A Silly Way To Get Backlinks
The 3 Easy Steps
- Create an application
It doesn’t have to be anything special. One way is to find a free screensaver builder and use a bunch of royalty-free photos to make your own slideshow screensaver. Make the application freeware - it’s easier and faster. If you actually create something worthy, you might set up a vendor account with one of the shareware-related payment processors/merchants (I use Plimus). - Build a PAD file for your application
A PAD file contains a standartized XML description for your application. Use the freeware PAD Gen app for this step. Put the PAD file on a website somewhere (it doesn’t matter where and it doesn’t have to be a programming-related site). - Submit the PAD file to software directories
PAD Publisher will submit your PAD file URL to about 100 software directories. Now you’ve got some new backlinks to your site (you specified your website URL in the PAD file, didn’t you?).
Why is it “silly”?
That’s because this isn’t much more than a form of directory submission and the backlinks you get will rarely be of high quality. On the other hand, there’s Download.com, a PR 8 directory… It takes time to get in, but it can be done and the listing is free. A backlink like that might be worth something.
July 23rd, 2007 at 5:39 pm
This way of spamming software portals is a very dangerous one. As I explained on my blog (http://webshield.blogspot.com/2007/07/affiliates-questionable-busines.html), this way of doing business affected seriously the entire shareware industry!
Some of our affiliates are using a SPAM database and all unrelated software websites are banned.
July 23rd, 2007 at 6:40 pm
I wouldn’t call this spamming per se - software directories are designed to list software and accept PAD files. A properly configured PAD file will make sure the application is inserted in the right category and so on.
The article you mentioned talks mainly about affiliate marketing; I fail to see the connection with my post.
July 23rd, 2007 at 7:19 pm
Let me give you an example: by making a screensaver or a flash presentation is not a software application to be listed on software portals; it’s spam.
Here you are a PAD file:
http://best-career-training.com/flash/01.xml
This is SPAM!
July 23rd, 2007 at 7:39 pm
Okay, that is spam. Looks like my idea wasn’t very original.
Anyway, I didn’t say this is a good or ethical technique. If some worthless application (or flash thingy) is built purely for link-generation purposes it sure looks like black-hat SEO. still think that popularising “real” software in this manner isn’t inherently bad.
I just got an idea and thought I’d write a post about it, that’s all.
March 1st, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Is executable ebook considers as software???