Tonight I made an online purchase at a store called Widgetco.com (no, I'm not kidding, and I'm not using "widget" as an example, the site is actually www.widgetco.com). Sixty seconds later, this email shows up in my inbox:
When I read the second-to-last line of the message, I realized that SEOmoz needs a "headsmacking tips" series on the blog, and that this was a perfect candidate. It's unreal that in all the link building tips, all the blog posts and Whiteboard Fridays, not once have I brought up what a terrific idea it is to leverage your customers for link building.
Why Should I Have My Customers Build Links For Me?
- They already like you
- They have a relationship with you, so the link request is more like "If you liked our barbershop, please refer your friend."
- Google loves these kinds of links - in their greatest dreams, the Internet, through links, is a realistic model of the relationships between people, companies and organizations. Links like these get them one step closer to that fantasy.
- Your customers are usually relevant to you, and it's likely that if they link, the post they use or the content they link from will have the right kind of relationship with your niche.
- It's scalable - the more customers you get, the more you can ping them with link requests and the more links you'll receive (again, bolstering Google's desire to show the most popular and successful businesses on top of the results).
But, There's Downsides, Right?
Maybe one - most of your customers probably won't do it, and many of them who might don't even have sites/pages where they could link (unless you provide website services). Of course, compared to a spammy link request email campaign, this is infinitely more effective.
How Do I Do It?
Just like WidgetCo did! Include a brief request in the order confirmation or shipment confirmation email. You might even consider following up with the customer and making sure everything was OK a day or two after the shipment arrived (assuming you're doing shipment tracking), and requesting the link then, when they're probably feeling most generous towards you.
If customers have a good experience and they want to share it, encouraging them with a widget, a badge,or even just a simple link request is not going to hurt your relationship, and it's going to bring you a lot more customers - both through search (thanks to all those juicy links) and through direct referral traffic.
Oh. So I Should Really Get On That, Huh?
Yep.
Why Haven't You Told Us This Before?
Oh what, I can't make a mistake sometimes? Just cause you're in bold doesn't mean you're all that. I bet Aaron Wall's got a post on it somewhere (can't seem to find it right now but I'm sure it's somewhere), why don't you go read his blog? Oh, what's that, you already do? Well good. Cause it's a really good blog.
Sorry - got a little upset there. I'm good now, and I'll almost certainly post some more Headsmacking tips in the future :)
Earlier this month, I received a confirmation email of one of my purchases, and there was a similar offer to this one.
They took it one step further, however, and added something like:
"If you have a blog or website, please consider linking to us. If you do,reply to this email and let us know, and we'll credit your account a portion of this purchase".
Smart. Very smart indeed. After you've just paid for something, you're very receptive to the idea of getting some of that hard-earned cash back...
The "we'll credit your account" idea is terrific - very, very smart stuff.
(postscript 8 years later - this type of thing can cause Google to penalize you nowadays, and I'd generally recommend against direct "links for discounts/payments/etc" types of models).
What, like this?
I tend to think actually having it on your site is pretty stupid, or at least rather crude.
Hat tip to Patrick for this one.
@ciaran - Geez. That one's downright obnoxious.
In fairness that one is pretty heavy handed. You need to tease the links out of people, as one might tickle a trout from a stream...
You need to tease the links out of people, as one might tickle a trout from a stream... Ha! That's the greatest line I've heard all day. Thumbs up.
"Trout" - "Line" ;-)
@ Darren - why thank you sir.
May the fish puns long continue!
In case I was misconstrued, and it appears I was - I was agreeing with Ciaran. I found the implementation of the tactic he linked to, rather crude.
They certainly don't believe that PageRank is logarithmic. Based on a factor of 6, that £15.00 for a PR1 should be around £25,194,240 for a PR9. I somehow don't think they'll be tweaking their scale quite that much...
Stupid????
Due to the wonder of Google Analytics, I have caught up with your discussion of my site, Turfandstuff a top UK landscape Garden and School supplier.
This technique was a trial, and has proved moderately successful.
The most common request unfortunately is to place the reviews within hidden facebook pages.
