Blogging competition - risky link acquiring method?
-
We are planning to launch a competition where bloggers can blog about our products and about our company. One winner will be selected to win a gift card to our web shop.
In order to participate the blogger has to put a link to the blog post that points to our front page or into one of our product pages.
Does Google have a guideline against such "link acquiring" methods?
-
It is against Google TOS to ask for a link, so the best way to do this, as Dejan SEO have said is to cause a reason to link back to the competition page o the home page.
There are various methods of this, and the best has been mentioned - include a code snippet on your contest page, perhaps with a blog footer like so:
This post was for a competition hosted by Company Name, promoting Product. Visit their website for more details on this competition
(With links in obviously). This will trick a lot of people into thinking that it is necessary to include that footer following their post to keep their entry legitimate, and will obviously be gaining you the contextual link you're after, to multiple pages if you'd like.
The other method is via profile badges, or a specific badge for that competition. Encourage users to add your badges to their sites/blogs/individual posts, and make it as easy to do so as possible.
One final thing, make sure you give out badges to the finalists, again, linking to your pages. If they're winning something they'll feel obliged to use the badge!
Hope all of this helps EuropeanSEOguy!
-
I had a similar idea for my site. It involved giving away free product in return for a link. Some have suggested to me that this could be black hat. But personally I don't see how this is much different than other methods such as gaining links by sponsoring a local event.
-
-
Hi
I like this idea. Do you have an example of such widget ? How to get started?
-
A suggestion: make a "blogging competition widget" that each blogger must embed. You get your link back and this sends traffic to all the other blogs who are taking part and further promotes the competition while looking less dodgy
ps, make sure every blogger wins a nice badge / honorable mention button
S
-
I agree with Dejan SEO's reply (his way of getting backlinks ) but i don't think that your strategy may invoke penalty of some sort. You are not buying or colluding with webmaster for it.
-
It will not pick it up automatically, however if you go massive with it or somebody reports you and you get a manual audit then you could be in trouble. There is a way of getting links without asking for links - and that is to create a need and reason for linking. For example you can provide them with optional code snippets that would save them time explaining the rules of the competition (T&C?) and other handy devices which would save webmasters time.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Blog hasn't ranked since reposting.
Hey Moz fam! I had a blog that was doing pretty well for the target keyword. Unfortunately, to make a long story short, we had an image in it we weren't supposed to so I unpublished it for a few days while we got that sorted out. Since republishing (with all the same content) it has not gotten a single impression. I inspected the URL and it is totally eligible but nothing in the way of organic traffic. Any ideas on how I can recover?
Content Development | | danieldaher1 -
Blog Posts: 1 link per 125 words?
I've seen this "1 link per 125 words" for blog posts suggestion pop up a variety of places. I wanted to know if that's "correct" or a best practice? In my posts, I generally write between 800 to 1200 words with about 4 to 6 links in the body of the post. However, (and this may be a problem) I add about 13 links in my closing paragraph, "if you have any legal questions, etc etc, click here for your "Tampa personal injury attorney, Clearwater Personal Injury Attorney, etc etc for all the areas we practice in related to that blog post." Should I stop doing that? Does that come off as spammy? (The blog is hosted on our site, if that matters for this question at all). Thanks, Ruben
Content Development | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
Is it Possible for an Internal Page to Rank for Various Terms Based ONLY on Blogging Anchor Text?
Hi everyone, Our company provides about 6 different services, each with a specific page on our website: 1. Accept ACH Payments (/accept_ach_payments.html) 2. Client Management & Billing Software (/customer_management.html) 3. Small Business Merchant Accounts (/small_business_merchant_account.html) etc etc Now, here's the question. One of our blogging strategies is to write content about how our online platform can help various types of businesses manage and grow their business. "5 Ways Fitness Business Can...." "How Law Firms Can Benefit...." etc In these blog posts, we don't specify our product, but we do link back into one of those main service pages, so I might link fitness management software to the Client Management & Billing Software (/customer_management.html) page as well as legal billing software to the same client management page Since there are so many different companies that could use our software, we don't want to include them on the Cl_i_ent Management & Billing Software page. That page is just about the benefits of the system and how it works as a great CRM. So....to make a long question short, are we able to rank the Client Management page for "fitness management software" and "legal billing software" if we don't use those terms on the "client management" page itself, and only use it as the anchor text when linking? Instead of making a separate page about how we can be used as a fitness management platform, we'd like our "client management" page to rank for various terms like "fitness management software" "legal billing software" "online church donation software" etc BUT, we don't want to bloat the client management page will all those other topics and content. Hope that makes sense, Patrick
Content Development | | SmallBizSmarts0 -
If you were guest blogging would you prefer a link or revenue share
I am looking at ideas at the moment, we have been getting a large number of guest bloggers wanting to write for our site but i have to say we are turning down around 90% of the articles as they are low quality. So i am just wondering, to attract high quality articles, should we carry on offering a link in the articles or offer them revenue share by asking for their google adsense code and putting it somewhere on the page. If we did offer this, how would we impliment this, we work on a joomla website and have read about rev share but not sure how we do this correctly. Would like to know people's thoughts on this
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848861 -
2,500 Word blog post? What's your advice?
Most of my blog posts end up being 400-600 words, sometimes more, sometimes less. I have written one that is 2,500 words this time. If it were you, would you make one huge post, or split it into two or three? Or would you say it wholly depends on my site and the type of content? As far as link bait goes, one page is better . . . I guess. But would anyone ever read a 2,500 word blog post, even it it's about a subject he/she is interested in? Additionally, what's better for SEO? Just wants some second opinions. Thanks!
Content Development | | UnderRugSwept0 -
Can I delete an old blog post and be ok?
I wrote some blog posts on my wordpress blog a few years ago that I no longer want on my site. I have them "no index" and "no follow" but everytime I run a report on my site they still seem to pop up. If I just delete the posts will it result in a broken link for my site? Or is there another way I can go about it? Thanks guys
Content Development | | Caseman0 -
Blog at blogspot
Hi My website provider doesnt yet have the function to integrate blog under my domain name so the blog is at blogspot. Inevitably there will be quite some links going from blog to differnet pages on my site. I havent yet incorporated a clickable link from my homepage to blog. I am not sure wether to do this or not. Will this just reduce the value of the links going from the blog ? Thanks
Content Development | | danlae0 -
For a consumer facing blog, how often do you recommend updating content to develop good rankings? I understand that it's really dependent upon the niche/competition, but what are some best practices? Content is expensive. Thanks
For a consumer facing blog, how often do you recommend updating content to develop good rankings? I understand that it's really dependent upon the niche/competition, but what are some best practices? Content is expensive. Thanks
Content Development | | CSOD19990