I’ve decided to make a little change to the rules for the Review My Blog for a free linkback promotion. From now on, a review must link to this post and the blog home page using any of the following anchor text:
- make money
- make money online
- make money at home
- making money
- make money from home
- make money on the internet
Here’s an example of what I want.
John Chow dot Com is a blog that helps you make money. He is offering to link to your blog if you review his blog.
Other than the above requirements, you are free to say whatever you want in the review - good or bad. You are also free to link to any articles I’ve written as part of the review. The post must be a review of this blog. You can not mix it with any other posts or reviews.
The Importance Of The Anchor Text
This post is also a lesson on the importance of linking with keywords or phases. In the Evil Nintendo Wii Blog Contest, I asked people to link to me using “root of all evil.” If you do a Google search for that phrase, you’ll see I am now ranked number three, just behind Wikipedia and RootOfAllEvil.com.
While it’s fun to rank for root of all evil, not many people search for that phase. However, according to the Overture keyword selector tool, there are over 44,000 searches every month for make money online. If I can get on page one of Google for that phrase, it would mean a flood of new traffic.
Since I am asking you to link to me with a specific anchor text, I am going to offer you the same thing. Review my blog according to the above rules and I’ll link to your review and I’ll link to your blog home page using whatever anchor text you want. Just don’t use “make money online”. 
If you’ve posted a review of my blog before and want to do it again under the new rules, feel free to do so. This is great way to get linked back to your blog using a proper anchor text. Once your review is posted, send me an email with the URL and the text you want to anchor your home page.
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(22 votes, average: 2.59 out of 5)
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is it permissable for a non blog to link to you with said text and expect a link back?
As long as the site is not warez, gambling or any other bad things, I don’t see why not. Go for it.
Hehe, John’s pretty footloose and fancy free with his rules. Rightfully so. There’s no reason to exclude a perfectly reasonable website because it doesn’t fit with the blog format. The list of sites you do exclude are reasonable too as they’re a pretty standard exclusion across the web.
It’s all about the SEO!
It’s good to change the rules once in a while - keeps people on their toes!
I like the flexability that john allows his readers, regardless of blog or not.
I don’t really trust John’s definition of “bad”
.
What makes you say that, the “toys” he’s been getting to review???
It is a great scheme, and no one will be able to match it unless they have a massive loyal readership or following like John does. With all of the “make money online” link-backs generated by this promotion, I don’t see how John won’t make it to the Google front page for that keyword.
I would try it, but I don’t have enough website owners / bloggers that follow my sites. John has quite a unique audience and readership at his disposal.
Kudos again!
Thanks,
Wesley…
http://DVDRentalForums.com Leran about DVD Rental Services!
http://WesleyTech.com Blu-ray, HD DVD & Optical storage info!
Oh wow, that’s a brilliant idea. I’ll have to get a review in sometime soon!
More evilness
Pure, pure evil. I’m going to call my first born child “Make Money Online” and see if he/she can beat you!
Kumiko
xo
Haha.. you better start soon, seems like John has a HUGE head start!
john has already sold his soul to the devil . . . just make sure you get a good ROI for your kid
It’s not evil, it’s genius!!
How about we compromise and say that it’s evil genius?
or is being genius evil?
Hey John,
Not being a super Google expert, but isn’t referring to you as the root of all evil a Google Bomb? Not that I mind, but I thought they had stopped Google Bombs.
Keep up the evilness.
Yeah, it seems to be a Google bomb (but one that is clearly working).
I’d stick with it till the bomb expoldes
The other thing is that reciprocal links supposedly cancel each other out, the fact that John gives a linkback will reduce the effect of the reviews, that said, the sheer volume should take effect…
It is a Google Bomb, that’s the point!
Is that allowed by Google???
I was under the impression that they only diminished the effect of the “I’m Feeling Lucky” link bombs. Google wouldn’t negate effective link-building with targeted anchor links.
If Google truly penalized you for linking how does Digg maintain such a high PR? That site is nothing but outgoing links!
True…those darn diggers, they get away with everything
This is a very evil scheme!
My blog is called, “Making Money on the web”, but I don’t think I can beat Seth Godin’s book of the same name.