A huge issue with all this I think is that within the "real" offline world, there are actually very few blogs. Most of our customers are of the silver generation and still struggle with the basics of buying online, let alone anything else.
We have moved to system of targeting our emails to those that have their own websites. Normally identifiable from their email address.
I am of the opinion, through my personal experience, that content be it articles on or off site, beats links in everything except the most competitive markets.
The "long tail" is the easiest source of traffic.
Anyway, cheers for now
Angus
The guys on your first link have got wise, and created a clever little repartee. Or have I missed something!
Now that is cheesy
I am very late to post comment on this blog post. In 2011: I suppose to design eCommerce portal. Old is always gold. I will try this method to get some positive signals. I am going to read entire series of Headsmacking.
Isn't that effectively 'buying links'?
I'm sure it would be seen as editorial choice. Anyone adding a link, off the back of a purchase from you, knows your product and knows whether it is worth supporting further.
i'm with dudibob.
seems like buying links.
With regards to crediting money to the customers account for the link, that clearly is buying links. But we all have our own viewpoints on when/if thats OK.Personally, I think its a fine idea. The customer would be promoting a product they already purchased. I think the main problem people have with paid links is that the linker is endorsing a product they would not actually recommend, which would not be the case in this scenario.
I don't think it's buying links as long as there aren't any requirements for the link. If it's just like "get 5% back if you link to us", thats fine....that's just encouraging word of mouth.
But once you start saying "the link must be do follow and have this as the anchor text within a 250 word post" etc, then that is buying links...it's no longer simply encouraging word of mouth, but search manipulation.
I wholeheartedly agree. I don't feel like that would be buying links. The company is choosing to say thank you with a discount if the customer links to their page, and only if the customer claims the reward. Maybe that's a fine line, but in my mind it seems really clear.
I like the idea of playing on the customers 'emotions' for lack of a better term here. IF they really are satisfied they will want to support your business. Their loyalty will play out to your benefit. Many of them won't, or are unable to do so, however, it's a pretty easy way to ask a lot of people. Even if only a few said yes and followed through on it, I would think this is a good use of resources. It's just web word-of-mouth.
Further to my above post, I agree with a lot of what you said here, plus, lets talk about conversions. How confident of our quality must we be to offer this IN ADVANCE of delivery, its like another slant on the "guarantee" that we know is essential.
I take on board the paying for links argument, but it is more paying for review isn't it?
How do you all view my "free chrstmas tree for a review" I sent to www.blagman.co.uk
Cheers
Angus
I think it is a matter of semantics. While I whole heartedly don't agree with 'buying links' I would have to agree with george on this one. In this case the purchaser obviously believes in the product that is has purchased.
I would consider this present case as being more along the lines of a 'paid endorsement' rather than buying links. The consumer believes in the product and therefore is encouraging others to purchase it.
Sure seems like a paid link to me. And I think it's great. Let's ask Michael Gray :-)
A voice of reason!
Worried about bad karma backlinks? Don't worry - rely on instinct with a splash of algorithm.
Great series Rand, thanks.
Great idea. First off - It worked with you. They got two links from a highly rated blog and a writeup on top of it. So - you never know when you'll hit pay dirt.
I would like to propose something like this:
Dear Rand Fiskin,
...
We appreciate your business!
If you love the product and happen to have a website or a blog, please consider dropping a link to our site. It helps us spread the word, and to show our appreciation for your support, you'll receive <insert promotion here> (i.e. 10% off, free shipping, etc,), on your next purchase. Just shoot us an email that you've linked to us and we'll note it on your account!
To make it easy, here's a little snippet below that you can simply cut and paste somewhere on your site.
<a href="https://www.widgetco.com">wine corks</a> Thanks again for your order.
Thoughts?
That is a great little template that includes the all-important anchor text link and a copy/paste bit of code. Plus you could vary the anchor text every month to target different keywords.
Thumbs up!
I like it Sean, discounts are a great way to encourage repeat business. They key is to not sound too pushy about it (see Ciaran's post), the whole beauty of online shopping is that you don't have to put up with the hard sell, and you definitely don't want to spoil a perfect sale experience!
I think I feel some order confirmation amendments coming on...
