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.

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

- Approximately 26 directory/blog directory submissions (for 2 of my sites)
- Approximately 30-35 DoFollow blog comments including some .edu blogs
- 40-50 posts on DigitalPoint forums
- Done one sitewide link exchange
- Received one one-way sitewide link because I did someone on the forums a favour

I have seen a much greater amount of traffic from the DigitalPoint forums, but that is the only thing I have noticed so far.

In the thread at DigitalPoint, silveraden tells that she spends hours each day promoting her sites. I don’t have that kind of time, I have to study, but am going to duplicate the schedule on a smaller scale.

What I am going to do on a daily basis:
1. Forum posting – Each day I am going to made at least 20 posts on DigitalPoint, NamePros and Sitepoint for backlinks and traffic. This should take 30-45 minutes each day.
2. Blog Commenting – Each day, I will spend 10-15 minutes commenting on about 10-15 DoFollow related blogs related to this blog. This is also done mainly for backlinks but also for a bit of traffic as well.
3. Directory Submission – I plan to submit my blog to 5-10 directories each and every single day with varying anchor text, probably using those directories DigitalPoint members promote in the forum.
4. Social Bookmarking Each Article – I guess I am doing this for a bit of a boost in traffic, a few links and also to establish myself in a network of other bloggers using social media sites such as Twitter (my username on twitter is: simonspurr)

What I am going to do on a weekly basis:
1. Article Submission – I don’t have much time to fit in extra article writing, but will try to make time for it an an attempt for some extra backlinks and good, targetted traffic. I will probably try to submit 2 articles to the main article sites each weekend when I have a bit of time.
2. Advertising in Advertising Forums – Never tried this before, but will give it a go. It should bring in a bit of extra traffic.

As a bonus to my readers, I am also going to be running competitions on a random time basis with prizes such as free banner advertising, free links and free reviews. (I will make a post announcing competitions).

To keep track of my progress, I plan to make a post on here every day or two with my progress which will probably keep me motivated as well.

Wish me luck

At the same time, the benefits of DoFollow Blog Commenting have been revealed and many more people would rather focus their time on more natural ways to gain backlinks, such as link baiting and article writing.

So is there a need to waste time submitting to multiple directories when time could be used instead to help other link building strategies. I have first hand seen the benefit of focusing my time onto DoFollow blog commenting on one of my other sites, which has gained me sitewide backlinks from high authority blogs and much more traffic than I receive from all directories combined. You are still able to use anchor text and this will help you rank higher in the search engines.

Forum posting is another extremely worthwile link building strategy. I find forum posting so great because not only does every post I make count as a backlink to my site (from my signature), nor because it brings great traffic, but because I also learn more about the topic of the forum I am participating in. All of the information you can ask for on many topics is contained within forums.

The Do’s And Don’ts Of Link Building

Do
- Comment on DoFollow blogs regularly
- Post in multiple forums related to your topic with a link to your site in your signature
- Write unique and interesting articles for publishing to your site, then rewritten to article directories such as EzineArticles and ArticleDashboard
- Create link bait by writing interesting and controversial articles and publishing them on your site
- Always search for new ways of link building

Don’t
- Spam blogs, whether NoFollow or DoFollow
- Submit to link directories (your time can be better focused – if you are going to then I recommend paying someone to manually submit your site for you
- Have your site linked to on any spammy pages or sites completely unrelated to yours