101 Articles Widget Forced Links
WIDGET FORCED LINKS
Web widget is a software widget made especially for web applications. Web widget is a small application installed and executed within a webpage by the end user. Web Widgets are derived from the idea of code reuse. Terms that describe web widgets are portlet, gadget, badge, module, webjit, capsule, snippet, mini and flake. Web widget codes are typically created using DHTML, JavaScript or Adobe Flash languages.
Widgets are nothing more than on screen tools that appear on a webpage. It is closely related to the contents or services provided by that particular webpage.
A widget is a standalone application that can be embedded into any website by the end user who has the rights of authorship (example: webpage, blog, profile or any other social media site). It enables users to turn personal contents into dynamic web applications that can be shared by websites in which the particular code is installed. A typical example would be using a weather forecasting widget sponsored by a weather channel in your Facebook profile to make your profile look more attractive and informative. Of course this can be accomplished only by copy pasting the embed code into your Facebook profile. Early widgets provided functions such as link counters and advertising banners. However, the use of widgets in several applications or fields has increased in the last decade or so and many web developers use chunks of third party code in their webpages of their websites.
Widgets are downloadable applications that act as traditional application but then are implemented using web technologies such as JavaScript, Adobe Flash etc. They depend upon web API's exposed by a browser or widget engines.
There are two major types of widget used commonly today. They are web widgets and desktop widgets. Web widgets are intended to be used by webpages and have various implications in areas such as site performance, SEO and backlink campaigns. Desktop widgets on the other hand are embedded on local computer.
Widgets for websites and search engine optimization strategy:
Using a widget in your website incorporates more exposure and business depending upon the nature of the widget and its application. Widgets get more links for your website which is a very important factor for search engine optimization. Link building is a very important search engine optimization strategy and thus every website owner, SEO firms and other web developing companies engage in link building campaigns. The idea is to broaden the markets, bringing in more business and in turn generating profits for website owners. All of this is done, just to increase the website rankings so that it may be listed among the top 10 search engine result sets which mean more exposure and more traffic for the website, which will bring in more business as time progresses. This is exactly what every website owner expects at the end of the day.
Traditionally website owners had to have finance for conducting link building campaigns. They had to pay to get exposure and backlinks for their website. Of course under most circumstances these backlinks were closely related to the kind of services or products that particular website is advertising. These backlinks were valued well by search engine spiders and crawlers, the website got indexed well and it had the opportunities to be listed among the top 10 result sets which brought in more business.
However, the world of marketing strategy via websites has undergone a revolution. No more do you need to pay to get backlinks from other websites including popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo etc. Creating a widget for your webpages is more than enough to get backlinks without paying. Widgets are applications created by webmasters that can be shared or used by other websites, desktops and cell phones. Widgets can be games, videos, quizzes or even a content feed that appeals to other websites for linking to this particular webpage that uses the website.
And thus this particular widget has a wide application platform and thus can be posted anywhere in the internet including both reputable websites as well as new websites. Several users are meant to come across that particular widget and if they like it, they are bound to use it for their social internet profiles or even recommend to their friends. In a way every website or a profile that makes use of your widget creates a backlink to your webpage that has this particular widget. It broadens the marketing base and makes it possible to be recognized further without taking much of an effort. Widgets are the next in thing for marketing websites and it has revolutionized the world of websites.
Widgets and Search engine optimization:
It is clearly understandable that widgets creates more links for your website and brings more exposure for your website. These links that a widget creates are also known as backlinks. Backlinks plays a crucial factor in search engine ranking algorithms as determine the popularity of the website and the traffic generated to that particular website. The algorithms do take the number of backlinks into account while analyzing the relevance of the website and determining its rankings after indexing. This simply means that the more backlinks to your website, the website will be ranked higher which means more opportunities for the website to be listed among the top 10 search engine result sets pertaining to a search phrase or a keyword.
Because of this good ranking and opportunities to be listed among the top few websites related to the search text, the website generates more business and profits which is what every website owner eventually wants.
