Free links, or what to do at your leisure site owner

This article will be useful for business owners who are promoting their site on their own, but in a “passive mode”: in their spare time they study the issue little by little, try to understand different aspects, try different methods and services. In other words, they do not set tight deadlines and do not spend budgeting and expenditure items for SEO in accounting.

If you are a marketer, and you, as is often the case, have been instructed to promote the site at the same time (of course, on your own, without a budget and on a voluntary basis), then I recommend going over the points in this article, it is possible that some of them will brighten up a little the situation.

I offer a list of places where you can post links in your spare time. I’ll say at once that no take-off in the search results can be expected (although, as a rare exception, and this also happens), it is a question of the gradual development and accumulation of the reference mass with an improvement in other factors and the receipt of live visits.

Catalogs

This is not about the “white bases for Allsubmitter”, those directories, perhaps, no longer have any sense to use: if the moderator is still alive and someday will add you, then most likely the site itself has been in the blacklist for a long time and will not bring any benefit.
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We will place large directories, like Rosfirm or Pulscen. From the first, they are distinguished by the fact that these are exactly directories of companies, not sites.

Than useful

1. Link weight to your site. May be absent if the directory has special rules for handling links or the conditions of their affixing. But if the weight is there, then it is usually quite good: the “surviving” by 2019 catalogs are pretty trust network resources.
2. Extra traffic. It will be small, but since it is free, why not attract?
3. Commercial factors. Mentioning your contact information in such directories can have a positive effect on ranking.
4. Mention brand. Useful for both branding tasks and positions.
5. Places in search. Pages with your contact information take up additional space in the top, and you collect more traffic from navigation queries.
6. Additional features and fields. Now the owners of many large sites understand that just contact information is no longer as valuable as it was before. Therefore, they make it possible to add additional types of information to your card. So, on Pulscen, for example, you can upload your product offers. And you can receive good and hot thematic traffic from the keys that you are not in the top yet, through your page on such a site.
7. Orders. In the regions, these sites even make a real profit, so that such links, even without great benefit for SEO, can be beneficial in themselves.

How to accommodate

Depending on what the playground allows. Use all the possibilities, do not be lazy. I would recommend to make a file-table (if it is not yet) and enter there all the data about the company, which the management allows to place in open sources. This significantly simplifies further work. Every time you meet some new field on the site, add the corresponding row to the table.

Communities in social networks

I specifically narrowed down to the topic of communities, because SMM in a general sense is a time-consuming process that is better to be trusted by professionals, or at least to hire a staff member. Here we are talking about what does not take much time.

Look for themed communities. The following types will suit you:

• Professional. Here your colleagues communicate.
• Consumer. Here discuss your products and services.
• Adjacent. It discusses the problems and events for the solution of which your goods and services will be suitable.

Than useful

1. Mention. If you are constantly involved in the life of the community, they start referring to your publications. Depending on how exactly you conduct the activity, on whose behalf and in what form, you increase the recognition of a corporate or personal brand.
2. Social cues. It follows from the first paragraph: some of the references and links that have collected “likes” and reposts will be taken into account by search engines when ranking.
3. Traffic to the site. If you have the opportunity to respond to the materials of the site (and there is such an opportunity, if you found the community correctly), then you get additional traffic. If at the same time your message collects “repost”, then its volumes increase.
4. Behavioral factors. Since we are talking about communities with high involvement, with the right strategy, attracted users will further improve the site’s behavioral indicators.

How to accommodate

There is no single recipe, but try not to “pull by the ears” just to be placed at any cost. Find natural motives and appeal to the audience in a natural way. Links should be given only if the answer is behind them.

Forums

Everything is approximately the same as with social networks, with the proviso that there are not so many forums now, but there are usually no second hands to be active, and according to your subject matter, in order to recount them.

There are also a number of features that should be considered:

• Pre-moderation and special conditions. Unlike social networks, where having access to the publication of materials, you can publish them immediately, on the forums often put certain mechanisms that regulate the activity of the community. Somewhere your answers and topics will be published only after moderation, somewhere you will even have to first earn a certain rating by answering other topics.
• Increased criticality to links and mentions. Be prepared that your absolutely innocent publication with a logical and relevant answer to the question asked will be deleted for the link in the text. Nothing can be done about it, you just need to get used to it. Learn the art of presenting advertising information.
• Sensitivity to traditions and rules. Forums are very inert communities where traditional ways and ideas about permissible may seem drowsy or just weird. Do not be surprised if you receive a warning for something, try to penetrate and read the rules.

