Speaker 1: 0:52

Hi Ed Dawson here, and, as I'm a bit busy at the moment and need a break, welcome to another one of my best of SEO is not that hard podcasts. These are the episodes from the back catalogue that I think have the greatest hits and ones that are still relevant and provide great value for you. So, without further ado, let's get into the episode. Hello and welcome to episode 71 of SEO is not that hard. I'm your host, ed Dawson, the founder of keywordspeopleusecom, the solution to finding the questions people ask online. I'm an affiliate marketer, seo, and I've been building and monetizing websites for over 20 years. I've built sites from the ground up, bought sites and sold sites in large exits. I'm here to share with you the SEO knowledge, hints and tips I've built up over the years. Today, I'm going to talk about how to link build using awards tips I've built up over the years. Today, I'm going to talk about how to link build using awards.

Speaker 1: 1:43

Now, I know there's lots of people out there who are really into ways of looking for ways how to get links to their websites, and links are important. We've covered this before, but obviously with links, you know. We know that there's issues around going out and buying links or doing things like guest posting in return for payment and backlinks and things like that, where Google don't want people to sort of manipulate the link graph in a way where they're exchanging goods and services for links. So you've got to be a bit more creative around building links in a proactive way, and 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. So this is like you know, the search marketing awards.

Speaker 1: 2:42

If you enter the search marketing awards, if you're an SEO company and if you win an award for a campaign that you put forward, then you know 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 your pitch taken and you can then put that on your site, which is okay. It's 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. And that's one way of doing it not what I'm a particular fan of, for a couple of reasons. One you know you're almost buying those awards because the only people that win awards are the people that pay to enter. You're only going to get links from the, from the awards website itself, which may not be the most relevant, depending on what. 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. And 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. You know it's hard get 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.

Speaker 1: 4:12

Now there's some great examples online of people doing this, and one is uSwitchcom. Now, if you haven't 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 are one of the big sort of 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 and, obviously, what they want. Ideally, if you're if you're an affiliate, the very best link is a link back from the merchants you're promoting, because that really um 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 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?

Speaker 1: 5:03

Well, what you switch 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 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, special logos 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 will have a 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 you switch have voted as the best broadband provider for fiber, look at us, we're great. And they'll link because you switch is a well-known, one, enough main 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.

Speaker 1: 6:46

Now you don't have to be a affiliate site to give out awards like this. You could be an e-commerce site where you, you know, you've got all the um, you know, um product manufacturers that you are selling on your website. What you could do? Say you're selling, uh, you sell lawnmowers, for example. You could do awards for the lawnmower category so you could do the best ride on lawnmower. You could do the best electric lawnmower, the best best battery-powered lawnmower, the best lawnmower under £200, the best lawnmower under £500, the best lawnmower over £1,000. You can create all sorts of categories and then award them to the product and the manufacturer that best suits.

Speaker 1: 7:34

And obviously there's some caveats to this. Obviously, you don't want to do it purely on who you want to link to. You should really make these awards objective so you actually are having a proper methodology by which you give these awards out. You know you want to make sure it is the best value one. If it's a lawnmower, it is the best value lawnmower and state why it's the best value lawnmower. You can't just 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 there is somebody trying to target for a link, create a category that they actually genuinely fit. Okay, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. And so then you can give these awards out and at the very minimum, you just need a logo and a page on your website about the award and then you contact the manufacturer.

Speaker 1: 8:22

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 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 award 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.

Speaker 1: 9:18

I think 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 for a very small scale. It doesn't have to be massive. 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 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 talking about their awards, you can encourage the merchants to send out a press release when they've won it so that they can get they might get links themselves. But people also link to your site because of the awards. So it's a really, really creative way of 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. It helps with getting backlinks 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 the other side. So it's a really powerful tool, done well and say you know, I know there's people out there 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, there's risk around that you could easily spend a portion of that budget on an award and an award ceremony and you know you potentially get a whole bunch of more relevant links, safer, 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.

Speaker 1: 11:11

Thanks for being a listener. I really appreciate it. Please subscribe and share. It really helps. Seo is Not that Hard is brought to you by keywords people usecom, the solution to find the questions people ask online. See why thousands of people use us every day. Try it today for free at keywords people usecom. If you want to get in touch, have any questions, I'd love to hear from you. I'm at channel 5. On twitter. You can email me at podcast at keywords people usecom. Bye for now and see you in the next episode of seo is not that hard.