those are backlink opportunities as these sites post your submitted coupons with your links.

In this way you can build links to your own product pages or you can build backlinks to your affiliate articles.

intitle:”submit” intitle:”coupon”

[mks_button size=”medium” title=”Check Now” style=”squared” url=”https://www.google.com/search?q=intitle:%22submit%22+intitle:%22coupon%22&newwindow=1&ei=nSzEWaSdFozqvASknYygAg&start=50&sa=N&biw=1536&bih=735″ target=”_blank” bg_color=”#1e73be” txt_color=”#FFFFFF” icon=”fa-reply” icon_type=”fa” nofollow=”1″]

This will show sites that accept coupon submissions. You can add more keywords to refine the results.

So start using this footprint, you may end up making some good backlinks to your offer or deal pages.

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Footprint to Find Affiliate Offers

This one is my favorite!!

Have you ever thought of promoting something new?? Either via Paid ads or via SEO??

Well, I’m sure many of you did. But did you manage to find a unique offer?

With thousands of niches and products available on the internet, it is impossible for us to remember all of them. It’s really hard to find something new to promote via affiliate marketing. Most of the time we end up finding offers of products related to what we already promoted.

This was a common issue for me. 🙁

But I recently figured out the use of operators to find literally thousands of affiliate offers from products that I never heard of.

And to be honest, I got some huge money making offers using the footprint. Anyways, let me share 😛 (I hope you guys will return it back someday 😛 )

“Affiliate” “Earn” inurl:.com/affiliate

[mks_button size=”medium” title=”Check Now” style=”squared” url=”https://www.google.com/search?hl=&site=&q=%22Affiliate%22+%22Earn%22+inurl%3A.com%2Faffiliate” target=”_blank” bg_color=”#1e73be” txt_color=”#FFFFFF” icon=”fa-reply” icon_type=”fa” nofollow=”1″]

As you can see, I am on the 10th page and every search result is an affiliate offer page.

You can tweak this footprint a lot. I mean a lot !!

You can add words to find offers that pay for trial signups or just for email leads. You can change the TLD to get more results and of course, you can add a keyword or a niche to find your keyword related affiliate offers.

Or you can add words like PPC to find affiliate pages where PPC is mentioned. (It may be written that PPC is not allowed 😛 )

Tweak a bit and get what you want 😉

Using this dork alone you can find 100s of affiliate offers that you can start promoting to make money.

Pretty amazing right??

For now, I have only these footprints to share. I will be updating the list with more footprints as I explore more.

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How to Create Such Powerful Footprints?

There is no magical formula for finding or creating such footprints.

The easiest way, however, is to try to solve your daily queries with the help of operators. Once you learn the art of using operators you will yourself be able to figure out quick queries and footprints for various common daily queries

Most of the footprints I made are solutions to the problems that I faced. And that’s how you can do the same.

Well, there’s not much left to write. Hope you enjoyed the article. By the way, if you have some more useful footprints that can be helpful in Blogging or SEO, then do let me know in comments. I will be more than happy to include it with a link to your profile or site. 🙂

About The Author
Iftekhar Ahmed
Iftekhar Ahmed is the owner of iftiSEO.com and writes on various topics like Online Earning, SEO, Blogging etc. He has worked on many blogs and also works as an SEO Analyst.

31 Responses

  1. Nice blog post about google new launched feature the search engine footprints it’s a new step in SEO world. Nice blog post keep the good work going.

  2. Iftekhar you have written valuable article on footprint. After reading this i have cleared all these google search operator. Before this it is very hard me to get best result on google search engines. Now I have planned to implement these operators to reduce my hours.

  3. Amazing article.I don’t know how you are creating such great content. You’re truly an inspiration for people like me, I also have a website related to that content. Kindly visit my website.

  4. Thanks for such informative post, Amazing article, u made me learn so much today abt foot print and operators. I don’t know how you are creating such a great content.You’re truly an inspiration for people like me.

  5. Hi Iftekhar ,

    This is maria, thanks for the posting, I really got lots of help with this post for my affiliate blog,. I will try these methods.

    Please keep posting more..

    Thanks

  6. Nice blog post, Iftekhar.
    I like the way you linked and highlighted all the list of Google Search Operator. It is indeed hard work to collect all this information. I like your point of “Footprints to Find Authors” which is very helpful.

  7. Hi Ifti, read your whole article and i am really impressed how you managed to use google dorks for a bloggers. These google dorks are going to help a lots of people. Thanks a ton for posting this wonderful guide.

  8. Hi Iftekhar ,

    This is maria, thanks for the posting, I really got lots of help with this post for my affiliate blog,. I will try these methods.

    Please posting more..

    Thanks

  9. Wow, this is absolutely brilliant. It will definitely help bloggers and Internet marketers to understand how to search on google right way.
    I will start using the above footprint to find dofollow commenting blogs.
    Thanks Iftekhar Ahmed for creating and sharing this awesome post with us.

  10. ifti sir you are the my godfather for internet marketing. there are lots of things which i learn from only your blog.thanks a lot sirji.

  11. Awesome Guide Bro! I read it and enjoyed a lot. May these footprints will help me surely to get comment backlinks for my upcoming event blog. Keep writing such guides!

  12. IftiSEO, my new favourite blog.. Never thought that is the kind of knowledge and intellect you hold brother.. Amazing and excessively helpful.. Subscribing you now..

  13. Hey Iftekhar
    i visited your blog first time , and found really amazing stuff here , and this post was great for every internet marketer , you are great man
    Thank you for sharing ,
    and now i bookmarked your blog for reading daily articles
    Alice 🙂

  14. Ifti You have created a GEM for all the new bloggers. Some of the footprints I know and have used, but the real magic is when we combine them Like to search for scholarship and guest blogging is just amazing.

  15. Was the first time reaching here and the “Best time too.” Have been trying to widen my knowledge in the search engine footprints and finally reached here. So far, this is the best footprint guide that I came across.
    Especially, the “Footprints to Find Authors” was just brilliant. Thanks for sharing such valuable info and keep doing it. Will be waiting for more such reveals. 😉

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