Wouldn’t it be great if you wrote such excellent copy on your site that everyone
would knock on your door just to give you a review? Well, life doesn’t happen that
way, but you can rig the popularity contest a bit by paying other people to review
your site. Granted, there are places that will review your site for free, like
BlogRaters.com, but they decide whom they review and when.
If your site isn’t in their top 10 or 25 most popular categories to review, you
probably won’t be reviewed. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to get your site
reviewed in free sites, just don’t expect them to bust down your door with free
advertising. The advantage is that they don’t cost you anything to try and get that
one-way backlink, other than some sweat equity. So, we will discuss ways to get
free reviews and also where to buy paid reviews for your site.
You can also have a site that reviews other sites, like BlogRaters.com. This strategy
will get you backlinks, but they won’t be one-way backlinks. The disadvantage is
that most likely they will be reciprocal backlinks. You write a review and link to the
site you are reviewing, and they link back to you if you gave them a favorable
review. Other sites might link to you if they are consumer watchdogs and you hand
out a bad review. Either way, the backlinks are somewhat reciprocal and won’t
count as much as if you paid someone to review you and gave them no backlink
also. Yet, if your website can afford to do a niche this way, it can drive traffic to
your site even if it doesn’t have as much impact on your PageRank.
Don’t forget that anything can be the source of a review. It doesn’t have to be a
witty article. The same places you submit your software offerings to will also review
that software. Anything that you are selling, producing, or offering can be the
source of a review. If you are the first on the Internet to sell some clever widget,
you can get it reviewed on a top-rated site. For instance, download.com is a PR8
and is always looking for new things to review. So, don’t think you are limited
because you don’t have anything to review. Even your website, as a whole, can be
reviewed.
WHERE TO GET FREE REVIEWS
Social networking sites are some of the best places to get free reviews. People
there are talking about other people all the time. Of course, they take a bit more
legwork than other sites because you will need to participate in the community and
establish a presence before you can ask other people for reviews. A different way would be to have something to review, other then your great personality and back
linked website.
Whether you are selling art, as in Deviantart.com, or just trying to get your site
linked up on StumbleUpon.com and reviewed, it will create some nice backlinks
back to your main site. You can even submit reviews to places that are constantly
looking for reviews for new products – even if it’s not one you are selling! If you are
one of the first people to review a product, you will be at the top of the heap and
that backlink will generate good traffic as well as help your PR. If you have a unique
product you are trying to sell, g this product for a review? If it happens to fit in an
envelope, think about mass mailing it to webmasters in your niche and requesting a
review of your product. Even better, offer the product up for sale on places that
allow you to link back to your site, like Craigslist.com.
There are sites that review websites as part of their sole purpose in life. You can
submit your website to be reviewed and get a valuable backlink. The only problem
here is that you are not guaranteeing a positive review. If they think your layout
sucks, they’ll probably say so. So, you might get a one-way backlink, but it might
not be favorable. That’s the risk you take in submitting to the website domain
review sites.
Blogs are also a great source of free reviews, but you will most likely have to
exchange with the blogger for a review of their own too. There are several ways to
do this and you will have to give tit for tat with most bloggers. So, you will probably
have to establish your own blog under your domain in order to take advantage of
the social networking within blog communities. However, a blog is an excellent way
to generate free backlinks.
Here are some ways to generate free reviews and backlinks from the blogging
community:
Exchange reviews with single bloggers
Many bloggers are willing to exchange reviews on each other’s site to help
establish more backlinks. This isn’t necessarily the best way to get a free
backlink, as it is reciprocal. However, it plugs you into the blogging
community fairly quickly.
Sign up for a review exchange for multiple bloggers Reveiwback.com
is one such site that gives you the ability to contact multiple bloggers and
exchange reviews without having to scout all over the Internet.
Have a review contest
Bloggers will often sponsor a contest offering some incentive to post a quality
review of their site. This way, they do get many reviews, but not all of them
are paid. Only the one that wins is paid, and the rest are free.
