Raffle Links!
Today I was just messing around, checking out who checking whom out via the MyBlogLog on Syzlak’s SEM Blog when I stumbled upon this cat who may have found a brand-new (though probably short lived) way of getting backlinks. Is it genius? Perhaps, or perhaps it’s only genius to me because I haven’t seen it before and wish I’d thought of it.
Anyways, what if I told you that if you linked to my blog, I’d put a buck in the pot and enter you into a drawing for up to 500 bones. Would you link to my blog? Would you then go out and tell all your friends to link to my blog in the hopes of upping the ante to the $500?
That’s what the guys (or guy? Maybe gal? Hell, who knows. At any rate it’s these people who are putting on the contest) over at SiteFever.com are running a contest that is exactly what I proposed above. You go to the contest page, grab a bit of the link code they have there for you (there’s two versions – good thinking!), drop it in your blog and send them an email telling them what page or post you dropped the code in.
My guess is that after the drawing, the page with the contest details will go away. And hopefully, they’ve got a couple hundred links coming into their site. If I were them, I would have considered dropping that page extension into the robots.txt file they’ve set up just to keep the search engines from finding it. But then again that might’ve looked sketchy whereas making the page available to spiders shows they’re not trying to scam anything. To me, it’s kinda’ like snitching on yourself by leaving such an obvious trail that if they don’t follow it they’re stupid and it’s their own damn faults. Anywho, I digress.
So what kind of link would the search engines consider this to be? If you’re entered into a raffle for linking, is it considered a paid link? And you’re sure as hell guaranteed not to get a reciprocal link, so all the recent grumbling about Google considering reciprocal links as part of a link scheme are somewhat moot. However, while it’s not a reciprocal link, it is a link scheme. And I have a feeling that’s part of the reason this will be fairly short lived. That, and the fact if the contest is only over a short amount of time means there will be an influx of backlinks that would surely set off some sort of warning system. Add to it the value of blog links aren’t that powerful and all the incoming links will be from fairly random sources . . . well, you get the picture. Great idea, I just don’t know if it would help all that much in this context. Perhaps if you were an automotive performance parts website and you offered such a contest to other auto-minded sites and forums and you held that drawing in a year, you might have a positive impact. The links would be much more relevant, it would offer auto enthusiasts a reason to come to your site and by having it over the span of a year they might be added much more regularly.
Want the chance to see if you can win $500? Follow the link to the contest. If you have huevos, aren’t depending on the internet for a living and are interested in seeing if it would work, give it a whirl! Just be prepared for the consequences. 
Getting Backlinks and Linking Strategy
The other day I received a question via IM about linking and how to get backlinks. When working for clients, I usually recommend them developing some sort of linking strategy in order to acquire the much needed backlinks. However, I’ve never put in a whole lot of thought as to how to go about getting said links and what kind of strategy to implement.
So, instead of taking the time to actually put something comprehensive together, I decided to pull the log from the IM session and dump it here. Yeah, I’m lazy. Sue me. Anyways, below you’ll find the dialogue and your’s truly thinking out loud about a backlink strategy. Would it work? Hell if I know.
(I’ve posted the following is in it’s entirety. Only names have been changed.)
[13:44] question asker: so i’ve a question on linking
[13:46] question asker: 1) is it ethical for a site to link to whomever they would like to, if it’s a legitimate site (like an insurance agent linking his site to a host of insurance comparison sites)
2) how does one go about getting more inbound links? and how does one buy links?
[13:51] MrRex: 1) Ethics don’t really play into this so much. In general, a website owner can link to whomever they want for whatever reason. With that said, from a search engine’s point of view, you have to be careful. In the case you have, it would make sense for the agent to link to the insurance comparison site or even maybe a banking and investments sites. You know, things that a visitor to the agent’s site might find interesting.
[13:51] question asker: figuredd
[13:51] MrRex: Now, if the agent decided to link to some gambling sites, a few porn sites and a viagara site, while they can do that, it’s not a good idea. To the search engines, they’re associating themselves with bad neighborhoods.
[13:52] question asker: right
[13:52] MrRex: I’ll answer 2) in a sec – the dogs need to shit
[13:52] question asker: HAHAHAHAHA
[13:57] MrRex: okay, as for 2), you basically need to develop some strategies.
[13:58] MrRex: First, there are directories. They’re a good source, and I have a list I can send you, but many are paid and the effect rankings and the quality of traffic is questionable. As long as the client is in some of the major directories, they’re probably okay.
[13:59] MrRex: Second, they can always ask for links. Search for relevant sites and send an email or do a link analysis of the competition’s site and approach the people who are linking to that site to link to your client’s. Again, the response rate on this is very low and it’s very manual.
[14:02] MrRex: Third, articles and other bits of relevant, useful content. have them submit articles to sites, post the articles on the site, have a blog, stuff like that. The problem is making sure the content is useful and relevant and that it gets found. RSS is one way of getting articles found and there are lots of places to submit articles. The client will want to make sure they have a link in the page to their site as well as making sure it is something interesting, useful and relevant.
