hit counters to boost rankings -- is this accepted?

[driver105]

I've been working on optimizing our website for a few keywords for a couple of months. I noticed that there a couple of the companies/sites that are in the top five for a particular keyword have a large amount of backlinks. After doing some digging I discovered that the bulk of these backlinks are derived from "free" hit counters that have links to their site and direct keyword links attached to them. And they actually taken out Google ads to promote the sites that promote these free counters.

While I think this was pretty ingenious (or maybe I just don't know enough about sneaky ways to increase backlinks) I was wondering if doing this could throw up red flags for Google. In other words, is Google going to beat them or should I join them in their sneaky ways?

[rustybrick]

This is just one of the many creative ways to build tools that link back to you.

People put these tools on their site and gladly link back to you with a link.

Red flag? I doubt it. Will the link be worth as much as a link elsewhere? That is to be seen.

[dazzlindonna]

There's nothing wrong with creating a free product for other people to use, requiring them to link back to your site in return. It is a good way to get backlinks, and the search engines *shouldn't* penalize for such. However, that doesn't mean they won't in the future. Probably, the worst thing that would happen, is the search engines would no longer count those backlinks, or devalue them to some extent, which wouldn't really be a penalty, but it would have a negative effect.

[driver105]

Yeah, I guess that makes sense. I didn't think about it in the sense that if I give something to someone, they'll have no problem reciprocating and giving me a link in return. Now I just have to be creative and think about what I can give to people!

[driver105]

Ok, so since I'm being pressured by the higher ups at my company to figure out a way of link building like our competitor has with their use of the web hit counter . . . what are other ways that companies do this? What else do people offer for free that contain links? We've been working on site optimization for a few weeks now, but our backlinks are poor compared to competitors.

[kid disco]

I would think that it would be best to create something that is related to what you are marketing... I'm not sure what you could do for your business, but some other ideas that I've seen are dynamic weather icons (magnets?), mortgage calculators, rank checking tools, etc...

What about creating an RSS feed to "syndicate" your News, Awards & Events? I'm not sure how much value (or if any value) is given to the links when others use your RSS feed, but it must count for something... anyone?

[dazzlindonna]

but it must count for something

sure, as far as i can tell, it counts just like any other backlink.

[SEOJaimie]

So far as I can tell, the only downside to counter links is that everyone is doing it and it's actually to the point that people advertise to GIVE you counters.

The cool part about counters is that people tend to put them on their homepages

the theory is good, but everyone is doing it ...

If anyone has any suggestions for something similar but "different" to get inbound links, post it ... Anyone done anything else that works? The RustyBrick Pagerank predictor comes to mind ...

[dazzlindonna]

Ok, assuming driver is talking about the call center site...what kind of freebie would work for that kind of site? Call center...talking...chat! Ok, so some sort of chat app that users can easily add to their site (think shoutbox here). That's where I'd probably go with it.

[J.Tabor]

An online chat app like {live person} dont cost much to have made and it will appeal to people outside of your niche as well .