When asking for links, what are good incentives to offer?
-
New to SEO and want to stay clean,
What are white hat incentives you can offer in exchange for links?
Giveaway for their readers? Give them helpful advice? Record video of me drinking a gallon of milk within 5 minutes?
-
You could write a positive article about them or provide them with a testimonial that they can add to their site.
-
I'm sure you've read this as much as I have Brett, but a top 10 list is a good way to spend a brain-dead writing day.
Top Ten Prizes for Hole In Ones or 10 Worst Prizes Ever Used for Hole In Ones
or
10 Reasons Why I Shouldn't Have Ate That Burrito Before the Back 9
-
I prefer writing a short blog for a link. They can either post it in their blog or your own. We all know sometimes coming with ideas for blogs for your own site is very tedious.
-
I second that idea. Guaranteed re-tweet on that video.
-
Exactly! Things like cheap wine, cigars etc are all good ways.
-
Cheap wine?
-
Do it! Do it!
-
I've never tried it. But that gallon of milk sitting in my fridge looks rather tempting right about now
-
I would link to that as well. Its gross but awesome!
-
Back to the milk thing:
If you make it funny it could be a really good link bait scheme!
Create a separate website all about doing the challenge, generating tons of links*, and then just 301 it into your main website when the fad is over!
*Not exactly sure what kind of links you would get from puking on camera...
-
The best incentive you could possibly offer is great content. Something that truly benefits their readers/visitors. But the non-utopian answer would be what Shannon said - free random offline item that isn't really e-traceable and is inexpensive.
On a side note, I may give you a link for the gallon of milk thing... just saying...
-
Anything that is OFF internet to get links is usually a good way to go. Send them paint and tell them to make a painting and to tell there users about it and you. People love to get messy with paint
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
-
Rank drop after link reclamation
Link reclamation is good activity interms of technical SEO and UX. But I noticed couple of times rank drop post the link reclamation activity. Why does this happen? What might be the cause? Beside redirecting to the most relevant page in contest to the source page content; anything else we must be looking into?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Link building - BBB, high quality associations and also botw.org
Hello, We would like to gain some quality links to compete with the competition. We already have about 70 backlinks. We are an eCommerce site. We are thinking of adding the following links: BBB online 2 high quality PR5 associations in our niche (one is $500 and the other is $200) A couple of less expensive but still quality partner listings, probably in the $40-100 range botw.org For current and future Google standards, do you think these will improve things? Do you see anything wrong with adding these? We want a clean link profile for as far into the future as possible. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Is Inter-linking websites together good or bad for SEO?
I know of a website that inter-links a handful of websites together (ex- coloring.ws interlinks to a handful of other sites, including dltk-kids.com, and others). Is this negative for SEO? I was thinking about creating a few related sites and inter-linking all of them together, since they will all be relevant to each other. Any thoughts would be great!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
People buying links to their profiles on my site
As we have a major Penguin update looming in the background, I am looking for expert advice on how to deal with professionals buying into link programs whether they are doing it deliberately or not. Our site provides detailed profile information on hundreds of 1000's of professionals and some professionals apparently believed that buying into link program will lift their profile in the SERPS. About 10 professionals have paid shady link building companies to buy links to their profiles on our site. The biggest offender bought over 1,500 links to his profile. Aside from adding the known toxic links to our disavow file, what else can we do to avoid any link penalties? I can think of three distinct options and would love to hear feedback especially based on actual experience. Option 1. 404 the existing profile - "http://www.anysite.com/jones_smith" and create a new URL "http://www.anysite.com/jones_smith_1". Option 2. Keep the existing URL and fully rely on the disavow file. Contact the professionals and kindly ask them to stop buying links and to contact their link building companies to remove the links. Any other ideas?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | irvingw0 -
Is Guest Blogging the Next Link Buying
I like the guest blogging idea for two reasons. One, it builds links, and two, it allows me to add content to a lot of blogs that are really interested in growing a lot of good content. But I often read articles that give credit to another article, that give credit to another article. I have been offered plenty of documents for client blogs, but I am worried that at some point in the future Google will decide all this guest blogging is similar to link trading and selling. What does everyone else think of guest blogging?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HandsomeWeb1 -
Link Building using Badges
In light of penguin update, is link building using badges(like "I love SEOMOZ" badge) still considered a white hat tactic? I have read old posts on SEOMOZ blog about this topic and wondering if this method is still effective. Look forward to feedback from MOZers.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Amjath0 -
Do bad links "hurt" your ranking or just not add any value
Do bad links "hurt" your ranking or just not add any value. By this I mean, if you do have links from link farms and bad neighbourhoods, would it effectively pull you down in search engine rankings. Or is it more that it's just a waste of time to get these links, as it adds no value to your ranking. Are google saying avoid them because it will not have a positive effect, or avoid them becuase it will have a negative effect. I am under the opinion that it will not harm, but it will not help either. I think this because at the end of the day you are not 100% in control of your inbound links, any bad site could add you and if a competitor, god forbid, wanted to play some black hat games, couldn't they just add you to thousands of bad sites to pull your ranking down? Interested to hear your opinions on the matter, or any "facts" if they are out there.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | esendex0 -
Can't figure out how my competitor has so many links
I suspect something possibly black-hat is going on with the amount of inbound links for www.pacificlifestylehomes.com ( http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.pacificlifestylehomes.com ) mainly because they have such a large volume of links (for my industry) with their exact targeted keyword. Can anyone help clear this up for me?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | theChris0