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Does "widgetbait" work?

by eightbananas
4 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hello warriors,

Is creating a Wordpress widget/theme for the purpose of getting backlinks (i.e. widgetbait srategy) a good idea? Do such backlinks have any positive or adverse effect?
#widgetbait #work
  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Originally Posted by eightbananas View Post

    Hello warriors,

    Is creating a Wordpress widget/theme for the purpose of getting backlinks (i.e. widgetbait srategy) a good idea? Do such backlinks have any positive or adverse effect?

    There's an old thread on this SEO forum about that subject, I don't remember the thread title.

    Anyways,

    My advice is If your creating a theme for the links, only allow the link to show on a single page of the theme (no more than 1 link per theme/domain).

    Usually the Index page will have one of the highest PR across the entire backlink/theme domain.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    I'm not a moz fan, but read this: How WPMU.org Recovered From The Penguin Update | SEOmoz

    Remember what I said about a single link per backlink/theme/domain.



    [edit]
    Also don't stuff the backlink anchor-text with keywords, instead do this, point the links at an internal page (not your Index page) this way you can dump all the links anytime in the future If needed (algo. update).

    Example:
    • hxxp://mydomain.com/info/
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    • Profile picture of the author eightbananas
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      Remember what I said about a single link per backlink/theme/domain.
      Silly question (it's 3 am over here) but why is this important? I'm asking because in the case of a widget, the blog owner gets to control where it appears on their blog.

      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      point the links at an internal page (not your Index page) this way you can dump all the links anytime in the future If needed (algo. update)
      This is amazingly clever. Thanks!
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by eightbananas View Post

        Silly question (it's 3 am over here) but why is this important? I'm asking because in the case of a widget, the blog owner gets to control where it appears on their blog.
        If it's Wordpress/php code, you can still control which page the links show up on. You won't get 100% links for all widget installs, which most sites probably have a large number of PRn/a - PR0 pages, you wouldn't want those anyways (I doubt they would be relevant to your site).

        If it was me, I would allow the link to only show on the Index page, nothing else. If the widget isn't on the Index page, I would just take the loss (no big deal).

        The average Wordpress blog runs the same header/sidebar/footer site wide, so odds are you'll get that Index page link.

        Seriously, I would stay away from having 100K (or whatever number) irrelevant site-wide links pointing at my site (any site).
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