Is this a good idea for link earning?

[Rubix]

Hi,

One of our clients provides legal documents online and one of the document is bespoke 'Privacy Policy' for websites. It normally comes with a price as solicitors draft each policy manually. We were thinking to offer this for Free

1 - As a promotion so that we can attract webmasters

2- to earn links that we will ask webmasters to give us a link from their website once they add the text

I wanted to get the understanding from you before i go ahead if this is a good a way to gain links or not?

I appreciate your input

Thank you

[SmartWebPros]

Many website design companies do this with clients, putting "Web Design By company name" and adding a link either to the exact anchor text, or their company name. We experimented with this and found that there is a diminishing return on links like this, because our clients websites have nothing to do with web design.

This would probably be the same case for privacy policies for websites. Because the clients websites won't have anything to do with legal documents, it may not be the best linking strategy.

I do think giving it away for free is a good strategy. Instead of demanding them to provide a link from their website however, I'd try to get them to promote it on social media. Make easy share buttons from the documents with text like "We just got a free privacy policy for our website from (link to your clients company)"

Hope this helps

[irvingw]

I think it's a decent idea because thew privacy policy page is usually linked to from the global footer so usually this page accrues decent PR if the site has PR. Also there are usually very few outgoing links on a privacy page, and it's only a link on that one page and not sitewide which is good.

[jesse-landry]

I agree with Jeff that from a marketing perspective this is a good idea but forget about the link building opportunities. What you really want (using Jeff's example) is other web design companies linking and saying "woah you can get this awesome service for free over at ______." That way it is relevant, natural, and authoritative.

Technically what you're describing slightly violates the Google ToS, but I don't think you would be penalized for it unless you started QUICKLY gaining a ton of links from low DA and non-relevant sites. Nonetheless I think the idea is sound and after promoting it online you might find that it brings in new opportunities for link building in an organic manner.

You'd be surprised. And that's why SEO is now marketing which is now SEO which is marketing.

[Rubix]

Thank you all, each comment is very helpful.

I think getting a footer link is not a good idea but this won't be a footer a link. It will be coming only from 'Privacy Policy' page and if we can link to terms 'privacy policy' it won't be unrelated as this is what client provides.

I think it is a little different issue here then ''' website is create by ...Brand''. In terms of gaining links from any website is not unrelated to us, because a website with a 'Privacy Policy' is generally a business website and this legal company deals with legal matters of the businesses including Privacy Policy. I think as long as the links come from Privacy Policy or Terms and Conditions page, it will be a related link.

Would you agree?

[irvingw]

I definitely agree, it's relevant and they will probably pass a lot of PR sine the privacy page is usually all text and limited outgoing links.

[jesse-landry]

I would definitely tend to agree while worrying that there's somewhat of a gray area here.

Reason being that the page might not be as relevant as the domain. So if the privacy policy page is on hip-hop-records.com's signup page, and there are 100s/1000s of these types of links coming in with presumably all the same anchor text (i.e. "Privacy Policy") then that could be dangerous.

If all of the sites you deal with are legal sites and SMBs then fine. But I feel like many sites can generate privacy policies for any type of business/service/product/etc.

[Rubix]

Jesse, i think you are right, it is a grey area and i guess it is hard to know what will happen before i test it. I'll go ahead with the plan and I'll share the results with you. Hopefully, the results will be positive.

Thank you all

[jesse-landry]

Sounds good I'd love to hear the follow-up sometime. If you can vary the anchor text or keep it to something like "Click Here" or better yet your brand name that would definitely help avoid penalties.

Also try to keep the possibility of adding a no-follow to those links open with any webmasters you work with. You might even want to pick and choose certain domains to automatically nofollow from.

That's what I would do. Good luck!