Comments on: Gain Backlinks to Your Website by Sponsoring Free WordPress Themes

By: kawaiithemes

kawaiithemes — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 04:15:39 +0000

the safest way to do this is look for designer who offer wp customization for a cheap price – like we do now!

we offer custom wordpress theme with huge discount for bulk orders, you may contact me via email should you need a quote, but it can be as low as $25 each custom theme.

your satisfaction is our guarantee. we will change/modify the theme until you’re fully satisfied with your order. so you’ll be the one to decide what kind of theme do you like – what EXACTLY do you like

we are also member of DP

MJ, I hope it’s okay if I linked this post to our site under the Sponsor Themes section – just so more people will have idea about it

thanks!

By: MJ Wolfe

MJ Wolfe — Tue, 11 May 2010 12:52:15 +0000

Thanks for the info Richard! I used one of my links for this blog! I hope Google doesn’t penalize me! I am not sure I will be doing a lot of theme sponsoring – this is something that I wanted to try. I may just stick with the one theme and see how it goes. I am guessing that you would have to buy a lot of themes to really get a large amount of backlinks out there.

By: Richard @ Lifestyle Design Unleashed

Richard @ Lifestyle Design Unleashed — Tue, 11 May 2010 08:57:02 +0000

I spent some time a year or so ago sponsoring a load of free WordPress themes on Digital Point. And whilst they have built a few links back to my sites, there are far fewer than you might imagine.

I think one of the problems is that there are so many themes out there to choose from which can make it difficult for you to stand out. Generally the better the theme, the more people will use it, but the more it will cost you to sponsor. Sometimes in my experience paying a little more to get your link on a top theme is worthwhile.

Obviously many more experienced WordPress users will also know enough to remove your link from the theme if they choose to use it and so you can lose links this way too.

The upside of sponsoring a theme is that you will not only get a link on every page of any blog that uses your theme, but you will also get a homepage link, which can be the most powerful links of all for your site.

So my experience is good and bad. Would I do it again? Possibly. I’m not convinced that the results are really worthwhile but if you’re on page one of Google and just want to push up your ranking by a couple of places it might be worth a try.

Incidentally, Matt Cutts has stated that sponsoring free themes in this way is not cool so be aware that Google knows about the process and may penalize you if they catch you using it. Best to only use for minisites then rather than great big authority sites you’ve spent months building.

By: Murlu

Murlu — Tue, 11 May 2010 02:42:42 +0000

I’ve kept this in mind for quite some time after I first learned about it, it’s certainly a great way to build backlinks.

Double points if you can land a wordpress theme that fits in your niche, then every post will be related to your anchor link giving you more relevance.

Keep us updated how the backlinking pans out.

By: Alicia

Alicia — Mon, 10 May 2010 13:42:45 +0000

I never thought about this before but it does sound like a sound strategy. I will have to check into this. Thanks for sharing.

By: MJ Wolfe

MJ Wolfe — Mon, 10 May 2010 12:58:45 +0000

Yea, even if you gained 50 backlinks – it would be worth $50. I just got my submission report from Bill, he submitted my sponsored theme to a ton of free WordPress theme databases. So now I just sit back and hope that people download it!

By: George185

George185 — Mon, 10 May 2010 12:43:53 +0000

You know, I had always considered this strategy but I though you either had to build the theme yourself or pay a lot of money. I think I could afford fifteen dollars. Seriously, you could sponsor a theme every month for that kind of money.