Link Building Using Awards

I'm here to share with you the SEO knowledge , hints and tips I've built up over the years , for today , I'm going to talk about how to link build using awards . Now , I know there's lots of people out there who are really into ways of looking for ways of how to get links to their websites . Links are important . We've covered this before .

Obviously , with links , we know that there's issues around going out and buying links or doing things like guest posting and return for payment and backlinks and things like that , where Google don't want people to manipulate the link graph in a way where they're exchanging goods and services for links .

You've got to be a bit more creative around building links in a proactive way . One of the ways you can do it that I don't see many people using , surprisingly , is using awards to build backlinks . Now there's two ways of doing this .

The more common way I've seen people discuss is where they actually enter awards , like business awards to try and win an award and then the awarding company will link to them . This is like the search marketing awards .

If you enter the search marketing awards , if you're a SEO company and if you win an award for a campaign that you put forward , then you go to an award dinner . You pay a lot of money , you might win the award .

You might get a bit of plastic and you're pitch taken and you can then put that on your site , which is good for EAT , because expertise , experience , authority and trust Google .

It's not a bad thing for Google to see you winning awards like that and you might get a backlink from the award supplier and then you might find that other people reporting on those awards might link to you . That's one way of doing it , not one I'm a particular fan of , for a couple of reasons .

One , you're almost buying those awards because there's only people that win awards . There's people that pay to enter . You're only going to get links from the awards website itself , which may not be the most relevant , depending on what you're trying to get links for .

You might get a few links from people reporting on those awards , but it's not necessarily going to be hugely relevant to what you do . It's only really relevant to sort of on a business side . It's hard to get links into other areas .

Now , the second way of doing it is where you , your website , your brand , actually becomes the awarding body , so you actually decide we're going to give out awards . Now there's some great examples online of people doing this , and one is uswitchcom .

Now , if you don't have heard of uSwitch , they're a big comparison website in the UK and they compare things like broadband , mobile phones , electricity , I think they do car insurance , all those kind of things all the big comparison aggregators and they're essentially they're an affiliate website . That's how they make their money .

They have affiliate deals with all the people that they list . Now , obviously , what they want ideally , if you're an affiliate , the very best link is a link back from the merchants you're promoting , because that really gives you excellent quality , relevant links from the actual industry that you're trying to promote .

And those merchants tend to be big merchants and links from them are really really good but really hard to get . Why should they link to you ? Well , what uSwitch do is they have whole categories of awards that they give out every year .

So , for example , in the broadband sector they will have a best broadband provider award , they will have a fastest broadband provider award , they'll have a best value broadband provider award and a whole bunch of awards for all the different sectors that they're in that they will then award to the merchants that they promote and with these awards they will give a

logo , a special logo that they can give to these providers , and these providers will actually in many cases put these logos on their websites .

They will do press releases saying they've won these awards and they'll link to uSwitch's pages on their site uSwitch's other page on their site all about the awards they've awarded this year , probably one for each category of award they've promoted and given away and they'll find all the different merchants will start linking back to them with these logos and onto their

awards pages . So they're essentially getting all the merchants to link back to them for free just by giving them an award , and it's genius really .

It's good for the merchants on the other side because they're obviously getting an award which is good for their EEAT , and it's good for their social proof because they'll put those awards on their websites where they can say to people uSwitch have voted us the best broadband provider for FIBER . Look at us , we're great .

And they'll link because uSwitch is a well-known site . That actually adds even more credibility to them . So by doing this , by giving out these awards , they're actually getting this whole layer of links coming back to them . An affiliate site to give out awards like this .

You could be an e-commerce site where you , you know , you've got all the you know Product manufacturers that you are selling on your website . What you could do say you're selling your , you sell Lawn mowers , for example . You could do awards for the lawn mower category so you could do the best ride on lawn mower .

You could do the best electric lawn mower , the best battery powered lawn mower , the best lawn mower Under 200 pounds , the best lawn mower under 500 pounds , the best lawn mower over a thousand pounds . You couldn't correct all sorts of categories and then award them to the Product and the manufacturer that best suits . Now See , there's some caveats for this .

Obviously , you know you don't want to do it purely on who you want to link to . You should really make these wards Objective . So you actually are Having a proper methodology by which you give these awards out . You know you want to be make sure it is the best value one .

If it's a lawn mower , is the best value lawn mower and state why it's the best value lawn mower . You can't just give out . Give them out based on who you want to get the link from . But that's not to say that you shouldn't .

You know , if you use somebody trying to target for a link credit categories that they actually Genuinely fit , okay , I don't see there's anything wrong with that , and so then you can give these awards out and the very minimum you just need a logo and a page on your website about the award and then you contact the manufacturer .

You can also go to the next level . You could give them an actual award , like you can get awards made like an engraved piece of plastic . A lot of them are , or some you know have something made . That's an actual award that they can display and you can send that off to them . I would also do a press release for your awards .

Now I know people have said before is press releases dodgy link building ? That's not because you're putting a press release out . You're hoping people might link to you , but you're not telling them to link to you . You're just trying to raise the Awareness around the award that you've given out .

And if you went to the top level , you can actually have award ceremonies , and I've seen this done In the broadband sector , where affiliate websites have actually done whole evenings where they've invited along all the merchants and done a whole awards ceremony with drinks and dinners , all those kind of things , and you know , you know comedians who present the awards

and things like that . They've made a full do out of it . I think that the further along you go , the more impact you're going to have and potentially , the more Profile you're going to build for your awards . But you can do it a very small scale , it doesn't have to be massive . So anyone can , any site can do this and you can do it in any category .

You just have to think what it is that you can actually recognize people for and give them these awards , and you'll find . You know , it can be a fantastic way of building back and I said , and the ones that do it really well , the ones that get the most profile , actually get the press talking about them .

And then , when you can start getting press links of people Talk about their awards , you can encourage the , the merchants to , and send out a press release that when they want it so that they can get they they might get . They'll get links themselves where people also link to your site because of the awards .

So it's a really , really creative way Building profile around your site . It sets you up , helps set you up as An authority because you're giving out the awards .

It means To be giving out awards in an area You've got to be an authority , so it helps with setting authority , helps with getting back links from your actual merchants and the other companies that you're dealing with and promoting , and you know it can help get press links in on either side .

So it's a really powerful tool , done well and say you know , I know there's people that spend a hundred thousand pounds just on buying links .

Imagine , instead of spending a hundred thousand pound on potentially Going against Google's terms of service , where you know there's risk around that you could easily spend a portion of that budget on an awards and an awards ceremony and you know you potentially get a whole bunch of more relevant links , safer links and ones that are going to endure longer .

So if you're looking for a creative way to build new backlinks to your website , then I'd strongly recommend you at least consider the idea of awards . Thanks for being a listener . I really appreciate . Please subscribe and share . It really helps . Seo is not that hard . Is brought to you by keywords .

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By for now and see you in the next episode of SEO is not that hard .