[14:04] MrRex: Fourth, add other bits of interesting things that would be worht linking to (that’s why so many of the bigshot SEO people have free tools, free newsletters and stuff like that). Any sort of widget or free tool, if it’s good, will get links. For a bank, having a mortgage calculator or some other sort thing for figuring out the interest over the life of a loan would be good.
[14:05] MrRex: Five, you can always buy links. They work like paid advertising. You want to make sure the traffic you’d get from the site would be relevant, because we’re still talking about conversions and traffic, but also because the link itself will be of more value. Do some homework on the site and on the page you’re link will listed on as wel. make sure it has decent PR and the site hasn’t been banned or anything like that.
[14:06] MrRex: Another source for buying links is with link brokers. I think in the “giving it up” section of SMX Todd Friesen mentioned a good linkn broker. If you spend some time in the forums you might be able to uncover some otheres
[14:09] MrRex: I know there has been a lot said about Google (and perhaps the other search engines) discounting the value of paid links, however, they’re still advertising and still a good source of traffic if bought on the right site. Approaching bloggers is another method, but for it to be of any value the blog has to be read by more than the blogger and his/her mom.
[14:09] MrRex: Lawsuits are another source of links, as you heard in the conference.
Look helpful?
Paid Links Get You Banned In Google?
It’s funny, but I’ve heard a couple of questions this week about Google banning sites for buying links. What’s funny is that it is only Tuesday.
The thing about it is, no matter how much Google hates paid links, no matter how much they’d love to get their algo sorted out enough to decipher which are paid and which are “natural”, they will not ban you for having paid links. Their snitching program paid links notification program and the request that webmaster put no follow tags on paid links is more of a ploy to get you to help them figure out which links are paid so they can discount the value of a paid link (and perhaps all links from websites that sell links) in order to make their results pages more relevant. In my mind this is more telling about how reliant Google’s algorithm is on links and the types of links than anything else.
So in short, if it makes sense to buy a link from a site, go for it. For best results I recommend making sure it’s relevant to your site, is on a page with decent Google Tool Bar PR (though personally I’d weight relevance more than TBPR) and is a site that not only get crawled regularly, but your link is on a page that gets crawled regularly. Oh, and if it’s on a page or site that gets decent traffic, all the more better.
“Buying links is all fine and good, but I don’t want to get banned by Google!” you say. In my opinion, don’t worry about it. Yes, there’s a chance they may devalue the paid link coming into your site. But the chances of them banning you for a paid link is slim to none, and I’m leaning towards none.
GoogleSayWhat? Stitches for Snitches & My Two Cents on the Matt Cutts Post.
Alright, it hasn’t hit any mainstream press, and it probably never will. But unless you’ve been living under a friggin’ rock in the SEO world, you couldn’t have missed any of the firestorm regarding Matt Cutts’ now infamous blog post about hidden links.
What’s got everybody set off isn’t the information on hidden links; to the contrary, that kind of information is useful. Google, regardless of the quality of their SERPs, are still by and far the perceived most important search engine for online businesses. And they still provide the most traffic from what everyone says. Knowing what they could smack you on the hand for is good.
It’s what was the latter half of the post that has everyone worked up. Well, everyone one in the world of search. Basically, Matt Cutts went on to say (and I’m paraphrasing here), “Google is thinking about considering paid links as a type of spam. So, why don’t you tell which of your links are paid or not so we can do our job better. And while you’re at it, if you know of a site selling links, tell us that too.”
That pissed off a lot of people. Sure, it’s their game and they can play it how they want. But considering a paid link as spam or something bad . . . that’s just obnoxious. Even throwing that out there, regardless of whether they’re considering it or not, is bullying at best. It’s horrible.
Of course there are legions of Cuttlets and other Google fanboys and girls out there saying it’s better for the internet. BFD. First of all, having us do their job smacks of laziness. C’mon, people! Use those big brains! You all could figure this out! Besides, if it weren’t for Adsense your SERPs would probably be a helluva’ lot better! Well, perhaps that’s unfair, but that’s how I feel.
There’s a solution out there. But slapping webmasters for selling advertising via paid links isn’t it. While at one time perhaps links were a good way to judge the popularity of a site, perhaps it’s time to take a hard look at how that’s influencing the current state of Google and the web in general. Links are good. Getting free relevant links is great. Buying relevant links is good business.
Honestly, in the long run, probably not a whole helluva’ lot is going to change. I think more than anything we’re seeing Google’s arrogance in play. They’re going to dominate the online advertising space with their purchase of DoubleClick. Telling mom and pop sites (who probably wouldn’t know Matt Cutts from Frylock and don’t spend a lot of time studying the subtleties of the Google Webmaster Guidelines) they can’t do with their website what Google is doing with their search engine without risking some sort of vague punishment is borderline criminal.
And if I’m wrong about what Mr. Cutts wrote, then I think it shows the building backlash against Google and their clumsiness with PR and their message, “Don’t Be Evil.” I think one they need to take to heart is “Don’t Be Assholes.”
