Contest Arbitrage – Link Building Through Contest Sponsorship
While planning a Christmas contest for you, it’s come to my attention that many bloggers don’t know how to use contest sponsorship to their advantage. They simply feel as if it won’t work to their advantage, but in fact contest sponsorship can actually be one of the easiest forms of link building possible.
It’s nothing complicated, just simple thinking. I like to call it… Contest Arbitrage!!!
The way contests work most on the time on the majority of webmaster/MMO blogs is that participants will have an option to blog about the contest, including links to the sponsors’ websites, and to place a link to a sponsors’ website. In contests where the prize is big enough (which is usually in contests with over $50 in prizes), there are usually 10-15 bloggers at bare minimum who will post about the contest in order to gain as many entries as they can. These blogs are all registered in Technorati and crawled frequently by Google.
Something as simple as a 30 text link on your blogroll will be accepted as a sponsored prize, and therefore basically you are trading in one 30-day outbound link for 15 permanent inbound links. If you can allow for 8 links in your blogroll, that’s an extra 120 permanent links to your blog per month. Not long ago I was talking about how easily Technorati Authority can be manipulated, and this is yet another way in which this occurs, gaining you hundreds of blog reactions and authority points each and every month.
Through this method you can also have some control over your anchor text (although don’t use just one keyword the whole time, Google will penalize you – John Chow experienced this first hand).
Stick around for the contest, I will be launching it on Saturday, and Santa’s going to be giving away a lot of goodies.
List Of Blogs With Top Commentators Widget
A week ago I wrote a post about using the top commentator widget for backlinks.To follow this up I have decided to post the list that I use for link building using the top commentator widget, sorted by PageRank.
All PageRanks are up to date as of today, just 2 days after the latest PageRank update.
PageRank 6
PageRank 5
- http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/
- http://www.blueverse.com/
- http://elitebydesign.com/
- http://themelib.com/ Inner Pages Only
- http://techie-buzz.com/
- http://www.quicksprout.com/
PageRank 4
- http://www.balkhis.com/
- http://theuniversitykid.com/
- http://www.sueblimely.com/
- http://zacjohnson.com/
- http://bluehatseo.com/
- http://www.pureblogging.com/
- http://optempo.com/
- http://www.imbloggingthat.com/
- http://uberaffiliate.com/
- http://imiseasy.com
- http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/blog/
- http://www.catswhocode.com/blog/
- http://www.bloganything.net/
- http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/
- http://imiseasy.com/
- http://www.jdavidmacor.com/
PageRank 3
- http://otooo.com/ (Make sure to drop some comments here)
- http://www.johnchow.com/
- http://www.jonathanvolk.com/
- http://entrecard.com/blog/ (You get a monthly bonus as well)
- http://thoushallblog.com/
- http://www.standoutblogger.com/
- http://norhafidz.com/
- http://linkersblog.com/
- http://www.ededition.com/
- http://www.riceblogger.com/
- http://www.jonlee.ca/
- http://pixelheadonline.com/blog/
- http://www.wpthemedesigner.com/
- http://theblogentrepreneur.com/
- http://www.lighteningsblogworld.com/
- http://www.lifeiscolourful.com/
- http://www.peterleehc.com/blog/
- http://www.derek-ang.com/
- http://www.niharsworld.com/
- http://www.oneyearmillionaire.net/
- http://www.datmoney.com/
- http://www.domainstructure.com/
- http://www.benbarden.com/
- http://www.michaelaulia.com/blogs/
- http://www.bookmarkbliss.com/
- http://www.creadiv.com/
- http://www.jennyhow.com/
PageRank 2
- http://www.benjaminpatton.com/
- http://dablogger.com/
- http://www.enkayblog.com/
- http://bloggervenue.com/
- http://www.netstrife.com/
- http://slyvisions.com/
- http://www.adesblog.com/
- http://bloggingexperiment.com/
- http://www.ryanjparker.net/
- http://pimpmypagerank.com/
- http://www.netbusinessblog.com/
- http://linkmoney.org/
- http://desmondblog.com/
- http://www.romandock.com/
- http://honestknowledge.com/warriorblog/
Hope this helps you build more links. 
If I have missed out your blog, just drop a comment and I will add it.
Using The Top Commentator Plugin For Backlinks
I really apologize for not posting in like a week – it’s the last week of term this week so bear with me for 4 more days before I have more time.
I have noticed when browsing webmaster forums such as DigitalPoint that many people are unsure of the best way to build high quality one way links to their website or blog. now I can’t say that there is a best way, but I know of a way that is the best way for me – it is enjoyable and I gain high PR and high quality backlinks quickly from authority blogs in my niche. What makes this better? These are usually sitewide DoFollow links.
Take a look at my backlinks in Yahoo SiteExplorer (click on the image to see it in full size):
My Links
Now, I’m not here to brag but that’s a nice amount of backlinks from a 2 month old blog. And look where these links are from – huge, well respected authority blogs.
Go and take a look at some of these blogs and see what they all have in common: You will find that they all have the Top Commentator’s widget installed, with the DoFollow setting enabled.
Many bloggers see this widget and think no more about it, but when I realised the link building ability of this some time ago now I jumped right into testing it out. And guess what? It seems to be working!
Now please, after seeing this, and I repeat, PLEASE, do not go out and spam the heck out of blogs with this widget installed. It is there to pass a bit of link love to loyal readers. I find that in the blogs I like reading I gain a spot anyway because I like to connect with the blog owner. Post valuable comments to the blog that are of a decent length, and you will find that you actually like the blog more as well.
Have fun commenting