Free Content as a Linking Strategy
Ron Knowlton has written an article describing the benefits of submitting articles to sites (like this one) to get free links back to your sites. This is a great strategy to use for high trafficked sites. Even though I don’t have a submit page up on this site yet, feel free to submit any articles that you think the readers would find interesting. Now on to Ron’s article.
Free Content
One day I was surfing the internet and suddenly came upon one of my articles on someone else’s web site. This is not the first time this has happened, but it got me thinking. It was not long ago that I started writing articles and sending them out, but ever since then something almost magical has occurred. I’ve started to see a tremendous increase in traffic to my web site. And the reason for that is simple, really. My articles are finding their way on to heavily-trafficked web sites. And not just that, but think of the multiplication factor as the articles spread to even more web sites! The process is on-going.
I’m not saying this to brag. It’s just something that’s started happening lately that has me almost giddy with excitement. The truth is that a lot of my traffic is coming from these article. It hit me the other day as I was looking through my web site statistics that this was the best linking strategy for me.
Here’s the process and how it works:
- Send out articles that you’ve written.
- Then they are reprinted in newsletters or on web sites.
- People read the articles.
- Then they click on the link to your site at the end of the article.
- And suddenly you have traffic coming in.
And it’s all free advertising and I paid nothing for it. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m sure trading reciprocal links can work. But I didn’t have to trade for these links. My articles were added and the link to my site was automatic. I didn’t have to link back at all to get these great links.
Now, had I followed the normal procedure (the one nearly all of the internet marketing experts are recommending) I would:
- write a simple email to each webmaster of each site where I want a link back to my site.
- Offer a link in return from my site.
Chances are the webmasters at these sites either would:
- ignore my email, or
- turn me down flat, or
- send me a copy of their advertising rates.
What really are the chances of getting the kind of results I want from this method? Think about it – these webmasters are not in business to give traffic away to others. They’re in business to make money. And you make money by attracting targeted traffic to your web site and offering something these visitors really want or need. What advantage is it to you as a webmaster to give traffic away to a site that receives considerably less traffic than yours?
And that’s the magic of my articles, it completely turns this around. With my articles I give these webmasters something of value that they want and need, free content.
They can in turn use the articles to attract visitors to their sites (or as material in their newsletters providing valuable content for their readers). I, in turn, get what I really want, additional traffic to my web site, meaning more subscribers to my ezine and additional $$$ in my pocket.
That’s what I would call a win-win situation all the way around.
Ron Knowlton is a former journalist and the founding editor at Soaring Profits.
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POSTED IN: Web Tips
4 opinions for Free Content as a Linking Strategy
Derek
Oct 12, 2004 at 12:22 am
And at the same time, after clicking his link in interest from the helpful article, I immediately hit the back button because his site is so poorly designed, he immediately lost credibility in my mind, and looks like a cheap SEO scam artist. (Judging by the “design” of his site) The javascript pop-up, misleading banner ads, wild claims of “do X in less than 30 days”, “300% increase of X”, etc.
I’d argue that the click you (Ron) gained from syndicating this article actually has a negative effect for you, because you lost credibility from me clicking the link. Of course you could argue that it’s better to have bad publicity than no publicity at all I suppose…
Scrivs
Oct 12, 2004 at 1:21 am
It’s funny you mention that Derek because I have been thinking up an article concerning design for this site. As some of us in the design community will attest to most affiliate sites do not have the appeal that we are looking for and therefore can easily be considered trashy. However, if these people are making money then should we put aside our tastes in the name of bigger profits?
Do not answer that question here as this will be my next entry.
James
Oct 13, 2004 at 4:26 pm
I was going to answer it here–but I look forward to the entry, Scrivs.
Syndication is good for smaller articles. However, I suggest that larger articles–several page articles–should always be kept to a single website.
JC
Nov 24, 2004 at 2:17 am
“write a simple email to each webmaster of each site where I want a link back to my site.”
you’ve got to be kidding me. Those things don’t just get deleted, they get forwarded to the spam reporter. Between the various sites I run I get 10-20 of those a day that the spam blocker doesn’t already catch.
Now, if you ran a site on, say, (legitimate, legal, non-bs) techniques to maximize your CD returns, and linked to me because our rates are consistantly some of the best in the country, and asked me to look over your content and consider if it might benefit our customers to link to it, that I might consider, if it wasn’t worded in a way that looked like the hundreds of link request spams I get all the time.
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