Guest post by Jay
In the world of SEO, we spend hours, days and weeks trying to come up with ways to get links. And while links are the life blood of SEO, they are also ways in which traffic can funnel from one site to the other. They are the arteries of the Internet.
Unfortunately, getting links can prove difficult, especially when they are a newer company that doesn’t have the resources to create in depth link bait.
Considering most link bait fails, it can be incredibly difficult to get links to your site. And, without that link juice funneling from your home page to your content pages, how will you ever rank?
I understand your worries and I’m here to offer some guidance. As an SEO consultant, I have offered support to numerous companies including coupon websites. These are sites that have offers for products all over the place from Island Surf to Navteq (Google them, they have nothing in common). And I noticed something that was really interesting on many of these sites: not only do they provide the coupon link, they also tend to link to the company name.
In other words, not only is the company getting the potential business from the coupon code that is being propagated all over the web, but the company is also getting link juice. Since link juice, generally, funnels down from the home page to the deep pages (if it’s done correctly), getting all of these extra sites to link to you is obviously common sense.
But, what about those websites that aren’t coupon related? How do you go about getting links from them?
That’s the tricky part, but it isn’t impossible either. Known as horizontal link building, what you are effectively doing is expanding your link portfolio to all sorts of sites. Any link is a good link so long as it’s natural. And that’s what we’re looking to gain from this.
If you own a company where you’re going to give a coupon away, encourage your readers to link back to you. It’s the call to action on top of the coupon. The way to do that is, like I said above, to offer encouragement. People are, often times, willing to do something if they are just asked to.
Underneath the coupon code, include the code for a link to anywhere you want on your site (homepage or the coupon page). There are perks to doing either the homepage or the coupon page. If you link to the homepage, then the link juice will flow throughout all of your pages. However, if you link to the coupon page, you’ll be getting a link to a page that wouldn’t normally get many links.
But, let’s take it a step further. I can hear people saying, “Homepage is the way to go because if I like to my coupon page, what happens when I get rid of that coupon page?” I know, you’re afraid of losing all of the links you got.
Why not do a 301 redirect? A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect in the eyes of Google. And they pass anywhere from 90-99% of the original amount of link juice. Therefore, do a 301 redirect from the old coupon page to either your homepage or to the next level up.
Let’s say your site is domain.com. And you have a domain.com/coupons directory that lists all your coupons. So, your 25% off coupon is listed at domain.com/coupons/25-off-sale. All of these links are pointing to the /25-off-sale/ page, but when that page goes away, you can do a 301 redirect from there to /coupons.
Since most people looking for a 25% coupon are probably going to be interested in any coupon, you are funneling link juice into the coupon page. But, even if you don’t have a coupon page, you can always funnel it into your homepage. That’s better than nothing.
It doesn’t matter where the links are coming from because Google will see that they are natural links. And, this isn’t you buying the links either. If you were trading the coupon for the links, that would be highly unethical. But, since you are offering them the coupon regardless if they link back to you, then that’s perfectly acceptable. Google has no qualms with you making it easy for people to link to you, so long as you don’t cheat.
So, the next time you offer a coupon out, try and get some links from it too. You’ll gain more search engine traffic and that could result in more business.
Jay is an Internet marketing consultant who specializes in helping companies increase business by offering discounts and coupons. He also works with coupon websites that reveal offers for products such as Navteq and Island Surf. His current project includes offers such as Island Surf Coupon Codes and Navteq code.
About Guest Author
Twitter: christinaxioymail.com
says:
Thanks for the marvelous posting! I truly enjoyed reading it, you are a great author.
Twitter: GTAMattKerr
says:
Awesome post. I had never come across this idea. Will deff try and find a way to incorporate this into some of my larger sites.
Thanks :)
Hi Jay,
Honestly I’ve never been think this trick before. Undeniable, create backlinks is a tough task. But to gain more traffic come to your site, you must to do that. I like to know more about this backlink strategy. I’m totally new to this. I hope you can create a guide video and post it here on the next update.
Regards,
Bryan
PapaJohns Coupons recently posted..PapaJohns Coupon Codes From Dealigg
Hi,
im new to seo..can anyone explain what is coupon links…
It never really occured to me to use coupons to gain links. I did read that coupon sites are doing very good business during the past 4-5 years, so it comes as no surprise. It’s certainly a startegy I will consider to generate income from the Internet.
I dont think buying a link boost your traffic in long term also Google doesn’t like this approch!
rahul recently posted..Hacking Alert: Personal Details of 13 million South Korean subscribers Leaked By Hackers
Twitter: ToasteeRobe
says:
That is interesting that this did not dawn on me sooner because I actually use coupons which obviously link to their sites but never thought about it for my own. Thanks to your blog for the light turning on, i think i’ll look in to it. Thanks Again!
Very nice information. Can you tell me some coupons site name.
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Thanks for a very interesting article. I have never considered this approach, using coupon sites.
Seb from Pedometer watches recently posted..Pedometer Watches and Pedometers
Twitter: Janis167
says:
This was really interesting, thank you. Never thought about coupons :)
I am a SEO lerrner. these tips are just great for me. thanks for sharing such valuable tips.
THis is indeed a great idea. Thanks for this comprehensive ideas.
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I am a new comer in SEO industry and i am learning slowly. It is very helpful article for me. as i have come to
know some useful information from the post.
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I had no idea you could do this! What a great idea. I’m new to seo, and soaking up as much info as I can. Thanks a lot! I’ll be sticking around for more helpful tips.
I have no idea that i can get links for selling coupons on line.. My friend offers me to be her business partner in a coupon sites.I think it’s time to grab her offer.
I have blog similar to yours just on my language! You have really nice blog with great posts! Keep it up!
Great idea, have you got any good examples of some coupon sites? I doubt these links will carry as much weight as say… a link within a post. But this seems like quite an easy strategy and a bit of link diversity can’t be a bad thing… Cheers!
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What are some examples of coupon websites? I think this is a great idea, but where do I go to promote my coupons?
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Jay,
This is definitely some food for thought. I’d not really thought of using coupons in this way. Sounds like a pretty interesting strategy that may really work as part of a good backlinking strategy overall.
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Twitter: ditesco
says:
Very interesting. This tactic is certainly something to think about, although I am very curious to see how these links are treated by “search engines”. I guess, just like anything else, the “coupon links” should be coming from trusted and quality sites. Thanks for the heads up!
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Very interesting! I feel dumb for not having thought of this before. Thanks Jay. Looking forward to reading more strategies from you.
Anish G. recently posted..HRT Music Streamer II Review – Our HRT Streamer II Reviews
Giving the link to the coupon page is the best option. So that it encourage the user to look for some other special coupons. But i haven’t try this method. Hope to try the best.
Sorry I have made a mistake. I would like to say that you can build a lot of “links” by posting the information about your discounts at various websites. Just typing error.
Terje Sannarnes recently posted..Effective Ways of Internal Linking for Website of an Entrepreneur
Discount coupons are extremely important for a marketing strategy of an online resource. They allow online business owners to obtain a lot of incoming links and potential clients. Discount coupons are a good way to build incoming links for a website. For example, if you deal with hosting you can build a lot of coupons by posting the information about your discounts at various websites.
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