Sep 18 2008
Link building with contests
I recently recieved an email from a company who sells automotive cleaning products. They were holding an interesting contest for car clubs. His email provided quick details about the contest and the Grand prize for first place which was a $1500 donation towards the car club’s choice in a charity. He then went on to ask, “Can I write up a nice detailed page about this contest for you to post on your automotive website?” After some thought I said I would.Shortly after I get this decent size article discussing the contest details followed by a phone number and website link near the bottom for those who want to sign up for the contest. I went ahead and posted the details in my news section. I also decided to include the link since it was needed for those who wanted to be included. I could just write the link in normal text but why? I personally hate when I have to copy paste a link into the address bar so I would rather avoid making my visitors deal with that. I also would really want to throw a nofollow on someones link right after they provide me some good content. After posting it, I checked it with copyscape only to find out this article was all over the place. He didn’t just write it like he mentioned he would, it was prewritten and published numerous times. I always try to avoid duplicate content penalties. I’ve seen this penalty in action and its not all that great. I ended up taking it off to rewrite. This rewriting task is still on my to do list. The number of copies I seen around the web is proof that building links this way works. If he was up to rewording it some before he sent it to me, he would have earned my link.
its not hard to rewrite an article. good to see programs such as copyscape helping duplicate content penalties be avoided!