Than useful

On this point, everything is the same as with social networks. You can also add that:

1. Forum topics are often the only answer to infrequently asked questions and a solution for infrequent problems. You probably yourself found this confirmation. It's great when for some narrow topic the only material that somehow helps the user is written by you. This is an additional brand loyalty.
2. Unlike social networks, where access to materials may be limited to its limits, forum pages are usually open for reading for everyone. Therefore, links to your materials may be placed on other sites.

How to accommodate

The main goal is to get a loyal potential customer. Therefore, it is important what you write and how. You should be competent in what you are talking about, users should understand that you can ask for expert opinion on this issue.

There are several accommodation options:

• Answer / dialogue. Find a topic on which you have something to say, enter into a dialogue, reasonably communicate, give a link to the site.
• Theme. Raise an interesting topic to which you are attracting a community. The link can be given in the topic itself, and in discussions. Just remember about the features of perception described above, and try to do everything as correctly as possible. If you raise the topic, then it should be a novelty, or at least a potential for discussion.
• Link from profile. You can not give links to publications, and leave modestly in your profile. This greatly reduces the beneficial effect, but it increases loyalty to you as a person. Please note that the links in the profile will go only to those who are really interested in your personality, or lit up with the idea to order something from you. With this strategy, you will have to constantly remind you about yourself in discussions, at least so that the potential audience has a link to the profile before their eyes.
• Branded branch. This is a civilized way for commercial companies, but this possibility is not everywhere. The point is that some professional forums create their own branches for brands. There, companies publish their press releases and answer community questions from “Why do you have such a work format” to “Do you have such a model, but 41.5 sizes”.

Major entertainment / theme portals

There are not so many of them now, but it is from here that one can get a rather large influx of visitors. Only you need to work very carefully and remember the main dangers of accommodation:

• Since this is a very wide scope, then if you are successful, be prepared for the load on the site.
• If you do not agree, then be prepared to get a real tsunami of negative, which will have to work out.
• You are so cunning and not the first, so they will look at you in advance through the prism of “Did you come popiaritsya?” So you will need to write actual and useful things, otherwise you will not be able to work with negative.

Than useful

1. Behavioral. This is a great example of crowd-links with all the consequences: a lot of users, a lot of information for search engines, you can get a good overclocking for the site.
2. Reference weight. Since these are sites with good quality indicators, you will get some amount of reference weight from them (unless, of course, they close the links).
3. Mention. Even if the links are closed from indexing, you still get references to the brand in a good contextual environment, especially if there is a discussion in the comments.
4. Quick top. Pages with heated discussions on any topic are often pulled up by robots, especially if the site is positioning itself as news.
5. Potential for viral spread. If you succeed in “stepping on the callus” of the community, you can get a lot of links in social networks and on other major portals and news services with all the resulting bonuses. Just do not forget that the negative spreads with even greater speed.
6. Branding and feedback. You tell about yourself to the community, it remembers you. And the answer tells you about you. And almost certainly not only pleasant things. Write to forget nothing, and change for the better.

How to accommodate

It all depends on the rules of the portal itself and the format of the placements:

• Simple publication. If the portal works in the format of a live tape (for example, Pikabu), then we register and publish what we have in mind. Link set in the profile and organically fit into the post. Or do not enter, if you can not organically enter: it is better to wait, when asked in the comments, than to be accused of self-PR.
• Speaker. It happens that a resource works according to the rules of the journal, it has an editorial board and certain rules of work. Offer yourself as a regular author and absolutely legally and openly in the first person talk about what you think is important. In this case, the link you will probably be allowed to leave only in the profile and asked to adhere to the editorial policy.
• Comments Do not forget that you can express yourself not only in the post, but also under it. And often there you can get a more loyal attitude towards yourself. If you have something to say on the topic - write, argue, refer to the materials and examples on your website. Just remember that comments are usually rated as well.

Reviews

These are sites like Otzovika, where people publish opinions about products and services. I don’t mean here by Yandex.Market and other marketplaces, because for online stores it is one of the main channels of product promotion, and this is a full-fledged and daily work, and not the placement of links at your leisure.

