Using A Survey To Get Links: Your Input Needed

[Planet13]

Hi there, Everyone:

I am thinking of launching a major survey with the hopes of getting some quality information that will be link worthy. Also, I hope to get inbound links related to my site from other sites encouraging people to participate in the survey. So the link gaining process would come in two "waves":

First Wave: Links from related sites encouraging people to take the survey

Second Wave: Links from educational sites that will link to the survey results, once they are ready.

I wonder if I should put the survey on my main site, or whether I should put the survey on a separate domain / wordpress.com site that then links to my site.

I don't have a ton of links to my main site right now, and IF I am able to get a large influx of links in a short time by promoting this survey, I worry that too many links too quickly might have a negative effect.

Also, I wonder if for psychological reasons, it might be easier to get other sites to link to a site that is dedicated specifically to the survey. I worry they may not want to link to my main site since it is primarily commercial in nature.

Of course, this could all fall flat on its face and I might only get a handful of links.

Any thoughts on how to make this a success? What incentive's can I use to get related sites to link to the survey in the first place?

And do you have any software recommendations for easily managing the survey taking and the results?

thanks in advance.

[linkbuildr]

How are the links going to have a negative effect? You're not going to have a problem from an influx of links due to good content.

I'd host it on a micro site if you can still push to your money site for sales or brand awareness. But if you have something really juicy, put it on your site. I'd do it just to see how good of a job I could do snagging links.

Making it a success will depend if it's interesting enough. Perhaps make a target list of Twitter people to try and snag a RT from..same goes for bloggers.

[Planet13]

Hi there, Linkbuilder:

How are the links going to have a negative effect?

the first wave of links will probably come from a publicity push and they might all come in at the same time, and they will mostly be from bloggers. So I do worry that a sudden influx of links from more or less the same type of sites at more or less the same time might cause google to consider some sort of action against my site.

Perhaps make a target list of Twitter people to try and snag a RT from...

Thanks for the suggestion about twitter. I am pretty much a twitter noob, so that is something I need to catch up with.

[linkbuildr]

Well those links coming in will have different anchor texts, there will be social citations I imagine as well as other factors that will indicate a natural "hotness" to it.

Survey away good sir!

[Planet13]

Thanks. any recommendations on the type of survey software I should use?

I plan on probably having two different surveys - one for producers of content, one for consumers (i.e., readers) of content.

Each survey would probably have about ten to 12 questions. Although if it is going to have more, I would love to be able to split the survey up over multiple pages, so the person taking the survey doesn't get overwhelmed with, say, seeing 20 questions on one page.

[linkbuildr]

Survey Monkey Or Poll Daddy for social media based ones.

[Planet13]

Thanks for the tips!

[jaymarketer]

SEO for Google is easy to incorporate in your website once you know how it indexes and reads your site information. And this new tactic to get more links and visits will also generate traffic and loyal visitors.