SeoSombra’s Secrets – SSS

Getting an effective widget that will encourage users to link to you is a challenge – incentivizing it, doubly so. One method that we’ve seen that works is to play on your most passionate users’ egos. You’ll want to have a system that lets them  show off their “accomplishments” on your site or in general – whether that’s participating heavily or receiving the most thumbs up or contributing great content. The denizens of the Internet love to display their own brilliant work, and you can benefit by giving them an attractive, easy-to-install method for showing their community spirit.

As an example, think of a site like SEOmoz where users are ranked by participation – if we were to utilize this system, we’d create a widget that shows of the user’s SEOmoz points, rank and latest comments/YOUmoz posts, thumbs up, etc. SEO bloggers could then embed this on their sites to show off their impressive SEOmoz profile.