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
-
The blog section of my website just got deleted, Would it get my website penalized if I posted the same content again?
The blog section of my website just got deleted, Would it get my website penalized if I posted the same content again?
Content Development | | DustChasersToronto0 -
My keywords have low search volume - is it still worth starting a blog?
I'm thinking of starting a new blog, but when I did my keyword research I found that my keywords all have low search volume (under 100 searches per month, with the occasional keyword having 480 searches a month). Is this a deal breaker? Any recommendations would be great - thanks everyone!
Content Development | | Trevorneo1 -
Loads of Blog Search Results showing up in SERPs - What's the best way to remove?
Our client has a good number of results showing up in SERPs that are search results pages produced by Blog posts. Unfortunately all these results have exactly the same Title tag and it has nothing to do with the blog content which means they are unlikely to help us much. We can’t create a 301 redirect because there is no page to redirect. There is no blog page we can re=canonical to either. The content on these pages is a short list of blog posts by each author. They are not true “Author” pages that would have a URL structure like this: your company.com/author/joeblow Our plan is to use GWMT's URL removal tool to request remove of these pages. (and then try to stop new results from being created) We are doing this to get low-value content out of the SERP. Is there a better way to remove these search results? Any drawback in removing them in GWMTs? Thanks.
Content Development | | RosemaryB1 -
Can We Publish Duplicate Content on Multi Regional Website / Blogs?
Today, I was reading Google's official article on Multi Regional website and use of duplicate content. Right now, We are working on 4 different blogs for following regions. And, We're writing unique content for each blog. But, I am thinking to use one content / subject for all 4 region blogs. USA: http://www.bannerbuzz.com/blog/ UK: http://www.bannerbuzz.co.uk/blog/ AUS: http://www.bannerbuzz.com.au/blog/ CA: http://www.bannerbuzz.ca/blog/ Let me give you very clear ideas on it. Recently, We have published one article on USA website. http://www.bannerbuzz.com/blog/choosing-the-right-banner-for-your-advertisement/ And, We want to publish this article / blog on UK, AUS & CA blog without making any changes. I have read following paragraph on Google's official guidelines and It's inspire me to make it happen. Which is best solution for it? Websites that provide content for different regions and in different languages sometimes create content that is the same or similar but available on different URLs. This is generally not a problem as long as the content is for different users in different countries. While we strongly recommend that you provide unique content for each different group of users, we understand that this may not always be possible. There is generally no need to "hide" the duplicates by disallowing crawling in a robots.txt file or by using a "noindex" robots meta tag. However, if you're providing the same content to the same users on different URLs (for instance, if both example.de/ and example.com/de/ show German language content for users in Germany), you should pick a preferred version and redirect (or use the rel=canonical link element) appropriately. In addition, you should follow the guidelines on rel-alternate-hreflang to make sure that the correct language or regional URL is served to searchers.
Content Development | | CommercePundit0 -
Guest Blogging
If I am looking to guest blog for back links, do I need to reciprocate and provide guest blogging opportunities for them on my site? OR is it better to ask other site's to link to articles on my client's page with the understanding I will link to their page (if they are not competition)? I am trying to do some link building for a bankruptcy lawyer and I am considering possibly searching out guest blogging in different cities/states. Bankruptcy is primarily a federal matter, so reaching out to neighboring states. Not sure the client will be interested in this or not, but it's something I am considering. A lot of law firms have contact information Thanks everyone!
Content Development | | DigitalEnvy0 -
Should my client copy and paste his blog posts onto other professional sites?
I have a client who is an Attorney and participates in a couple of different Q and A legal sites. One of these legal sites is recommending to my client that he copy and paste his blog posts onto his profile page on the Q and A site. I understand my client wanting to copy and paste his blog posts onto these sites, as it will not only get his content in front of a larger audience, but also lend credibility. However, I've always heard that that could cause some duplicate content problems. Will my client's blog likely get penalized by google for copying and pasting his blog posts onto other relevant sites?
Content Development | | ScottMcPherson0 -
When Search for Blog Guest and to Post, What is the FIRST Metric to lookk at???
I have a online store selling furnace filters. For link building, I started to post on guest blogs I'm new to posting on guest blog and I would like to know what are the most important metrics to look at when selecting a blog? The P.A. ??? I did a few test and this is what I did: in the Goolge-BLOG tab option search for K.W like: ''furnace filters'' ''air furnace filters'' Look at Google results and (MozBar is installed on browser) slect blog with P.A. of 15 or higher Read the post and if I have a relevant content to add, post on the blog and had my infos, store url... Then I keep the blog URL and see if my post get approve and publish. Thank you, BigBlaze
Content Development | | BigBlaze2050 -
Guest Blogging
Hey Guys, I've been reading about the power of guest blogging and it seems like a fun way to build links. However, finding blogs that allow guest blog posts is a bit tougher than I thought. I read about MyBlogGuest.com and some other guest blog networks. Are these legit and am I on the right track when searching for blogs that will allow a guest post? Thanks!
Content Development | | GoldStarGames0