Nuances to consider:

• Protection from fake reviews. Some resources require proof of purchase or identity.
• Pre-moderation. Often your reviews will be published only after verification.

Than useful

1. Reference weight. Large review sites can be attributed to the trust resources of the network, although you should not count on a lot of weight.
2. Traffic. As practice shows, with reviews you can get very stable, although usually not very large traffic. However, it all depends on the promotion of the brand, the numbers are impressive.
3. Behavioral. As the traffic goes involved and warmed up, you get an improvement in behavioral indicators, a decrease in the percentage of failures.
4. Rating systems. How much the number of “stars” that put your site, in its position, is not known for certain. We will consider it just a nice bonus in issuing, when your review page takes place in the top.
5. Commercial factors: approximately as with catalogs of companies.

How to accommodate

It all depends on the limitations and format of the site. There are several possibilities:

• Company card. If you are given to register a company, be sure to do this: get a link from your profile.
• Goods and services. There are also more detailed profiles in which you can add product lines and collect feedback on them.
• Reviews on the goods. Sometimes users leave their impressions not about a particular seller, but about a particular product. In this case, in reviews you can leave a link to this product on your website. Only, of course, not on my own behalf.
• Feedback on request. Some sites allow the user to ask a question about a particular company if it is not yet listed. And other users write their feedback on this request. Here you can act simultaneously both as a questioner and a respondent. Also not from his own face.
• Responses to reviews. On behalf of the company, which left a review, you can respond to positive and negative in its address. And in these answers refer to the pages of the site. Naturally, the indication of the link should be motivated and logical.

Question answer

These are sites like Mail.ru Answers, where users ask questions on all possible topics and get answers from other users. Services of this type are convenient here than:

• A constant influx of questions on the topic. You can go to the site once a week and for more or less popular topics during this time there will always be 1-2 questions minimum. So, you can post answers with a link on a regular basis and absolutely reasonably.
• Extremely simple publishing rules. To post a response, no special “merit” for the account is required, usually there is no pre-moderation. You write a question or answer, and it immediately appears.
• Perfect optimization of site pages for specific issues. Most people formulate the questions plus or minus equally, so when someone searches the search engine “What is a filter of zero resistance?”, He immediately gets a link to the page where this question is asked in exactly the same wording. And in the answers it receives your link to the desired section on your site.

Than useful

1. Reference weight. Similar to previous sites.
2. Traffic. This is also a crowd-link, a large number of users follow it.
3. Behavioral. If you are on the page correctly answered the question asked, then all these users whom you have attracted, increase the site’s behavior.
4. Mention. They are always useful for promotion in general, and for branding.

How to accommodate

There are two levels, you need to work on both:

• Answers We are looking for already asked questions on our topic, we answer them with a link to your site.
• Questions Even despite the popularity of these sites, there are always questions that have not yet been asked, or have been asked for a long time and a little. They can be found in the tips, Wordstat, or simply based on the logic of your site. It is necessary to formulate a question, ask it and give an answer with a link. Naturally, from different and not their accounts.

What's next

Having tried the channels listed above in a “relaxed”, episodic mode, you can roughly understand how they work, what to expect from them and what is required for their conquest.

And here the main thing to realize is a very simple, though not very encouraging thing: serious work in these areas requires financial investments. It doesn't matter if you want to receive traffic from forums and otzovikov, or to increase brand awareness through communities on social networks - if it comes to systemic work, then it takes time.

And then you will need to decide whose time you will pay: your own or a contractor. And whether you have it in principle. I know many examples when directors and employees successfully promote their own business without attracting third-party companies. But even more I know of cases when it ends with a zero result and an appeal to the agency.

That is why I always recommend trying my hand: it will not take too long. You will understand the main things:

• Do you like doing it yourself;
• Do you have time to do everything that you have planned;
• What percentage of potential actions you do not plan, because you obviously will not have time.

And finally, the most important thing without which it is not worth starting it all: metrics. You will never be able to understand and calculate the effectiveness of the above, unless you set up analytics systems and mark up links. At a minimum, put Google Analytics and Yandex.Metrica. It is useful in any case. You can add call tracking and track calls. You can configure pass-through analytics. The more deeply you analyze the data - the better you understand what works and what does not.