I always like to watch what others are doing in building links and qualified traffic to a site. Joel Comm has been around online for quite a few years having set up a games site before selling it to Yahoo!



His latest project in the next internet millionaire- A reality online TV program, with a similarity to the Apprentice - Hey if it works well on normal TV, why note take it online in a niche area.

Not all that targeted, just for those who want to make money online.

His superstar contest included using the contest itself to create traffic- pretty smart. For example he firstly used the contestants to put videos up on youtube and get the friends to vote for each of them at the next internet millionaire site.

Then, in exchange for a listing on the superstars page at the site (which is no longer visible from the home page), you needs to take a number of actions in which you gain points.

To get listed on the site you needed to gain at least 50 points. Since the maximum points you could gain per action was 10, you had to perform at least 5 actions to get listed. How is that for a multi linking/traffic strategy?

These actions included:

#1) "Digg" the video. ? A vote for the site at the social networking site Digg.com

#2) Rate the video at YouTube- The more good rating the video gets, then the higher it gets up the rating, the more stars then the more people see it and it ends up on the home page of YouTube

#3) Embed the video somewhere in a site- Easiest option is blog so also the site would mostly get a normal link to the site as well. (I found a few like that)

#4) Link to them- A normal link to the site, which gets you 10 point. If you complete this task, you are qualified to enter the Ipod giveaway contest- A nice incentive

#5) Tell your friends and family ? He asks them to "pass on the information" on.

#6) Become a MySpace friend. [5 points] ? In which you ask to become a friend of there Myspace site

#7) Visit the Squidoo page. [5 points] This is a very quick task. Just go to the Squidoo page (called a "Squidoo lens") and give us a 5 star rating.

#8) Stumble Upon Us. [5 points] Install the super cool StumbleUpon toolbar. After you've installed it, need to go to the website and while you're on the site, give it a "thumbs up" on your StumbleUpon toolbar, and click the "comment on this page" button to give it a good review.

#9) Submit a Press Release. [25 points] This is only for people who have auditioned for the show. You can help them and get free publicity for yourself at the same time by submitting a press release to the media about your involvement with our show!

If you look at the list you will see he has aimed at the search traffic with normal links, the social market using myspace and youtube as well as traditional marketing using press releases.

This is sure to bring plenty of traffic from many marketing areas of the internet. If you were to apply any or all of the strategies above, with a view to getting natural search engine traffic (which most likely wasn't his major goal) then I would suggest the following change: A focus on varied links text.

Here's what I mean ?Its unnatural for ALL the links to your site to have * exactly * the same text in the links. Its unlikely to happen, at the same time you don't want to confuse Google. You site is about one subject, so you want to focus around that subject. Lets look a practical example.

A web site sells "Dog Clothes" online- you would want the links to your site to be something like this

Dog clothes- majority of links Designer Dog clothes ? some of your links Small Dog clothes ?the rest of your links.

You see that's very logical, also you will get some people who will link to your site with your URL which is also to be expected. You have kept the base keyword and then add the next most likely keyword. Make sense doesn't it?

So when you are looking to build links to your site, especially for the primary purpose of search engine ranking, keep in mind the base keyword and any words that can build off that base keyword.

At the same time, looking at what Joel Comm has done, what reason can you provide for your visitors to work for you, link to you, how much value can you provide for them to link to your site.