Embedded Widgets For Link Development

[msafi]

I read here that embedded widgets can be an easy way to get other websites to link to yours.

Some company in my industry issued a highly technical and comprehensive report. I want to take that report, digest it, put the information in tables, and create a user-friendly widget where the user will just make a couple of selections, click find, and see a number. I think this would be a very useful widget that other webmasters will want to embed.

The thing is, I never used widgets and I know nothing about them. So, I would really appreciate some help.

Here are some questions that a newbie like me would find really useful:
* How much will it cost to develop a widget like this?
* Can I get anchor text links when somebody embeds my widget?
* Will the widget funnel PageRank?

Thanks,

[buckworks]

I want to take that report

Make sure you obtain copyright permissions from the originators before you try to repackage their content.

Your idea might make a good joint venture with the originators.

[msafi]

They are making it publicly available. I will give them credit in that widget for sure.

[buckworks]

Please clarify: are they making the report publicly available for other people to republish or repackage as they wish?

That is very different from making it publicly available for people to read.

[msafi]

They don't indicate on the report itself. But this is what it says in the footer of their pages:

"Reproduction of material from any #*$! pages without written permission is strictly prohibited"

So, point taken.

I still would love to know the answers to the other questions here...

[msafi]

I researched this topic a little more and found some interesting information.

First, I conducted a small test: I looked at Digg's web widget and saw anchor text "Powered by Digg's Users" So I typed this into the search engine and the first page that was returned was the same page that this anchor text is linking to. Now I have a proof that anchor text in widgets helps...I'm not very technical so I suspected that my test could be flawed, so...

I researched this topic a little more and found this: [seomoz.org...] which confirmed that they work. But It also mentions some websites that were penalized for spamming this technique, but I'm not gonna spam it. My widget is gonna be relevant to my topic and the anchor text definitely gonna be relevant to what I talk about in my website.

So, is this the most powerful and easiest way to get lots of links with great anchor text? To me, so far, it seems that it is! But why does the search engine value this anchor text? The Javascript file that produces this anchor text is hosted on the same domain that is being linked to in the widget. Shouldn't this fact alone devalue this anchor text?