Blogging competition - risky link acquiring method?

[EuropeanSEOguy]

We are planning to launch a competition where bloggers can blog about our products and about our company. One winner will be selected to win a gift card to our web shop.

In order to participate the blogger has to put a link to the blog post that points to our front page or into one of our product pages.

Does Google have a guideline against such "link acquiring" methods?

[Dan-Petrovic]

It will not pick it up automatically, however if you go massive with it or somebody reports you and you get a manual audit then you could be in trouble. There is a way of getting links without asking for links - and that is to create a need and reason for linking. For example you can provide them with optional code snippets that would save them time explaining the rules of the competition (T&C?) and other handy devices which would save webmasters time.

[IM_Learner]

I agree with Dejan SEO's reply (his way of getting backlinks ) but i don't think that your strategy may invoke penalty of some sort. You are not buying or colluding with webmaster for it.

[firstconversion]

A suggestion: make a "blogging competition widget" that each blogger must embed. You get your link back and this sends traffic to all the other blogs who are taking part and further promotes the competition while looking less dodgy

ps, make sure every blogger wins a nice badge / honorable mention button

S

[EuropeanSEOguy]

Hi

I like this idea. Do you have an example of such widget ? How to get started?

[Dan-Petrovic]

• http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0/badges
• http://www.seomoz.org/dp/badges

[MarieHaynes]

I had a similar idea for my site.  It involved giving away free product in return for a link.  Some have suggested to me that this could be black hat.  But personally I don't see how this is much different than other methods such as gaining links by sponsoring a local event.

[aarondicks]

It is against Google TOS to ask for a link, so the best way to do this, as Dejan SEO have said is to cause a reason to link back to the competition page o the home page.

There are various methods of this, and the best has been mentioned - include a code snippet on your contest page, perhaps with a blog footer like so:

This post was for a competition hosted by Company Name, promoting Product. Visit their website for more details on this competition

(With links in obviously). This will trick a lot of people into thinking that it is necessary to include that footer following their post to keep their entry legitimate, and will obviously be gaining you the contextual link you're after, to multiple pages if you'd like.

The other method is via profile badges, or a specific badge for that competition. Encourage users to add your badges to their sites/blogs/individual posts, and make it as easy to do so as possible.

One final thing, make sure you give out badges to the finalists, again, linking to your pages. If they're winning something they'll feel obliged to use the badge!

Hope all of this helps EuropeanSEOguy!