Licensing your content is a great way to gain links. The problem is that most business are not willing to change their business strategy for the sake of their website. Many businesses still see their website as just “a page” on the internet and are missing the most powerful marketing opportunity available. Many businesses already license their products or services in one way or another, so its not a big stretch to include in the details a link back to your web site.
Here are a few ways for different types of websites / business to license their content:
- Real estate companies: They take great photo’s of some houses to sell the house, but why stop there. Once the house sells, or even before it sells, add the photo’s to Flickr and use a Creative Commons license. This is really easy to do, requires no legal team, and will gain you some great links if your a good photographer.
- API / Web Services: SEOMoz provides a great API to get metrics on websites such as Page Authority, Domain Trust, and other really useful information. As a condition of using their free API, they specify that you link to their website. Although creating an API may seem like a large upfront task, if you invest in the money and create something of value, it will really pay off in the long run. Companies spend tens of thousands of dollars a month on ppc generating no long term ROI, why not spend some of that money on an API and create some strong organic results that will last a long time.
- Licensing content is another way to get links. Create graphs, images, or even industry reports for complimentary products and services. The key here is to invest in great work. For graphs and images, have a real artist create them. For industry reports, have an expert write it.
Licensing content can take time and money on your part, but its important to understand that strong natural search rankings are anything but free. On the bright side, its certainly less expensive than buying the keywords in ppc over a long period of time.
