Leveraging "Powered by" and link spam

[NoorHammad]

Hi all,

For reference: The SaaS guide to leveraging the "Powered By" tactic.

My product is an embeddable widget that customers place on their websites (see example referenced in link above). A lot of my customers have great domain authority (big brands, .gov's etc).

I would like to use a "Powered By" link on my widgets to create high quality backlinks.

My question is: if I have identical link text (on potentially hundreds) of widgets, will this look like link spam to Google?

If so, would setting the link text randomly on each widget to one of a few different phrases (to create some variation) avoid this?

Hope this makes sense, thanks in advance.

[davidangotti]

I would be very careful making embeddable widgets as an important facet of your link building campaign. This tactic used to work very well, but has been on Google's radar for some time now. In August of last year, Matt Cutts said the following: "I would recommend putting a nofollow, especially on widgets." The attached video of him discussing this may be helpful to you as you consider this tactic.

With regards to the anchor text, I would be VERY careful with it if you decide to proceed. I would personally recommend abandoning this tactic (unless there is a value outside of link building) and investing in high-quality content instead, but, if you do decide to proceed, I would build solely branded anchor text. This would be more defendable if a Google engineer ever flags the site. It won't look like you were trying to game the rankings on a keyword, but may still have a positive impact on the rankings. I would proceed with caution before doing that though.

Instead of putting the effort into a widget, I would put it into something that lives on your site (evergreen content) and provides a ton of value to end users. That will attract links and real users.

Hope this helps!

watch?v=PvR_8aGEc98

[NoorHammad]

Dan,

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my question.

Your advice is sound. Matt certainly advises a nofollow however at the beginning he cautions against making widget links the primary source of link building in a strategy. At the end he says that links from widgets don't "carry the same weight" as links freely given.

As such, I wouldn't necessarily expect a blanket penalty for widget links. Rather than abandon widget links entirely I will instead apply a nofollow to all the links except a hand selected few on the very best domains (.govs and major brand / media sites).

Hopefully this approach will not raise any red flags (or black hats as the case may be).

Thanks again.

[NakulGoyal]

I'd defenitely recommend not to use keyword rich anchor text. Just use your brand name and diversify your link profile.