Widgets are an excellent way of building links but sometimes Google gives penalties to the most “successful” websites.
Former SEOmoz employee Matt Inman was able to build 500,000 links using widgets but because his methods were outside the acceptable widget link guidelines his sites were given penalties.
Most people seem to think there is some ambiguity about how Google handles widget links but really there isn’t. Matt Cutts has made it quite clear that some links are OK and others aren’t.
In this post about getting value from scrapers by adding links to the footer of your RSS feed Matt said it was OK as long as the anchor text wasn’t spammy. Basically that means that adding a link to your blog saying “Post from Blogstorm” is acceptable while adding a link saying “Post from Blogstorm search engine optimisation blog” might be deemed to be going overboard. My guess is that in most industries Google won’t be too concerned about this but if you have a blog about payday loans then Google might take action.
The same principle applies to widgets. If you use the name of your site or the name of your widget as the link then it’s not a problem. Really the link should go to the homepage of the widget rather than the homepage of the site. As soon as you start using keyword rich anchor text and linking to your homepage it’s not really surprising that Google gets upset.
This is OK:
My quiz widget
This isn’t OK:
Search engine
I don’t understand why people are getting confused by this? Google wants to rank the most useful sites at the top of their results. They don’t want to rank the site that has the most popular widgets. If you are going to make the effort to use widget bait or any other type of linkbait at least take the time to make it defensible.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Patrick,
As I’ve explained over at SEOmoz, the problem here arose as soon as Matt suggested that off-topic linkbait was a good thing to do.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/whitehat-seo-tips-for-bloggers/
As soon as Matt offers advice, people are going to follow it. Nuff said.
Find me on Twitter
I think the linkbait is fine, it’s just how you execute it that matters.
Google probably needs to write down some specific guidelines for this as it’s going to keep cropping up.
More comments from Patrick AltoftGreat Post Patrick.
What’s your thoughts on having your companyname in the anchortext and pointing it to the frontpage (“Power by My Company” > mycompany.com) instead of (“Powered by My Company” > mycompany.com/widget) ?
Find me on Twitter
I think that should be OK, I’ve done it in the past.
If you only generate 1000 links then you will be fine whatever you do. Once you start generating 500,000 links then Google starts looking deeper into the intent of your widget.
More comments from Patrick AltoftA pretty good reason to have the best keyword domain you can afford so that ‘keyword’ is ‘company name’.
Find me on Twitter
Quite, the owner of curtainscurtainscurtains.co.uk should try it.
More comments from Patrick AltoftPatrick does that mean that I should try it too. http://www.curtains-2go.co.uk/index.htm
Find me on Twitter
James I think if you do widget bait in the right way then you are OK, otherwise you are taking a big risk.
More comments from Patrick AltoftPatrick, can you look at my site http://www.curtains2go.co.uk and give me some advise on the links side as I do not want to go down the route of paying a company £1000 per month.
Jim
patrick, can please help in how i can manage my site curtain4u.co.uk ranks well in competition
to the previous message…
there are a number of search ranking software around to assist you to rank well in the competition. Search google for IBP or seo elite
{ 1 trackback }
Leave a Comment (registration is optional)