Link Building Hack - Five lines of JS that brought us a lot of backlinks
A few months ago I launched Pyre.gg which is a social network for gamers 🎮. To this day our main source of new users is through Search.
So we are always validating and testing how to improve our SEO. We currently have 150,000 users accessing monthly (not all registered).
We noticed that many people took part of our content and copied it on their websites or platforms and ended up losing some of the content's value. Until we did this little experiment. 🧪
Whenever someone copies our content we add the source at the end of the text. Although it is not foolproof, since it is possible to easily remove this text it has still yielded a good amount of backlink.
I hope it helps you too. 😁
Trending on Indie Hackers
I know this seems cool, the browser has a ton of APIs we never really think about, but it's know as "copy paste hijacking" and is seen by many as an anti pattern on the web.
Just google "copy paste hijacking" to get a feel for the sentiment on it.
Yeah, I love the ingenuity, but this can actually hurt your seo too. Be cautious.
As @aminmemon brought up in another comment, you can end up getting links from domains who have spammy reputations. And you have limited options of undoing the damage.
Yep that's right. I know a site which got roasted on HN for doing this a few months ago.
If I was OP, I would instead show a small popup(kinda like how unsplash does) and try to get more engagements from it.
"If I was OP, I would instead show a small popup(kinda like how unsplash does) and try to get more engagements from it."
I didn't remember that Unsplash had that mechanics. I will also test it.
Thank you!
No I meant as in, when you download an image on unsplash, they show a small popup asking you to credit the artist, plus a few other things. You can use the same mechanic when someone copies text.
Thanks Alex! I didn't know about this impact, I will study more about it; D
No worries!
Yeah the web is a bit of a minefield and the thought process for developers or product people is often, "this seems cool, it's supported by many browsers, let's do it!"
Definitely the trend is minimal interaction these days, scroll hijacking is also a common thing to hate on.
Very cool!
I might add that to our blogging platform https://versoly.com/
Love how indie hackers share everything :)
This is a nice growth hack.
How did you know they were copy-pasting your content?
What kind of content is this? I mean who copy-pastes content for their own blog/platform, it would hurt their SEO, right? I have seen auto-scrapers doing something like this but then all those are toxic backlinks that would hurt your SEO? I came across this using SEMrush's tool for finding toxic backlinks.
What am I missing here?
Much of our content is by UGC, at least for me it is common for users to write news and guides and share on other media.
Some people end up copying small pieces and it is quite clear when we look at sites/blogs that are in a smaller position than ours. (Often users themselves warn me that they found a site with very "similar" content)
Can this possible by install any plugin in wordpress , i want to use it on my site - http://fullformplanets.com/
Is there any WordPress plugin that can help install it to my website https://mp3cape.com
I'd really love to as people are copying with no credit.
i have tried this on one of client and i have faced a read bad impact on my rankings . This is really harmful in the long run
sorry, i'm a newbie - where do you paste the code?
thanks
Hi.
Sorry, newbie here - it looks great - but where do you put the code?
Sorry. Thanks.
Thanks Gui! Any idea how many backlinks you got from this tactic?
What a great idea!
Going to search how to use it on my Wordpress blog tonight)
ps. if anyone has any tips, you're welcome :)
That js code can easily be removed and text can be copied easily without making backlinks 😁
Yes, just as it is easy to add it is easy to remove.
Still, it has shown effect, since I imagine it generates an automatic opt-in to place the source of the content.
Can this possible by install any plugin in wordpress , i want to use it on my site - https://www.shoutmegaming.com
💡 Anyone looking for an idea? Here is a weekend project! A Wordpress plugin!
I think you may find by searching "js" on wordpress plugin search
Just checked you guys out on Ahrefs. Am I right that you only started the site in January? Where did you get your initial users from? The performance in search is pretty explosive.
No, we started in July last year. It shows January because we migrated our domain from pyre.com.br to pyre.gg to make it more "international".
We started mainly using social networks (Facebook mostly, which is still strong in Brazil). But little by little we analyzed our traffic and users and we saw our SEO was growing fast and we migrated our efforts to it.
(Although Search does not bring us the best type of user, it reaches a large audience and ends up having a CAC with more cost benefit.)
Man, that's a neat little hack!
haha, that's nice !
Thanks for the tips :)
This is an amazing idea!! Thanks for sharing.
Yeah, news website really like this strategy :)
Thanks for letting us know this awesome hack ;)
This is awesome, I’m gonna be putting this on my site today!