You’ve heard the legends before: Create a tool, get it out in the internet and hordes of traffic will come in. Alternatively, create a tool, distribute it among webmasters and get thousands upon thousands of backlinks. If only reality were that easy.
Yes, it’s absolutely possible to get thousands of backlinks and visitors using tools and widgets. You’ve seen it before as you browsed plugin sites, template sites and tool sites. This tactic really works.
However, the side you don’t get to see is all the webmasters who’ve taken this path and failed. For any webmaster who’s created a tool and successfully gotten a lot of traffic, chances are there are dozens of webmasters who did the same thing and saw no results.
How can you make sure your efforts are rewarded rather than ignored?
#1 – Better or More Original Than Any Existing Tool
This is the first and most important rule. If you’re creating a tool, make sure it’s either better or more original than anything else out there.
For example, if you’re creating a Body Mass Index (BMI) calculator, take a look at all the other calculators on the market. Can you create something that’s better and more original? Can you create a calculator that gives them more stats than other calculators?
If not, then don’t do it. Your tools won’t rank in the search engines and won’t rank in tool or widget distribution websites of if you’re not original.
Don’t do “me too” tools and widgets.
#2 – Make Your Tool Viral Friendly
Make it simple and easy for people to share your tool with their friends.
Put Facebook likes and Twitter retweet buttons right on your website. Put an embed code for your tool at the bottom of your page, so anyone can embed it.
Ask people to share your content. Make it easy to invite their friends. If you can give them some sort of incentive to invite their friends, such as the ability to compare results, you’ll increase the virality of your tool.
#3 – Target Webmasters
Give your tool away to other webmasters, who can then republish the tool on their site. Do it for free.
This model strikes a lot of people as counter intuitive. After all, you’ve spent dozens if not hundreds of hours building the software. Or you’ve spend hundred or thousands of dollars getting it off the ground. Why should you give it away for free?
If you charged for it, chances are you’d make a few sales to hardcore developers, true fans or people who really need your widget. The reality is however, selling tools and plugins are very difficult.
On the other hand, if you gave it away for free, you could easily get hundreds or thousands of backlinks to your site. Make sure a link is embedded in the plugin.
These links will help you get ranked in the search engines. They’ll help you get thousands of other visitors to your site who could eventually end up buying from you.
#4 – Duplicate it on Other Platforms
Make your tool available on as many platforms as possible.
If you have it working in just plain HTML right now, write a version that other developers can use in WordPress. If right now you only have WordPress, expand to Drupal and Joomla.
If your tool is getting extremely popular, write a version for the iOS. Then write a version for the Android store.
Each time you write your tool, you tap into a different, brand new audience. As long as your tool is truly useful and original, it’ll spread, get traction and build a following no matter what platform you’re on. Each time you’ll get more backlinks, more buzz and higher rankings.
Using tools and widgets to build backlinks and get traffic is one of the most powerful yet overlooked methods of generating web traffic. It takes some experimentation to get it right, but once you do the efforts will more than pay off.
About Sameer Panjwani
Twitter: rommysunnyblog
says:
i agree with above points and i would like to state that now a days infographs and guest blogging has emeged as a new and authentic way to build backlinks.lots of most popular website like quicksprout,Kissmetrics social media examiner are taking help of infographs which has helped them in creating quality backlinks for their business.
Widget For Blogger recently posted..New Professional Tabbed Social Media Sharing Widget For Blogger
Twitter: rommysunnyblog
says:
nice one from you now a days guest blogging has emerged a new way to create backlinks along with instagrams and infographics.even neil patel of quicksprout mentiones about this infographs.your tips are too good and will help to create backlinks.thanks for sharing
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Twitter: IbangSR
says:
Thanks before for the tips, but until now I was afraid to get backlinks or traffic through tools or widgets.
Riki recently posted..Icandy Stroller
Great list of tips. I think you forgot to mention installing CommentLuv to entice users to post feedback.
Twitter: AppleMobileLeas
says:
Very interesting. In my quest for backlinks for my site I had never considered using a Tools and Widgets, but it does make sense how it would generate a great deal of traffic. Bravo to you my friend, think outside of the box.
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Thank you very much for the information. Is it really backlink can improve our keyword appears at the first page of google?
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Twitter: Taruhan Bola
says:
This is a very informative website, and it is helping a ton with my school project on the history of country! i couldnt find any other sites on the history of country, and weblogbetter was really great!
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thats a good strategy :) thanks for sharing
Arcadius recently posted..Portugal, Algarve, Perfect place for Wedding Photography
I think I will create free template blogger
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Twitter: Ajayudayagiri
says:
Great tips!
Building backlinks is the important strategy of blogging to rank well in the Google. So, these tips may help every blogger.
