Are Creating Free WordPress and Joomla Themes a good link building strategy?
-
Hello Everyone,
I have been analyzing various link building strategies recently. One tactic that always seems to come up is to give stuff away. I wanted to get everyones thoughts on creating Wordpress and Joomla Themes, then giving them away as a link building strategy? The goal would be to create some stellar themes, then place our website link in the footer with some text that would read "Wordpress Theme by Pete Juratovic" and Pete Juratovic would point to my website.
Is this a good tactic, or would this look like spam? If spam, why? Why would this tactic be any different then creating a great infographic as a link building stratedgy?
Pete
-
Have you think about develope any simple joomla's module/plugin? A link to your website from JED will be so relevant...
Infographics are a very good natural way to do link building, because a lot of sites are going to link to you in a natural way.
Share a good theme in VERY RELEVANT sites is a good option too... A lot of sites downloading yout theme is an important factor that Google loves. If anyone is downloading your files is becauser your files are interesting, and Google wants people finds RELEVANT INFORMATION.
I hope it can help you
-
There is a huge variety of themes. Themes for each CMS, themes for real estate sites or themes for e-commerce, etc.
A fantastic general Joomla theme which I love is: themeforest.net/item/blackstudios-creative-joomla-15-template/full_screen_preview/129204
The designer has a 5 star rating with this theme, promptly replies to questions, and the theme was showcased on the front page of the theme site.
-
I agree with you Vahe. Either method is subject to theft and dishonesty. The theme can have the link removed and the infographic may be offered without a link.
-
Pete,
To be honest I don't have specific example. You can look at specific CSS, HTML or Wordpress (PSD) Theme galleries. You can also search for these galleries by conducting specific queries i.e. "submit theme".
One thing I would check before you submit your themes, is to ensure these sites have strict submission guidelines, particularly submitting original themes/contents. You should also track these links on a regular basis.
Hope this helps,
Vahe
-
Ryan I agree with you, however unless you have creative commons for your infographic, this will be scraped on most sites with no link pointing back to the website.
It all comes back to whether your site is authoritative enough to be considered as the original source by search engines. Both methods are voluntarily link placements from the website owner. It's about how you manage those relationships.
-
Why would this tactic be any different then creating a great infographic as a link building strategy?
If you created an infographic as a link building strategy, you would presumably receive a single link in content for the infographic. You may or may not have the infographic itself as an image link to your site.
If you create a CMS theme, you would receive a footer link. Footer links are the least visible and lowest valued link.
Also consider with the infographic someone is choosing to provide a link to your site based on your great graphic work. With a theme link, many of those using the software are not voluntarily providing the link. They may wish to remove the link but keep it based on your copyright. Google is pretty good about understanding such differences.
The main focus I would suggest is quality. If your site is related to Joomla or WP, such as if you develop websites using those solutions, then creating a theme is relevant to your site. If you make a high quality theme, it is representative of the quality of your work as well. It can be a solid idea. Hopefully your theme becomes the subject of "Best Joomla Themes" articles. If such is the case, your theme can generate a lot of usage and links. On the other hand, if you just kick out an average theme you wont likely see much benefit.
-
Hi Vahe,
Thank you for the repsonse. Do you have any references on what a good quality theme site may be?
Thank you,
Pete
-
Pete,
If other people are using it, it means they are crediting your work. Just make sure to promote your themes on authority design sites rather than distributing to dozens of lower quality sites.
Same things goes for infographics and a link building strategy.
Thanks,
Vahe
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
-
I am looking for my "Flywheel" that can help me scale link building
I am looking to scale our link building efforts to create better inner link opportunities, according to the "flywheel" method by Rand, I need to find something that is "evergreen" and creative, What are some of the coolest campaigns you guys have seen?
Whiteboard Friday | | uBreakiFix1 -
Internal linking: Global Nav Bar obscuring link authority?
I was watching Rand's whiteboard on how links in the headers/footers can impact SEO: moz.com/blog/links-headers-footers-navigation-impact-seo If I understood correctly: 1) Google will use the first link in the html that it sees for a given page. Additional links will not be considered for passing weight. 2) Text links in body (carry more weight than) > image links > nav links > footer links If we want to use a global nav bar, is there a simple solution for not obscuring the links in the body content? (It seems very awkward to load the header nav last (and bring it up via css after the page loads), and this also goes against Google wanting people to load above-the-fold content quickly.) If I internally link to a page that was not important enough to get a spot in the global nav, but I include this link in the body as a text link (for example, an accessory specific to that item), is this internal link really getting more weight in Google's eyes because it wasn't in the nav? This seems strange to me. Thanks!
Whiteboard Friday | | HalfPriceBanners0 -
Link building webinars
Hello, I'm doing link building for an ecommerce site using 100 articles as content for link building Which pro webinars and videos should I watch, and is there anything out of date in the ones you list? Thanks!
Whiteboard Friday | | BobGW0 -
Will the link back to my site be worth building them one for free?