Drawbacks of the widgets in websites:
Although widget marketing is the next thing for every website to look out for, there are certain considerations when it comes to rating a website using widgets.
What widgets essentially does is create more backlinks bringing in more exposure for the website. These backlinks can also be stated as artificial backlinks as a person who makes use of these widgets is not concerned about the reputation or contents of you website and he/she just likes to use your widget. Thus the ranking generated by the search engine algorithms taking the backlinks into account is also sort of artificial. One of the primary concerns faced by many search engines is that should a website be rated based upon the backlinks generated by widgets. Does the website provide quality services or information for the web users? Are the contents of the website related to the search texts? Is the website a reputable website and popular that derives traffic by providing quality information or do they just derive traffic due to the widgets? If not do they deserve such a high ranking generated by automated search engine algorithms that just takes these factors such as backlinks, keywords etc into account without analyzing whether the website really deserves such a ranking or not?
These are the primary concerns faced by search engine organizations when it comes to ranking websites and providing efficient results to search engine users.
A spammer or a hacker can typically create millions of widget applications and promote them for deriving traffic for their websites which barely provides any useful information. They tend to create artificial links which manipulates search engines to rank them higher. Search engine algorithms are automated and they cannot figure out things like the way human brain does. They will just take facts into consideration and rates them accordingly. After all the experience search engines have gained in the past few years, they are taking every possible measures to come up with more complicated programs for ranking a website that is not just based on backlinks or keyword elements.
Spammers and hackers also make use of widgets for their website just for the heck of creating backlinks. This allows them to be listed among the top 10 result sets due to the high rankings at the cost of other genuine websites giving headaches to SEO firms, website owners and other web developing companies. They also amalgamate the efficiency of search engines to provide fair results and annoy viewers as well.
Other Drawbacks of widgets:
The most common type of widgets you'll see is client side widgets. These client side widgets are usually rendered in JavaScript or Flash. The content of these codes are not visible to the search engines and thus it won't be seen as a part of contents of your website. Server side widget code content on the other hand is visible to search engines but is slightly harder to be embedded within your website. This adds concerns to SEO firms and many other web developing organizations when it comes to performing SEO tactics.
Secondly every website today makes use of counters and trackers to figure out who have visited one's website. These trackers are also related to widgets as people visit your widget just for deriving such a code to be embedded in their websites or profiles. This tracker creates a record that contains a link to their website or profile. The record of backlink generated cannot be deleted or modified unless you have a highly technical person who knows to deal with programming tracking software's.
Famous search engines such as Google also have widgets and it supports the concept. However, though it allows users to make use of its widgets and other services, they ponder about whether they should link to that particular user's website helping them to increase their rankings. They question about the credibility of the websites to which a backlink is generated. Search engines feel that widgets should just be used as an application and the fate of the website shouldn't be decided based upon the backlinks generated by widgets. They are working towards the betterment of their algorithm strategies.
Thirdly the host these days has no control over widgets. All he can do is accept or decline the usage of a widget in his website. The element of control concerned widgets is significantly affected. The contents or the functionality of the widgets cannot be controlled by the hosts. He can only control the placement of the widget in his website if he likes it and accepts it. Eventually the consequences imparted by the widget to the website cannot be judged. If things go wrong, he can only remove it but not modify it and reuse it for his website's benefits.
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Screen Shots |
The above screenshot shows an example of a site that used widgets for backlinks and was filtered by Google for doing so. Later on the site was indexed with another name without the backlinks in the widget.
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Flash/Interactive stuffs |
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Working Examples |
The above screen shot is an example of a site "justsayhi.com" which was penalized by Google for adding backlinks to the widget that they used. The site changed the name to Mingle2.com after removing the backlinks
This screen shot is an example of a widget that displays details of your site like Google PageRank, Google index page etc. the site added a backlink to their site in the widget and so was filtered by Google.
But now the widget has an option to make the backlink no follow or not to add the backlink itself. And hence the site is functioning with proper PageRank and the widget is also used widely by many web users.
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Other sites that refer to the same manipulation tactic are as follows |