Thanks for sharing
Ajay recently posted..How To Backup Social Media Images?
Twitter: eyadi_aldivian
says:
Thank you for for the science guys, your article is very good. But I hope there are more interesting. Create a new you? I’m waiting.
Twitter: musicjaan
says:
Hey Sameer, thanks for the useful information, I have a little experience in blogging. I hope you idea about create backlinks will help me. Thanks for sharing this article.
Twitter: astrageeks
says:
These are the great tips that you have shared.Tools are very important in back linking thanks for sharing such a good post.
These are great tips that you have shared. But I feel, building links the natural way help in long run, rather than using some software or tool for massive link buildings.
Twitter: lankanewsz
says:
Interesting post, good explanation
dhanu recently posted..SLT deploys its FTTx technology with i-Sri Lanka project~
good job dude backlinks is tool to get more traffic and depend on my experience backlinks must have same niche with the post you put the backlinks.
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Nice to know some new point to create some quality backlinks but it’s seem hard to work on these point if your not able to create some thing very special then it’s just waste of time but we try something new in our lif e to get some thing good so trying something new is not a problem.
Twitter: zplasticsurgery
says:
Good job! This will help both readers and bloggers to interact with each other at the end of their informative blog posts. Readers can read their own feed back based on the blog posts they have read and at the same time, this will help them build links. ^^
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Twitter: GarmentsTerms
says:
Hey Sameer, thanks for the useful information, I have a little experience in blogging. I hope you idea about create backlinks will help me. Thanks for sharing this article.
Twitter: Taruhan Bola
says:
Hi sameer.
You make a good post. Many of the bloggers who use a tool to build backlinks. I see a lot of tools offered on the market to create a backlink faster. However, if you will use a tool, check whether the tool would work well and produce quality backlinks, and remember not to over-build backlinks in a short time. just because google will not like it that way. I like your writing.
Thanks
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Twitter: IndovisionAsia
says:
Dear Sameer, I use tools and widget like AddThis or ShareThis, are these worth it? I think those tools great for traffic but no for link building, because they masked our link with shorten URL. To be honest I have no idea for other tools because I use blogger for my site. But you gave me some tips to create more links. Could you tell me about Google policy for this steps?
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Thanks for the information, I do need lots of back link and this article do help me to have better understanding on how to get more of them.
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Twitter: manseadvance
says:
Case in point, here’s a free traffic generator and natural backlink creation tool any blog can use on their site. It avoids the pitfalls of widgets like ‘comment luv’ and only provides quality, respectable, spam free results.
ManseAdvance Widget
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Twitter: sparklingweb
says:
Sameer definitely your post reveals secrets of building backlinks which are ignored by many webmasters! Keep your great ideas coming!
Talha recently posted..Best Shoulder Exercises – Secrets For Building Massive Shoulders!
Great post Sameer! Well tools and widgets are tricky things.. especially if you are not a blog guru like me!
However, I strongly agree with you that if you bother to create a widget or a tool for your blog, you better make it really good and unique. Making a medium quality tool or a very simular to an already existing one, is a waste of time!
Thank you for sharing!
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Twitter: JimiAntoniou
says:
I have made some wordpress themes in the past.
The truth is that the link I put in the footer has proven to be my most successful link ever.
I am now thinking of building a shareable tool for blogs to use.
I might create it as a plugin for wordpress maybe for freelancers (find jobs near them or something).
Do you think that a wordpress plugin could get viral?
There are many many many other plugins already…
I have to rethink it maybe.
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Twitter: onlinemaximizer
says:
Thanks everyone for their valuable comments. Looking forward to hearing everyone’s success stories..
Twitter: mdimranmondal
says:
Thank you for the valuable info . But its not so easy to create a widget for a newbie .If they can do it it will help them ;)
Twitter: collegeocontent
says:
there is a site called widget box, as you can create widgets easily from there.
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Twitter: mdimranmondal
says:
Thank you for providing some valuable information .I am a newbie and trying to be succeed. That a new idea for me and a will try to do it.Thank you again :)
Sameer, you are so right, anything that is really unique, be it a cool tool, a great ebook or just something that people really want are great ways to build traffic.
I would add something though, your tool needs to be targeted to the niche. For instance if you had a tool for building backlinks on a gardening website, you might get a lot more traffic and some backlinks…but it would be completely untargetted and not really worth very much. But a tool to target when to plant certain plants..would be awesome.
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#1 is very important. It takes a lot of time to develop something worthwhile. If you’re going to do it- you need to make sure that it is better than what is already out there. If it’s not, people aren’t going to use it.