I would make it product specific to what they bought and have the link go to a page other than the root domain (to boost deep links) - like a link to the product page itself:
href="https://www.widgetco.com/wine-corks.htm"
I feel that whenever you ask for a link like this, you should ask for a deep link.
This is pretty much what I'm doing. On the shipping confirmation e-mail we use a database call to produce the html the customer can use to 1. Show off an image of what he/she bought (every one likes to show off what they've bought right?) and importantly 2. Has the right anchor text and link right back to the product page.
No point in having links back to the homepage when a deeplink is more relevant for 1. the customer and of course 2. Search Engines.
To make sure we keep the juice flowing, if we stop selling a particular product, we don't wipe it from the database, we shift it to the archive, but maintain the products' URL so any juice it has carries on coming into the domain.
@Sean - That's just about a perfect approach. I'm doing it right now - since we we're already doing a follow up email asking for feedback and testimonials this is so simple to implement I really don't know why I didn't think of it myself.
Love it but I'd do it via a widget and auto sign them up for an affiliate program that gives them $ off their next order (or even cashback frankly). I'd spin it as a 'introduce us to your friends' and 'show off your pride' and layer it with some congratulatory and appreciation text.
Brent
That's exactly what I did (just now) offered a 10% refund on the current order. Instant (as instant as possible) gratification.
All great contributions. Thanks guys. That's the great thing about being part of a community of really smart people.
Hey Sean,
I really like this option as well (these ideas keep going a long way!!). It adds a little touch of personal attention when addressing the client in a very subtle way - yet offers them a "discount" to come back and buy again! - which helps and goes a long way with clients in the online "purchasing world"..
Great idea.. mind if I borrow it :) haha...
Oooh...I like this idea. Could potentially work with the handwritten note as well from above. Not as easy to copy and paste from a handwritten note though :P
Umm - this was one of the strategies I was going to include my link building on a shoestring budget! Lol. Well I can still include it.
But yep - its a great strategy, and to be honest one of my cleisnt gained 50 odd links with two emails... For a small business with no budget - it works!!!
Hey let me know when that goes up Rishil, I'm currently on the 'We need links - what? Of course you can't have any money!' wagon, so doing it on the cheap has become my M.O. of late...
Everyone break out your SEO Glossary and put in a new entry. Ready?
Link Re-Bait.
You know the real beauty of this is that it applies specifically to the e-commerce business sector. It's usually very hard to get organic links to an e-commerce site, and every little bit really does help.
Affiliate program, Affiliate program, Affiliate program . . . but remember to 301 redirect the inbounds to wipe out the tracking code and don't make the parameter 'affiliate' 'partner' or anything that may flag Googlebot that it's an affiliate link.
Affiliate links still work and work well. A link from Fatwallet, Techbargains, DealNews, XPBargains, and others is still very powerful!
Brent
Don't most affiliates 302 redirect their links anyway, cutting off any potential juice? I'm pretty sure that LinkShare and COmmision Junction do, and that FatWallet uses CJ ... ??
What's the status on this? Would love to know. I don't use affiliate programmes for link juice atm, but I want to, and need to, so I want to make sure I'm doing it well.
Thanks Rand for the nice post.
David thanks to you for mentioning the importance of it for e-commerce sites.
I will try to do some head smacking and use all the ideas given here for some good link building.
That's an excellent point - it can really help you build links to the non-loved areas of the net.
Nice tip Rand - headsmacking tips - what a cool idea!
Of course there's lots of extensions of this premise, i.e. utilsing your existing customers for links. Putting badges and widgets on your thankyou pages is another cool one
Widgets are a much smarter and exciting approach.
"Show off your OneCall.com pride by posting this badge on your Facebook, MySpace, blog, or personal web site. PLUS . . . you'll receive 5% cashback for every purchase your friends make via your badge (Terms). It's our way of saying thank you for introducing us to your friends."
;-)
I agree, a widget can add value to yor customer by keeping them up to date on your newest products.
Much more exciting.
Something else which I implemented (and I learned from Scott Hendison) is to put in your email template the Feedburner Widget that shows the last 5 blog posts & an invitation to subscribe to your RSS feed.
This would be an excellent way to compliment your link request.
