Link Building Ideas: 3 – Compelling Link back content

This is the third in the Link Building Tips series. First two articles here – Tip 1 – Rank lists , Tip 2 – Interviews.

  Okay, today let’s take a look at yet another link building strategy that is guaranteed to work, provided you do it right.

Remember, there is no BS here as you might often see elsewhere with “do this,you might get this” kind of general lame talk. This is a tested, proven strategy, that if you do the right way can work wonders for ya. Believe me, it works !

Before jumping in, let’s ask ourselves this question. What is the one reason that makes us link to another article/blog ? Whether it is a bandwagon, or a meme, or a simple admiration to the author, there’s one thing in common. While linking to another story, you pass value to your readers.

Ex:- When you are linking to a Wikipedia article, you are actually passing value to the reader.

So basically, if you were to tempt someone to link to you, you must be able to convince them that there is value in your content, that the readers would enjoy. (You’ve heard that a million times from the gurus eh?)

Okay, let’s get straight to the point. You are going to create “something” that’s going to tempt others to link to you.

And this goes out to all the strugglers out there so clearly we are not talking about writing an exclusive interview with Guy Kawasaki or a brand new product release or the new iPhone design that’s releasing in mid 2009. That’s the big guys cup of tea. Let’s make ours own.

We are going to create pages on our blogs, that will ask questions to the readers, rate their answers and give them a grade. (Sounds very simple, eh?)

Let’s put it this way. Assume that you are an authority in “AJAX coding”. You know the world but unfortunately, the world does not. Now, you need that one major break to let the world know of your expertise in it.

1 – Create a quiz page on your blog, that will ask 100 questions to readers. All of them are tough, above average questions that AJAX learners have never seen anywhere.

2 – Create a grading system from the answers they give. And give them badges according to their marks.
Ex:- If they score a 10/100, they get a “I’m a newbie” badge, probably with their graphic or something.

3 – Provide them a HTML code with the links to the graphic, that they can paste in their website.

Now, who ever manages to get a badge showing off their “ranks”, will be proud to show them off on their websites. And each badge means a link back to you.

The problems

You have to decide how tough your questions are going to be. If they are too tough, people might find it boring. And if it’s too easy, people would simply skip it off and wouldn’t even bother to show off the badges, even if they got a 100/100.

The codes to frame the quiz.

If you are on Wordpress, these plugins will help you build quizzes of various types.

Quiz plugin 1, Quiz plugin 2, Quiz plugin 3,  

If you are on other platforms, you have to create separate quiz pages with Javascript. Here are some scripts that might help.

Quiz script 1, Quiz script 2, Quiz script 3,

So, what are you waiting for, go make your own quizzes and show it off to the world.

Please don’t forget to create badges, which are the the “hooks” that will compel others to link to you. If you cannot manage badges, make the quizzes as interesting as possible, also select a topic that you are best in or is related best with your blog.That itself would be the factor to compel for a link back.