I have a great idea for a contest that will generate links...but how do I promote it when I have little traffic?
-
I'm working on a new real estate site and I've got some great ideas to generate links. One of these ideas is a pretty neat contest. (I'd tell you what it is, but really...this is one of those ideas where people will go, 'Man! I wish I thought of that', so I want to do it first before anyone else steals my idea. )
The contest involves readers submitting photos and other readers voting on them. I anticipate it will generate some good press both locally and internationally if I can get enough submissions. But, the question is, how do I get contest submissions when I don't have good traffic yet?
Once I've got some good submissions, I'll contact some media, spread it amongst my personal fb friends, etc.
Any ideas are welcomed!
-
You might be trying to go too general with it... figure out who you're targeting first then tailor the content to them.
-
Some great answers here, I'd add that there are numerous websites around the web to advertise your competition, some offer paid advertising, others free. Most offer a follow link. There are quite a lot of low quality sites, which I'd avoid, check their mozTrust etc prior to submitting your competition.
I've found twitter a great medium for promoting competitions in the past. Choose a unique, related hashtags and tweet about it regularly.
-
Building on @EGOL suggestions agree it is important to get the tone set from the beginning. To this end there is nothing wrong with soliciting the help of your own network early on...you can cajol them into providing good entries to start with. Once you have some good content you can look at some tactical local PR, local newspapers and websites.
How you actually execute it is also going to be important, making it very easy to pass along. I'm personally bullish on FB powered commenting. Again getting your network to start interacting with the content this way will help socialize it on FB.
FB advertising may also be a good way to seed the comp.
-
Its not aonly a good way to get links, its a good reson to ask people to link to you. find relevant sites and ask if they will link to you.
-
Thanks Steve. I have never been able to get something picked up on Digg or StumbleUpon...not sure why!
-
That's what Social Media is for Use Digg, StumbleUpon, etc... to promote the contest. As long as it's done well you'll get some traffic and submissions... there's bound to be some well targeted platforms for it too.
-
I would go straight to other webmasters - especially if they have a local blog that might cover your contest or sell you a banner ad.
-
I like the idea of prizes for the first ten entries that meet our specifications. That's good!
Regarding the advertising...are you thinking Adwords? Or approaching local webmasters to purchase ad space?
-
Give nice prizes for the first ten entries that meet your rigorous specifications.... The first entries will set the tone for those that follow. You want to start with some kickass stuff and not a bunch of slackers.
Advertise these as a "mystery contest" on local websites (use local websites because those people are already online and can click straight away to your site,)
Be friendly and encouraging but let them know that you expect good stuff.
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
-
How to stop internal Dynamically created links that generate 404s
Hi I have question weather to block in Robots.txt or through No followed tags. Links that are part of a Dynamic Tab control that generates the tabs based on CMS content. These are internal links on the page which show content within a tab control. Would it stop these errors appearing in the Google report if we added a rel="nofollow" tag to the <a>tag, for example:</a> <a></a> <a></a>VIEW FROM SEATS? Is it better to use No followed tags or block it in Robots.txt? Thanks Cee
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mara.lature10 -
Will this affect
Hi there! I've got a question that I'm having trouble answering. My client has one site url essentially has two sites within it. The homepage (name-photography.com) content focuses on her fashion photography services with a specific design and look with almost no mention of weddings unless you click the weddings icon. When you click on weddings, it takes you to a "new" site on the same url (name-photography.com/weddings) that has entirely different look and feel. The client would like to improve her visibility for her wedding services and not the fashion photography side. Would it be more beneficial to house the wedding services on an entirely new URL so that homepage content can be wedding focused. Again, with the current homepage, it's all fashion photography focused and not easy to redo. Or could one implement a 301 redirect from the fashion homepage (name-photographer.com) to the wedding homepage (name-photographer.com/weddings)? Thanks for your advice! Jessica
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zigzen0 -
Disavowing Affiliate Links - Domain or Actual Affiliate Link?
Hi everyone, Hope you're all having a great day, I have a question in regards to a site which I am about to disavow. Over the past 2 months a certain page of ours has dropped from the 2nd page, all the way to the 7th. I haven't been able to diagnose why, however, yesterday I discovered that a site has been using an Lafitte link on his sidebar, the link is a do-follow. Webmaster tools indicates that this site has linked to us over 24,000 times. I understand that this link could potentially ruin our rankings - however, in terms of disavowing, what is the best approach here? Do I disavow their domain, or do I disavow the actual affiliate link also? The link is placed within an image, once the image is clicked it redirects you to another link for a second then redirects to our money site. We have got in touch with our affiliate program and they have made the link a no-follow, however, we are pretty certain this site is causing issues for us and we want to go ahead and disavow. Thanks, Brett
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brett-S0 -
Does Disavowing Links Negate Anchor Text, or Just Negates Link Juice
I'm not so sure that disavowing links also discounts the anchor texts from those links. Because nofollow links absolutely still pass anchor text values. And disavowing links is supposed to be akin to nofollowing the links. I wonder because there's a potential client I'm working on an RFP for and they have tons of spammy directory links all using keyword rich anchor texts and they lost 98% of their traffic in Pengiun 1.0 and haven't recovered. I want to know what I'm getting into. And if I just disavow those links, I'm thinking that it won't help the anchor text ratio issues. Can anyone confirm?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MiguelSalcido0 -
Removing Bad Links
Hi all, I am in the process of conducting a Link Audit and I am faced with quite a lot of seemingly poor quality examples, such as; http://gotogetaways.com/tag/cunard/ http://jobhiringlocalandabroad.blogspot.com/p/job-hiring-for-cruise-liner-orchestra.html http://lumukixu.xlx.pl/p-o-cruises-aurora.php To me these should be removed \ disavowed but I am getting a little resistence from stakeholders regarding the amount of links I am seeking to rid ourselves of - all are of a similar quality to my examples above... Just so that I know that I am not being 'over eager' with my audit, I welcome your opinions Thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
How to build links naturally?
Hi, I recently started a website on famous Photoshop images. These are available in the internet, but on different sources, so i gathered them all and made them available in my website. So my content is not unique but it was gathered from different sources and made available in one website. How can i get links naturally? Yes, it is a great content, but how people will know about my site so that they can reblog on their blogs? How can i make the users to reblog my content and get links naturally? Can anyone experienced help me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hari10 -
Help Identifying Unnatural Links
http://bit.ly/XT8yYYHi,Any help with the below will be most appreciated.We received an unnatural links warning in Webmaster Tools and noticed a large drop in our rankings. We downloaded and carried out a full link audit (3639 links) and logged in an excel spreadsheet with the following status: OK, Have Contacted, Can't Contact, Not SureWe have had some success but the majority of the ones we identified are not contactable.We use the dis-avow tool to tell Google of these. We then submitted a reconsideration request where we explained to Google our efforts and that we can supply them with our audit if necessary by email as you can't upload any evidence.A few days later we received a response suggesting that we still have unnatural links. We are a little stuck as we don't know what they can be:1. Is Google actually looking at our dis-avowed links before making this judgement?2. We have missed something that Google is considering bad but we can't see in our audit?Again we need a little help as we are trying to sort this out but can't see what we are falling down on.I can provide our spreadsheet if necessary.Many ThanksLee
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LeeFella0 -
Links with Parameters
The links from the home page to some internal pages on my site have been coded in the following format by my tech guys: www.abc.com/tools/page.html?hpint_id=xyz If I specify within my Google Webmaster tools that the parameter ?hpint_id should be ignored and content for the user does not change, Will Google credit me for a link from the home page or am I losing something here. Many thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | harmit360