I can see the headlines now...
Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz Takes Blow to Head!:)
--dlp
This same technique can work well for soliciting testimonials, comments and product reviews too.
Also, if you have a loyal customer base, consider dropping a short explanation about linking to your site or to their favourite product on your site in your FAQ section under a 'How Can I Help' or something along those lines. You may have some customers eager to help promote your business and it's easy to outline this kind of information for them.
In honour of you awesome idea Rand. I dedicate this video of Whitney Houston from the bodyguard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUoEil40qZA
Hm. What I have now on our tech news site for first-time commenters is an email that thanks them for their comment and an invite (link) to subscribe to the RSS feed --> for return visits.
I'm not sure I can add in a request for a link on top of that -- I feel it's too much. Most lot of them have personal blogs anyway since the reader profile is techie. Should I replace the subscribe to RSS feed with a request for link?
That is a good point, you don't want to bombard people with requests.
Could you possibly send another email after someone has made, say 5 comments, requesting a link? Admittedly it will be a lot less people but you know they are fans of your site and you might get quite a good success rate...
Also when your audience are techies and bloggers chances are they understand the value of an editorial link so wont be too keen to share that until you've built up a relationship with them.
Thanks @jaamit; that's a helpful way of going at it. I guess I'll try that; will have to do it manually for now until my developer partners can squeeze in time to make me a plugin. Would be really useful if it were automated since most of my niche sites are on Wordpress.
This is where badges can be useful.
Great post and great comments. It's tough to find good link building tips for e-commerce sites so this post was very helpful.
Just checking out widgetco.com - why do they have a digg button on their main page? That's not going to help too much. Also, their newsletter sign-up form does not work.
nice post! To answer your question Nicc - I would say "Yes" to it being a paid link if you were offering a coupon code on the next order. You are essentially buying the link for a price....Is this as bad as the footer paid links - "no".
Up for comment: This is what I'm going to use for one of my clients
"Thank for purchasing from ForSports, don't forget to bookmark our site, www.example.com, so you can see our new updates and sales. If you happen to have a website or a blog feel free to link to us at www.example.com, every link helps us and we can continue to bring you quality products and great prices!"
*used fake address so it doesn't look like I'm trying sneak in a promotion*
better yet... ask them to go to yelp and write a review...
=)
Perfect idea...!! wow... so easy... love it...
Good ideas as usual. We have the luxury of getting most of our clients to link back to us because we also provide their web sites. But it's amazing how people forget to just ask your clients for something and they usually are ok with it.
Last month I had to rent a limo for my little brother's bachelor party. The limo service was actually offering pretty decent discounts for a wide variety of SEO activities. You'd get discounts for bookmarking the limo site, blogging about it, linking to it, etc. Unfortunately you couldn't stack the discounts, or I would have done them all to make that company cheaper than the one I ended up using. Still an interesting idea though.
I wish more businesses did that (especially if you could stack the discounts) - talk about savings/deals for bloggers and SEOs!
I've never bought a widget before. What does one do with a widget?
I think I agree with IamJustinM on this one. It does feel a little manipulative to send out a message like this before the product has been received. I would be much more tempted to send out something with a followup email once the product is actually in there hands.
"If customers have a good experience and they want to share it, encouraging them with a widget, a badge or even just a simple link request . . ."
Given the context did anyone else find this funny?
Rand, First, great post!!! I think this is great to get the "link juice flowing" and the idea of working your clientele on another level beyond just “link practices” makes it that much more interesting.
For my companies, I managed to do something similar to this (by accident) - but before I knew it, we had exchanged phone #’s, made a few calls and spoke in meetings to somehow creatively - talked even doing business together collaboratively.
Turned out they owned businesses in the same lines as us in Reservations, Real Estate and Property Management, just in Colorado, next to us in Jackson Hole.
It amazed me how in tune these owners were and willing to open up the doors to building business together. We now have an office for Aspen, Colorado and our business’s are doing great after only 2 years.
I tell you… this type of information is golden to anyone who can apply it to their business model.
The possibilities are endless….. Thanks again,
Rob
Nice one. I have been considering starting a 'link to us' section on my site. With the amount of emails going out daily, advertising the 'link to us' section in there would be awesome.
