Does your site offer something unique or something of value to your customers? Build a widget for it!
For example, bloo.com.au provides widgets for a range of functions. For external sites a ‘Search Widget’ is available which allows the business listings on bloo to be searched from anywhere, but look closely – you’ll notice a set of links embedded in the widget itself. Providing the site hosting the widget doesn’t ‘nofollow’ the links, bloo instantly has a few more backlinks. Remember however that we design and develop on the internet for our users, not the search engines, so make sure the widget is useful and will add value to any site it is placed on. Bloo has widgets that provide search, free call and audio business ‘plug’ functionality which gives back to their customers while creating backlinks for itself.
Simpler is better for widgets, as they will be appearing on pages you have no control over. You won’t know what technologies, styling, or control over their server your target webmasters have. Once again we’ll use the bloo search widget as an example – a user can search a term on any site the widget is placed on and will be presented with a bloo page containing the results. The mechanisms that return the results are extremely complex, but all the widget does is send a search term to the bloo server and all the hard work is done there.
