Ding! You’ve got homework!

If you’re attending SEOBash this Saturday, I’m going to be giving away some awesome free links to attendees. That’s right - for free; from an aged authority site with over 11,000 backlinks, a dozen of which are .edu’s.

But you’ve got do just a bit of homework. What you need to do is write a 200-500 word article on a subject that relates to your website. Burn the article to a CD or DVD and bring it along with you to the meeting.

Here’s what you should have in the article:

- the article should be general in nature, about a subject relating to your website. i.e. not an overt ad for your site.

- minor formatting such as ul or paragraph tags are OK. Page layout or other design should not be included.

- include various keywords related to your topic. Use some synonyms and keyword variations.

- pick some nice keywords from within the body of the text of your article and link to your site three times using those keywords. Consider linking to some internal pages of your site as well.

For example, if you do webhosting, you could write an article on things to consider when looking for webhosting - uptime, guarantees, bandwidth, and so on. Then you could link to your site with the terms ‘webhosting in toronto’. Or if you have a site where you sell suits, write an article on how to fit a suit. Include some suit types, and link to some pages on your site that offer those types of suits.

I’ll be discussing this ‘article’ technique in my presentation on link development, these articles are commonly called presell pages.

Include a small text file with your contact info on the CD as well, just in case I need to contact you after the fact or have questions on your article.

I’ll reserve the right to review the articles and decline any that I don’t feel are for quality sites (i.e. MFA’s, pure affiliate content, rough backlinks, etc.).

I have to limit this to attendees only. I normally charge for this type of link from this specific site. And you need to bring the article to the meeting - I’m not looking for more organizational work after the event :).