Hi, Sad Dawson here. Now link building has always been and continues to be a crucial part of the SEO jigsaw that you need to build authority and drive rankings in Google. And with the emergence of AI-based search like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity, the importance of links in getting your site cited in responses means that link building becomes of even greater importance. So I've grouped together all the best episodes of the podcast that touch on link building into a series dedicated to all the many strategies and tactics you can use to get more links to your content. So let's get on to the podcast. Hello and welcome to episode 71 of SEO Is Not That Hard. I'm your host, Ed Dawson, the founder of KeywordsPeopleUse.com, the solution to one of the questions people ask online. I'm an affiliate marketer at SGO and I've been building and monetising websites for over 20 years. I've built sites from the ground up, bought sites, and have 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. Now I know there's lots of people out there who are really into ways of looking for ways of how to get links to their websites. 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, um, 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. Um, so this is like you know, the the the search marketing awards. If you enter the search marketing awards, if you're a 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 expertise, experience, authority, and trust Google. Um, 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. Um, and that's one way of doing it. Not what I'm a particular fan of for a couple of reasons. One, um, you know, you're almost buying those awards because the only people that win awards are the people that pay to enter. Um, 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 trying to get links for. Um, and you might get a few links from people you know reporting on those awards, but but it's not necessarily going to be hugely relevant to what you do, and it's only really relevant to um sort of on a business side, you know, it's it's hard to get get links uh 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 gonna give out awards. Now, there's some great examples online of of people doing this, and one is uswitch.com. Now, if you don't heard of USwitch, they're a big comparison website in the UK, and they compare things like broadband, um, mobile phones, electricity, I think they're car insurance, all those kind of things are all the big sort of um comparison aggregators, and they're essentially they're an affiliate website. That's how they're making their money. They they have affiliate deals with all the people that they list. Now, 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 it 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? Well, what USwitch 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 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 um a logo, special logo 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, you Subscribe page on their site all about the awards they've awarded this year, probably one for each category of award they've 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 uh they can say to people, USwitch have voted us the best um broadband provider for fibre. Look at us, we're great. And they'll link because USwitch is a well known, well enough known site that they'll that 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. Now you don't have to be an 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 um selling on your website. What you could do, say you're selling uh you're you sell uh lawn mowers, for example, you could do awards for the lawn mower categories, so you could do the best ride-on lawn mower, you could do the best electric lawnmower, the best battery-powered lawn mower, the best lawnmower under£200, the best lawnmower under£500, the best lawnmower over a thousand pounds. You can create all sorts of categories and then award them to the um product and the manufacturer that best suits. Now, obviously, there's some caveats with this. Obviously, you know, 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 um 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 lawn mower, and state why it's the best value lawn mower. Um, you can't just give out give them out based on who you want to get the link from. Um, but that's not to say that you shouldn't, you know, if you 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. Um and so then you can give these awards out, and the very minimum, you just need a logo and a page on your website about the award, and then you contact the manufacturer. 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 some you know, have something made that's an actual award that they can display, and you can send that off to them. Um, 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 um awareness around the award that you've given out. Um, and if you went to the top level, you can actually have awards ceremonies. And I've seen this done in the broadband sector where affiliate websites have actually done um whole evenings where they've invited along all the merchants and done a whole award ceremony with drinks and dinners and all those kind of things, and you know, uh you know, comedians who present the awards and things like that, they've made a full do out of it. I think the further along you go, the more impact you're gonna have, and potentially the more um profile you're gonna build for your awards. But you can do it at a very small scale, it doesn't have to be massive. Say anyone can 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 recognise people for and give them these awards, and you'll find you know it can be a fantastic way of link building back. And I say, 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 the merchants to um send out a press release that they've when they've won it so that they can get they they might get they'll 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 um 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 bat links from your actual merchants and the 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 it's a really powerful tool done well. And say, you know, I I know there's people out there that spend£100,000 just on buying links. Imagine instead of spending£100,000 on potentially going against Google's terms of service where you you know there's a risk around there's risk around that, you could easily spend a portion of that budget on an awards and an awards ceremony, and you know, you potentially get a whole bunch of more relevant links, safer links, and ones that are going to endure longer. So if you're looking for a creative way to build new bat links to your website, then I'd strongly recommend you at least consider the idea of awards. Thanks for being a listener, I really appreciate it. Please subscribe and share, it really helps. SGO is not that hard is brought to you by keywordspeopleuse.com, the solution to finding the questions people ask online. See where thousands of people use us every day. Try it today for free at keywordspeopleuse.com. If you want to get in touch, have any questions? I'd love to hear from you. I'm at Channel5 on Twitter, or you can email me at podcast at keywordspeopleuse.com. Bye for now and see you in the next episode of SGO Is Not That Hard.