To clarify, I am in the running to be awarded a project by a college in my area. They want to pay NOTHING for me to have my designers and developers build a site for them. If I don't want it several other companies will do it (or so they say). This site will be used to promote an event that is held annually in different major cities around the world. (online registration, pay online, etc) The weird part to me is the governing body of this event has the hosting city build their own website and promote the event on their own so every year they reinvent the wheel with a whole new website (not smart I know). **Is this worth it for me? ** The attendees will be almost exclusively from colleges and all have edu. websites and emails they will be using to register. There will be about 1,000 attendees I do get a link giving my company credit for building the site at the bottom of every page BUT..... I realize any love my site gets from the search engines will be next to nothing, right? (its a BRAND new domain and by the time it start getting any recognition the event will be over and it will be abandoned plus it will be watered down bcs they can tell its a site I built). Is it possible that when one of the attendees tweets or links to the page my site could get a little love? If I impress my contact that is sending me this 'business' I know it will turn into more paying work.............. **Thoughts? Opinion? Is there a silver lining i'm missing? Is this a dumb move? ** Thank you for your time and any response! Matthew
Whiteboard Friday | | Mrupp440 -
Unnatural links
Realizing that there are several links pointing to my domain, and most of them I do not recognize, who seem to have been made by a competitor in order to hurt me in Google, how should I to proceed?
Whiteboard Friday | | soulmktpro0 -
Some questions on Multilingual sites with domain strategy
hi seomoz addicted, i need your help.... did you see the webinar last friday? i totally agree with randfish,
Whiteboard Friday | | guidoboem
especially when he talks about redirection; To create my multilanguage site i inserted a php redirection on my site homepage that redirects visitors to the right domains. everything it was working fine when i realized that googlebot was no more able to index both sites becouse it was redirected only to one.... i think that i'll create an home page where visitor could select their language and then by setting a cookie that redirects only the returning visitors ... what do you think? I've just one doubt, shall i put this home page on both domain, and what will be the new url adress of my current home page? How the new home page have to look like ( in terms of seo )? i mean there will be only an image and two links for the .com and .it domain, isnn't it? and how to put the cookie for returning visitors? hope to have been clear thanks,
Guido0 -
External Linking and SEO strategy
I run a business where we offer music lessons in student's homes throughout a local area. We currently rank for phrases like piano lessons + city, or voice lessons + city because we have a page specifically made for each keyword + city combination. The result is a very spammy looking site. I'm afraid that eventually this duplicate content will be penalized especially when we move into hundreds of cities throughout the US. With that in mind, I came up with a system that would give each page original content specific to the keyword + city. Whenever we hire a new teacher the teacher must fill out a short teaching philosophy which will be displayed next to their picture on pages where they can teach. I go through the teaching philosophy and add a keyword or two for search engines as well. For example someone who can teach piano lessons in Los Angeles would appear on the piano lessons in Los Angeles page. This way I have some more original content. I am also going to systematically ask for testimonials from all of our customers which will then be displayed on the respective pages as well. Therefore the more teachers and students we get, the more content we have available on our site. With that said, I'm still trying to think of ways to make a better user experience with more specific content on each page. Recently I was looking through whiteboard Fridays and found this video: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/external-linking-good-for-seo-whiteboard-friday I thought it may be a good idea if I went out and found perhaps local sheet music stores and added them to my database. Then I would link out to them on specific pages, saying "this is where you can go to buy sheet music" or "buy a trumpet here". It would be a lot more elegant than that, but hopefully you get the idea. My entire site is database driven so as soon as I put the new stores information in the database it could show up on the instrument/city pages within 10 miles of the store, or something like that. I'm posting this for opinions. Is this a good strategy? Some of my worries are that these other businesses almost all provide lessons in their store, so they would be direct competitors. I also really don't want to detract from what I'm selling, which are lessons. I'm worried about conversion rates mostly. The positives to the approach though may be that I can get some good linking to these individual pages from these stores (if they'll link to a competitor), which is something that would be very difficult to do for these deep instrument+city pages. Also I'm thinking if I included the stores physical address then perhaps search engines would be more encouraged that the instrument+city page actually represents a local service. Any ideas and thoughts are greatly appreciated!
Whiteboard Friday | | BrianJenkins1 -
How would you Oustsource Link Building if your budget is $200?
Hi, We all know that Link building is a tough job which requires persistent effort , and for a content creator it takes focus away from his job , which is "creating content". So content producers resort to "outsourcing" their link building. Now, unlike business/ enterprise , professional SEO's cost a fortune and beyond reach of an upcoming content creator. So he/she resorts to cheaper link building mediums like Forum Posts , Blog Comments , Article submissions , automate bookmarking site submissions etc. All the above software relatively do not cost much ($50-$100) BUT create links which do not have much value and hence not desirable. ============ My question is - ============= How can a content producer (like me) with a budget of meager $200 spend his money to get "most value" out of his link building activities
Whiteboard Friday | | krishru0