Crowdlinks are links from places where they are likely to be left by live users. These can be topics on forums, topics on social networks, sections with reviews, bulletin boards, and other sites where there is communication and you can read more information on the topic.
Such links have always been an integral part of global crowdfunding – they help increase brand awareness, create a positive opinion of products and services, and build customer loyalty.
Recently, however, crowdfunding has been more often discussed in the context of search engine promotion. On the wave of tightening of the fight against link spam, they have become an obligatory element in link building.
What Tasks Are Solved by Crowdsourced Links?
- Attracting targeted traffic. Like any link, crowds bring users to a site. But a link profile built solely on such links, no matter what they say, will not give as stable traffic as the same commercial links. But crowds are better at reaching the target audience and converting into revenue, it is more trusted by users and less hostile to search algorithms.
- Increased brand awareness and increased customer loyalty. This is what we have said above: crowdfunding allows you to take full advantage of live communication with your target audience. Proper work with links on forums and other thematic platforms increases sales, builds a circle of loyal audience, helps in solving reputational crises, etc.
- “Warming up” the young site. After launching, each project gets into the so-called sandbox. How long it will spend there, and with what results will leave it – it largely depends on the SEO work that was carried out with the young site. Competent provision of external crowdsourced links is an effective strategy for supporting a resource with zero link mass. In contrast to the purchased anchor and anchorless analogs, these links are safer: the probability to get under the anti-link filter is very low. Thus, sites heated by Crowd, more quickly leave the sandbox and already at the start have the foundation, which helps to actively build traffic.
- Minimizing the risks when using commercial links. Since crowds generate the most natural link mass and do not pose a serious threat in terms of search algorithms, their role is indispensable as a stabilizing component. Dilution of such links frankly commercial anchor and to a lesser extent unanchored links, allows you to shade their effect and to re-insure against the possible imposition of filters.
Thus, the role of the Crowd in the promotion of sites is mostly auxiliary. It is unable to fully replace the commercial links but acts as a mechanism that enhances the effect of the entire link building and reduces the risk of imposition of anti-link filters.
Where to Place Crowded Links?
Without going into details, all Internet sites with the possibility of open commenting are suitable for placing crowds. We partly listed them above – these are thematic forums, feedback boards, message boards, social networking tracks, Q&A services, directories, etc.
But if we are talking about SEO – for search engines, the value of external links from a particular donor site has a different weight in importance.
Practice shows that crowds placed on thematic forums with a more or less clean link profile quoted best. We are talking about sites where moderation monitors the quality of links left and does not allow their forum to become a link dump.
Placement on such resources is more difficult because there is a high probability that the link will be removed by the moderators, but it is here crowdsource will bring the most benefit to your site. Again, this is purely a matter of SEO. Attracting direct traffic, increasing brand awareness or product promotion is another story.
Question-and-answer services are another effective type of donor for placing free crowdsourced links. When linking to such sites, the quality of your comment is important. If you give a useful and thorough answer, establishing yourself as an expert on a particular topic, the reader is likely to click on a link to the site.
Such a promotion strategy requires time and resources that have to be spent on writing really useful posts. If you simply post a comment in a branch along the lines of “read the answer here,” it is possible that such a link will only increase the bounce rate and harm the behavioral factors of your site.
Crowd-Marketing Mechanics
As for the tactics of laying such links, there are also subtleties. To begin with, the bulk of crowdfunding is non-commercial in nature. Such links are not bought directly, as they do with anchor, but to work with them, in any case, have to allocate budget, well, or time, if you decide to put them yourself.
One strategy for getting crowd signals is to motivate your target audience to share links to your site. For example, you can organize a contest, one of the conditions of which is to place a link to a resource page. Similar crowd-sourcing mechanics work well in social networks.
With forums, especially those that have not turned into link-posters, things are more complicated. Here, moderation fights for the purity of their pages and removes most links.
To ensure that your comment is not considered spam, you should at least have a well-heated account, write a lot of useful posts, and do not abuse the links unnecessarily.
To get the most out of your crowds, you should try to post them in popular threads that are frequently viewed by users and where there is a lively discussion. #KhabarLive #hydnews