Yes, i believe this is good way to get thousands of backlinks as well as visitors by developing and pushing tools or widgets but i would like to give more emphasize on the tool or widget uniqueness. The idea of tool should be unique or have some advanced features as compare to prevalent one and along with this tool should or widget should be user friendly and help something to get solution otherwise as you said not all webmasters go success……
Twitter: b24solutions
says:
Hii Sameer.. Thanks for sharing this. It’s an awesome way to generate backlinks. It’s a good strategy that, make a tool more original, easy for use and freely available. If we follow this we will definitely get lot of traffic and backlinks.
Looks good but I’m afraid google may consider these links to be unnatural, dont you think? I prefer not to use tools and widgets for getting backlinks
Twitter: Zeeshan
says:
Awesome post ! It contains very useful information.Thanks for sharing such a valuable knowledge.
Tools are very important in in backlinking and we should be aware with it.. I hope this can help a lot.. Thanks for the great information you posted here..
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Thanks a lot man for sharing this topic and tips that how can we build more and more backlinks using some SEO tools. I would like to share these tips with all of my friends. Would come soon on this blog
Thanks
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Thanks, it is a very good thing to give away free tools online, because it will help your search engine back linking strategy enormously.I very learn this post….
I agree that more people should try your tool before you can use it massively , but I still think that using tool while creating links leads to some failure as link should be natural and they should come natural. When we use a tool we usually create masses of links which can look like spamming.
Twitter: SaiTheGeek
says:
well epxlained Sameer Panjwani,
by the way recently i heard that Google is penalizing the sites if building back links through automatic tools,bots . so this method is safe ?
sai krishna recently posted..How To Open Blocked Facebook Websites In School,Office
It a very good strategy to give away some version of the tool for free, or even the whole thing. Just be sure to choose a business model. The ways to make money from free things are described very well in a book a read recently (it is called FREE and the author is Chris Anderson). I recommend it to everyone.
I also like what you say about maximizing the audience by making it for different platforms. You can even make different languages if I may add. But whatever you do I think you have to give it a little push in the beginning with some advertising or something. Just to get the things going.
Regards.
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Twitter: collegeocontent
says:
yes it is a very good thing to give away free tools online, because it will help your search engine back linking strategy enormously.
College of Content recently posted..How to Diversify Your Organic Backink Building Strategy
Twitter: Pcmaster0
says:
Well, gotta say, these are some out of box tips to get quality backlinks and be a blogging hero in a short time. It’s some creativity is all what we need here, rest it’s all viral.
Thanks for the insights :)
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Twitter: collegeocontent
says:
do you use a an out-of-the-box back linking strategy?
College of Content recently posted..How to Diversify Your Organic Backink Building Strategy
Twitter: collegeocontent
says:
Great minds think alike. College of Content is writing a post right now about building backlinks too!
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Twitter: makemoneyinlife
says:
Interesting post, which tool do you recommend and that you used personally?
bookmarked it :)
Twitter: christinaxioymail.com
says:
Thanks for the marvelous posting! I truly enjoyed reading it, you are a great
yeah instead of buying some heavy priced backlinks packages one should follow these tips.
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Twitter: superdrug_saver
says:
I used to see your post and see updated information in that. Really appreciate your ideas and thoughts you come up with and share it here. Its like a more discussion point for me some time and make me to think on.Thanks
Twitter: trungpc81
says:
I love point #1, I also think we have to re-do something better or, if we can’t, don’t do it, ignore it and find the other ways :)
Trung Nguyen recently posted..How to Start a Blog That Will Generate Income?
Twitter: TechTricksWorld
says:
Nice way of building links. So many traditional ways are not working these days because of google’s algo change. I think these can work well.
Atish recently posted..Blogging Tips For Beginners
Thanks for such practical things to do. A lot of times we think that there are such complicated strategies to execute to get traffic to flow. It is simple- connecting with people and giving….
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Twitter: christinaxioymail.com
says:
I always visit new blog everyday and i found your blog.
Twitter: howtospecialist
says:
Although the online environment is very competitive, I think there are still many opportunities to exploit. The main issue is to create an useful tool, but to be unique in the same time.
Jack Sander recently posted..Bbq pit plans
Twitter: techinitio
says:
That’s exactly the crucial part. Be unique! Noone gives that much attention to something he has already seen. Totally agree with you there.
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Twitter: latsouc
says:
Thank you for this advice. In fact, for a good traffic I work especially on the social aspect and the contents of my site. See you soon.
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Thanks for sharing with us these great tips, I do love to pin it with my friends… I know that this will help them too….
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Twitter: davelucas
says:
Ah Sameer! Making a tool is quite a challenge! I’m on the case! :)
Dave Lucas recently posted..New Blogger Interface Problems
Twitter: blogger_navin
says:
Sameer Panjwani i am trying this strategy. seems cool and easy actually is not. btw its the awesome idea for now. :)
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