Host a blog carnival
Generally, you can host a carnival on any topic and invite noted bloggers to
contribute to the carnival in exchange for links. They link to your site when
they post their submission and you link back to them to show who submitted.
Link bait a blog post
This is a strategy where you find some blog with a high PR and then post a
review of some post they did either attacking, being contrary, or bringing
some humorous angle to the post. Then, go back to the original blog posting
and comment on why you have an opposing view or what you think is funny
about the blogger’s post. Either way, you are likely to get some quick
attention this way. This strategy can backfire if you come off as a frequent
troll instead of someone with an opposing view.
Look for trophies
Do you think your blog could win awards? Maybe you should submit it to award sites and see if you can collect a few backlinks while you’re at it. This
strategy can even work with websites too, not just blogs.
WHERE TO GET PAID REVIEWS
If you want a little more control over the process of getting reviews and the cash in
hand, it can do your website a lot of good to pay for reviews. There are significant
advantages to paying for reviews by controlling what it is that people on the
Internet are saying about you. Exactly how much control you have depends on
whether you hire the review yourself or whether you go through a third-party that
links you with people who will review sites for pay.
In the second instance, you may not get a favorable review. This is because third
parties that hire bloggers, like ReviewMe.com, do not guarantee a positive review
and bloggers deem themselves independent contractors. They feel they are being
paid to review a site (not to offer positive feedback), and this group is particularly
sensitive to rigging the Internet to favor people with money. So, that is a question
of “buyer beware” and you should check the postings that you paid for reviews to
see if they are worth the money you spent.
If you want to be sure what level of control you have on the review, be sure to read
the terms of the agreement thoroughly before signing up for a third party
networker package of paid reviews. ReviewMe.com does offer a separate package
where you can sign up an “advertorial” which is a review that is sponsored to be
positive with a message that you control. It costs more to do this, however, but
might be worth the extra cost.
Another excellent place to post job bids for reviews is called PayPerPost.com.
They offer the ability to post jobs that are either buzz, review, or opinions. Buzz
would be used for a new product or feature that you want to stir up some interest
for on the Web. Review is for a honest review of an offering on your site. The difference is that advertisers can ban or bench bloggers that they find are not
meeting the standards they need from the advertising dollars they paid. These
bloggers will not be allowed to take a job opportunity that you post. When banning,
they will never be allowed to take your job bids and benching just puts them on the
sidelines for a while. If an advertiser likes a blogger but finds they need a wider
audience, they might bench them instead of banning them. This will make them
inactive to bid on that advertiser’s jobs for a period of time.
SponsoredReviews.com will allow you to hire reviewers for your copy. The
difference here is that they offer the advertiser to search for bloggers that meet
their criteria and/or just post the job and let them find the advertiser. You won’t
have the level of control on reviews here as you might with ReviewMe’s
advertorials, but if you have a good product/service it really doesn’t matter.
WHAT REVIEWS COST
Reviews are expensive to buy, in comparison to other ways to get backlinks. A
single review can cost up to $100. If you try to obtain independent bloggers to
review your products, you will probably be paying top dollar. The network of
bloggers that other third party companies use will rely on the PageRank rating and
other publicity factors to choose their bloggers. They might be able to get you a
better deal, but it will still be costly in comparison to other ways to generate
backlinks. Generally, the more control you want over the message, the more you
will end up paying for the review. Some third party companies, like
SponsoredReviews.com, take a percentage of the total price of the review off the
top and that’s how they get their cut.
If you decide to go the paid review route, just be aware that this is a highly
controversial area for everyone involved: advertisers, publishers, and search engine
designers. What works one day may get you penalized the next day. Of course, if
you are managing your backlinks and PageRank actively that’s just par for the
course. There is no area of the Internet that is stagnant from one minute to the next. The key is to constantly monitor your marketing strategy and adapt to the
changing environment to best optimize your chances at making money down the
road.