I have a blog on a domain where there is a book of the same name, thats one of the reasons I chose it. I could see people searching for similar informaiton on Amazon, but there were no sites specifically catering for that niche, so I created one
Good idea Jez, at a way to be creative and proactive!
That is an amazing idea John. Props for coming up with it!
Too bad I already have a review in though
I said anyone who has reviewed me already can do it again under the new rules.
Double trouble! youll be writing a lot more posts reviewing the reviews then!!
You are evil!
You’re a very smart man and a wonderful writer, I admire you very much. Good job on all of this! Once I get my web dev. blog up I will write you a review. 
That’s a really good idea John.
I’ve started writing my review of your blog, but I’m not going to finish it until I upgrade my blog (new design soon)
I don’t know .. I would prefer giving reviewers who are taking the time and effort to write a review, the freedom to choose the specific anchor text. After all, it’s their writing style, their readers and their blog.
Compared to receiving a nice fat contextual keyword link and a keyword link in a list that is devoid of context, I’ll much rather receive the former.
Good luck cracking the top 5. You can bet the other websites won’t relinquish their position easily, especially when it comes to a competitive keyword.
See you at the top
He’s still letting you write whatever you want. I’m sure that somewhere in your review of this blog, the term “make money online” or some variant is bound to pop up.
I understand your point Michael. Yes, it’s fairly accurate to say that the term will pop up somewhere in the text and I’m aware that John isn’t making the reviewers write all good stuff about his blog.
My point is this: reviews without the designated anchor text will be rejected. The reviewer doesn’t have autonomy over where to point the link (must point to homepage + specific post) as well as the link text itself.
This makes it somewhat like all the adverts I see on PPP everyday, each with specific anchors pointing to specific URLs.
Why not still maintain the old Review My Blog policy but allow reviewers that use the designated anchor text, the ability to choose the anchor text for John to link to them?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure John will get tremendous benefits from this scheme because of his wide readership and following.
This has always been the way he does stuff on his blog and I wouldn’t expect anything else.
Just wanted to point out my thoughts on this issue.
I agree, it would be better to suggest the how the anchor text is keyworded, but allow for some variation, I think that would probably give better SEO than an “exact” term repeated accross many sites.
Search engines use text in the title attribute of link tags for keywords as well, do they not? Perhaps a good compromise would be just to require the phrase in the title attribute.
Absolutely, this is a very important field with the review…
[...] The master of this tactic is the root of all evil himself, John Chow. He has previously sponsored a contest to review his site in exchange for a return link to yours. His latest brainchild link request contest involves giving [...]
Great idea to build the Google ranking!
I have just read tons of your posts and I have to say this is a wonderful resource with lots of good fresh ideas. Keep up the great job.
I just reviewed your site yesterday under the old rules. It hasn’t appeared yet on one of the linkback lists. Should I go back and change the link? Thanks!
Up to you. If you can change it or make a new post.
Way to google bomb!
http://www.weeklyhiphop.com
Why would you include a link to your site? It’s a nofollow link, and you already have it in the title of your comment?
You tell him Sam!
I always wonder why people do that! Is it supposed to be their signature? Don’t they realize they don’t get a linkback for it?
Personally, I won’t visit the site of someone who does that!
Now thats the true definition of spam, what do you think spaman..i mean saman
Are you trying to get banned from Google too? hahaha . . I love how you walk the fine line! The thing is your blog is about making money online, so I guess they can’t really argue that you’re bs-ing the system.
FWIW, I’m seeing you as #4 on the search for root of all evil. You’re slipping John!
As soon as more people find out about the Wii contest, he’ll move up to #1 pretty quickly
Yup…that Wii contest will help a lot, especially because it runs till the end of the month…so lots of time to get lots of links
Someone just told me about your plan, so I stopped by to check it out. Good idea. Currently, my blog is ranked in the top 10 on Google for that term and the traffic is not bad. It took a long time, but it might have been quicker if I had been as creative you are being.
If you are interested we could exchange links or cross promote our sites in a way that might help both of us get and stay in the top 10 for that keyword phrase.
All the best,
George
anchor text is very important when it comes to link building