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A hotsheet is a simple list of items that are currently “hot”, high value, or available only for a short period of time. In some contexts a hotsheet might be a list of stolen items, a list of forbidden items, or a list of items to find.

If you want to be serious about link building then you need to work with link hotsheets. These are not the spreadsheets your grandma uses every Sunday. Here are a few scenarios that illustrate how to use link hotsheets.

Scenario 1: Top Linking Resources – Everyone is looking for places to get more links from. You should have a hotsheet that includes 10-20 places where you can place credible links to your content. You won’t be able to use every resource on the list at any one time. Still, when you roll out a new section for your site or launch a new site entirely you should check this hotsheet first to see which sites can help you.

Criteria for Top Linking Resources:

1. Frequent cache updates in major search indexes
2. Verifiable anchor text passing
3. Easy to update
4. Not used by many other people

Scenario 2: New Linking Resources – Everyone in the SEO blogosphere wants to get the next hot thing on Sphinn, and some people stupidly publish lists of linking resources. You should keep track of the newer ones AND AVOID THEM LIKE THE PLAGUE. Don’t waste your time using linking resources that every SEO idiot in the world will exploit and burn to Link Spam Hell.

Criteria For New Linking Resources:

1. Blogged about by 2 or more people in the past six months
2. Google Toolbar Penalty Applied
3. Recommended by any popular SEO tutorial, book, or webinar in the last year
4. Mentioned in any SEO-related video that gets more than 2 views

Scenario 3: This Week’s (month’s) Hot Content – There is no point in building links if you have nothing to link to. You should be building deep links, fresh links, and refresh links. Cycle through your URLs (especially if you have a lot). Don’t just point every link at the “important” pages on your site — point links at ALL the pages on your site.

Criteria For Hot Content Resources:

1. You just created the page
2. You haven’t built a link to the page in at least six months
3. The page will become relevant to seasonal queries in 2-3 months
4. You just updated the page

Scenario 4: Safe, Non-Competitive, Relevant Resources – These are sites you link to freely to help create value in your own content. They are relevant to your content but not competing with you. That should be self-explanatory enough I don’t need to list specific criteria for inclusion on the list.

Here are some basic rules for using link hotsheets:

• DO NOT SHARE THESE LISTS
• Update these lists at least once a month
• DO NOT SHARE THESE LISTS
• Keep more than one set of hotsheets if you promote multiple sites
• DO NOT SHARE THESE LISTS

There is no greater harm you can do to your own SEO power than to share with people which resources you use. It doesn’t matter how many other people know about them. Do not contribute to their popularity because they WILL become useless if they become popular enough.

Ubiquity signals the death of any SEO linking resource. There are no exceptions to the rules, just a lot of useless links being built by fools.