Thanks randfish, you're the greatest! [Insert cheezy grin and double thumbs up here]
Great post, but I smacked my head so hard I forgot what I was going to say.
Actually though, this is sort of like the sale after the sale, with a twist. Very cool idea.
That's a great idea - I can't believe it hasn't been talked about before. Sometimes good ideas are just too obvious...
In terms of it being intrusive, I think it all depends on how it is phrased. Widget co's request is cute and charming, a single line at the bottom of a booking email. Exactly the right way to do it.
This was a great post. June of last year too. Thats one of the things I love about this website.
I can read a new blog post such as this one here: https://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-things-relaunch-your-website
Where there is a link to this blog post that I certainly didn't come across in my daily commings and goings here. Then I find myself on a little "trip" finding great tips here and there, simply by jumping from post to post.
Thanks for this.
Good idea's and what you can do is changing the snippet every week/month so you can get different anchortexts.
Another goodie here is to offer them your affiliate program. If they're willing to link to you than they might be interested in making some extra cash:o
I can't believe no users or staff on SEOmoz thought of this! Great information and very valuable and oh so simple. I presented the idea to my boss and he loved it, thank you again Seomoz!
I pitched my text blurb above to my bosses and they thought it was a good idea too. I also added a note about favoriting/bookmarking our site. :-)
Thanks for the great and simple idea! Just added it to my personal blog newsletter. Surely won't hurt at all in the worst-case scenario. =)
I'll think of something to my organization (news/media). Hope it gets approved!
Keep up the good work! Kudos from Brazil! =)
This is a very interesting post, I cannot believe I have never thought to make customers try to get reciprocal link when placing orders. This would cut down on a lot of wasted SEO time trying to dedicate someone to try to find reciprocal links on their own. Fabulous writing I cannot wait to read more posts from this nicely written blog!
We get an obscene number of glowing testimonials for service (and more worringly, sometimes for the usability of our site - our redesign can't go live soon enough).
Right, this went live in our processed order text this morning:
If you really like what we do, please feel free to link to us from your website, we will send you a £5.00 credit for your next order.
Wish me luck!
It would be really great to hear how you get on - if you're willing to share :)
Oh, absolutely. As long as I can avoid Matt Cutts' beard of retribution.
I think it's pretty much regarded as fair practice - but if you're worried you could PM me?
I was out of town and apparently out of touch, as soon as I saw this post I went to the execs and said, we gotta get on this.... they chuckled and said review our latest emails. Bummer for me I haven't felt that behind in a long time.
1. This is hilarious: "Just cause you're in bold doesn't mean you're all that."
2. I searched for "headsmacking" after reading the recent "headsmacking... #17". It seems that giving a # for a regular series is an effective way of communicating, "hey, there is probably older content you would like too".
Thanks!
Really great tip. I can't believe I have never thought this before.
Great tip and very simple. Will be recommending it where appropriate.
This is a great head smacking tip. I've just included it into my email signature.
I think it would work well to use different requests at different times:
Signature = polite please link request
Order confirmation = polite please link request including snippet
etc
While this idea is so easy & simple and to me sounds like it doesn't have any potential negative why do I constantly have hard times trying to get the big guys "boss man" of clients to bite off? Any good stories or examples where you got through to an exec.
Thanks,
just smacked my own head! great tip!
Awesome idea! Will be using this with out a doubt!
wow, what a simple but brilliant idea.
We haven't been requesting links directly from our customers but one of our customers took it upon himself to setup a link to us for his own convenience. Guess he doesn't like bookmarks. It is from an 'admin' type page on his site that he uses to jump to all the services he uses. He uses it to login to our service up to 400 times a month. While it is wonderful that he is such a loyal customer and loves our service, I only viewed it as messing up my referrer stats. The site that is linking to us is not a big high value domain. What is google going to think of this one? Does it help, hurt or is it neutral?
I used to work for a company who offered discounted rates to those sites that linked to them, amd it was a very effective way of generating links and definitely assisted them in their SEO efforts.
