Idea to Get Back Links, Traffic, and Good Will

This might be somewhat obvious to many, but here’s a technique that I’ve been using to get some backlinks and traffic to a couple of my websites (not my blog). These are things you might consider to help your sites while helping others as well.

On Twitter and Facebook, I’ve noticed many companies and organizations discussing competitions or contests they are involved with that need votes from the general public for them to win.  They seem to focus a lot of energy publicizing their involvement and asking for support for them to win/make money. Additionally, many organizations hold annual events and need as much publicity as possible for them.

I’ve contacted some of these groups at various times and offered to post articles on my sites to help promote their cause, at no cost to them.  They send me articles, and I simply publish them, Tweet them, Digg them, and post them on Facebook.  Since the articles have somewhat of a relation to my sites’ content, the readers who visit can see why it’s posted so it’s not annoying to them, and they help the organizations and companies. I let them know I prefer recaps of press releases (rather than the duplicate release).

Additionally, and most importantly to the sites the articles are on, the organizations help promote the articles and drive traffic back to the sites. They are happy to share links to leading websites (on the category killer names) that are promoting their events and work. As you can imagine, doing something beneficial like this generates good will for my websites, traffic, and back links.