Pure genius in its simplicity,
1. thanks, it's on its way
2. we value you and want your feedback. (You can actually reply to the email and don't have to find a different email address at the bottom, another smart move)
3. please link is great but what I love is this - "every link helps"
very good idea and easy to implement. thanks for sharing that one Rand!
Pretty good tip. Thanks!
Widgetco.com looks very well optimized (metatags, proper urls...). Are they an SEOmoz client? Just curious.
Nope - we always disclose if we mention a client :)
Yep. It's so easy to gloss over the obvious techniques. I try to read some sales help books or J.C. Levinson's guerilla marketing stuff every couple months.
Guy Kawasaki does the same thing at the end of his presentations too. If you never ask, you'll never get it. What's the harm!?
Great post!
Hmm, I thought it was a little intrusive.
I see what you are saying, however I think once a purchase is made, the customer has already endorsed your site. If your site is user focused they will mosy likely have had an easy, pleasurable experience purchasing from you, and so (you would hope) have left with the warm fuzzy feeling of the satisfied consumer.
If you send out follow up emails as well, you will have already planted the seed in the customer's mind, and if they indeed felt it was a bit intrusive, once your goods have shipped you can give them a gentle nudge to link!
All you're doing is capitalising on that moment of shopping extasy by saying 'Hey, share the love, link to us'. Given that varying anchor text on links to your site will help you by making them look more natural in the eyes of Google (I think I read a post where this was mentioned on Slightly Shady, which was related to spam links but it is also applicable from a white hat perspective - please link if you know which one), this could be a long game winner.
I personally don't think it's intrusive. However what would you think about this method?
Instead of sending the link request in the email after purchase, how about putting a 'hand written' thank you note in with the product itself.
A short 'personal' note/card thanking them and explaining every link counts.
I think emails that are sent after an order is confirmed are not often read thoroughly as the client believes they already know what it says.
However an unexpected thank you, at a time when they have just opened the product may be read an understood more as well as give good feelings about you, themselves and your product.
There are obvious downsides - you are not catching them at their computer. They may be so excited to use/play with the product that they forget about it and its an added cost.
But i'd love to experiment with both methods and see which converts better
I feel similarly. When I read the intro I thought that head-smacking-tip meant like, "oh man how could they do that".
But when it comes down to it, its a very very simple non-spammy request. And they did just buy your product...
It's just liek any other referral program ... but this has more benefits, not just sales. These people don't HAVE to do it.
A nice way (a bit less "link buying-like) could be to offer up a discount coupon on the next purchase.... as opposed to just a rebate on this purchase just made.
Agreed. Although I don't think the aforementioned link requests are actually link "buying", they do come relatively close to the line.
On a similar note, we're about to send out a link to a 45 minute free MP3 on dealing with nerves when you're making presentations. All we're going to ask in return is a link - it's not buying a link as such, just giving something away and then asking for one.
There won't be a great take-up, I suspect, but it can't hurt! We won't be monitoring/trying to enforce this either as it's predominantly a good-will thing.
S
PS: PM me if you want a copy of the MP3, anyone! :)
Thanks for sharing !! Great find !!
Whew, I was out all day with my kids so I didn't see this right away. Great discussion. As an e-commerce site owner, I don't know if I would use this tactic...seems a little needy? Maybe I would have at first, when I was trying to get a few links, but then discontinued it.
I'm just trying to think of how I'd respond if I got an email confirmation like the one Rand received. I'm always of the mind that people who link will link to you anyway, and people who don't won't even if you ask. Is that a wrong assumption to make?
Great post Rand! Thanks for sharing.
As noted many times before this comment, truly a great idea--if not frustratingly obvious. But is it just me, or is this brilliant company not redirecting any links that may go to, say, widgetco.com w/o the leading www? Surely nobody here would be victim of that same oversight.
wow. yeah. typing in widegetco.com goes to a page not found for me. also their footer links are all broken so you can't find the contact us, warranty, privacy policy, etc....
anyway, great tip rand. my head's a little sore from smacking it now.
I hate that .. when organisations (the biggest offenders I see appear to be the gov.uk sites) don't do their redirects properly.
I always just type the root domain, example.com. But I choose www.example.com to be canonical - mainly because in print it's best to use the www. address as it's easy to pick out as a web address, for .com's this isn't as important as for .org or .net, IMO.
Redirect root domain to www. subdomain if you want to know more, seems a bit OT to post here.
I think it's a very clever idea; but what do I know, I'm new at this.
Am I allowed to add my site?
Kidzbuzz at buzzingkidsworld.com
Very awesome idea. Don't know why I never thought about that, but I will be implementing it ASAP.
--
xoxo
Eclectica
https://eclecticaclothing.com - Fashion For The Terminally Hip
Essentially - that constitutes as buying links, correct? I'm new to SEO, but that seems a little suspect to me.
Money in exchange for a link constitutes buying links. Asking for a link from a business contact is nothing more than requesting to be vouched for. Nothing suspect there.
This is only a good idea IMHO if the customer buying the product has a website with similar things in it. If I had a website about ‘widgets’, I could link to that website.
Else I (the customer) would have to use ‘nofollow’ (how much would that help the website where I bought my product?), without using ‘nofollow’ and linking out to an unrelevant website I risk of getting my website down ranked.
My 2 cents.
Yeah nice tip Rand, But I doubt if such links will provide any ranking boost other than link juice flow and referral traffic as links from customers will help only if the domain name contains a targeted keyword. The chances are that most people will link to you only using your domain name and if it doesn't have a keyword in it... I dont think there will be much of a ranking boost. Also, we can't ask customers to use a particular anchor text while linking as they might not know (or not even want to know) what's an anchor text and why does every link count?
But one thing is for sure... only customers can be your best link partners :) Useful post Rand.. Thanks!
Correct me if I'm wrong here,but:
Say you've sold someone a golden pen, that customer could link to you from their blog, rather than website, espousing the virtues of your company/website in a lengthy post with many mentions of pens, golden pens, and how great you are - this content will still be viewed positively (by Google at least) and potentially contribute to your site's PR even if it doesn't do much for your ranking.
Which is what you might call a fringe benefit I suppose...
Yes Stuart, I agree to you whole heartedly. I am only saying that this tactic might not provide so much of direct Search Engine Ranking benefit but it will certainly boost the brand presence, link juice flow and referral traffic. Yes if a customer gets so excited about the prodcut that he decides to write a whole post about it on his blog while linking to you, yes, it will surely give a big time boost to the Search Engine rankings too.
I'm not sure what part of boosting link juice won't help your search engine rankings?!!
Tom, my only concern is how do we specify the anchor text to the customer if the domain doesn't has an anchor text to make maximum out of the widget bait.
Sure, our ability to specifiy anchor text is limited (though you make a good suggestion of having the keyphrase in the domain) but to suggest that non-anchor-text-rich links don't help rankings is a bit far out!
Yes, I understand as even if a customer writes -
"I bought a nice golden pen from www.stationary.com"
will provide a rank boost to stationary.com for term golden pen. That ways, may be you are right (but only if search engines consider the surrounding text of an anchor text ) :)
Tom is trying to express that every link counts, even those with crappy anchor text...
Yeah, I understand justFred. I never said that these links don't count. I only meant that relevant anchor text will make the widget bait more effective. May be I just put that one wrong... 7 thumbs down :'(
A good way of controlling anchor text is making a 'link to us' page with HTML badges containing your targted keyword link. Better still, offer several badges with varied anchor text so your link profile doesn't look too uniform.
It also makes it easier for some people - you hold their hand through the process by providing the cut-and-paste code.
I've found this to be an effective technique of getting links from friendly sites where there are good offline relationships - especially those where the 'webmaster' isn't too clued up on anchor text links and might otherwise just use the URL or the dreaded "click here".
That is what I was driving at basically, I mean the real benefit of these links as Rand said, is that they are the kind that Google has wet dreams about; it's a natural, almost spontaneous link, with varied keyword targetted content (as the customer will mention the product and site they bought it from), which will have a direct impact on your rank an/or PR - forgive me if I'm missing something...
No dude. May be I was wrong. It will boost the rankings too.
No worries - just thought I might be missing something really obvious for a moment!
No, you were not. It was me :)
But I persist that a keyword in the domain name will help more then any thing to make widget bait more successful.