Are You Using Blacklisted Backlinks? Check Now
Do you want to take advantage of a huge link building opportunity most SEOs neglect?
It’s simple, budget friendly and takes no time at all to setup and partially automate.
Not only that, but it helps to support other businesses in your industry!
What am I talking about exactly?
Crowdfunding!
It’s one of the most underrated and underused strategies for building links.
Which means there are hundreds of opportunities just waiting for you to snap them up!
What Will I Learn?
What Is Crowdfunding Link Building?
Crowdfunding link building is where someone raising money for a business through small donations, places a link to anyone who has contributed.
These donations can range from $1 right through to $1000+ and can be focused on any kind of business or project in any niche, making this a fantastic link building opportunity!
For example this Fidget Cube raised $6,465,690 on Kickstarter.
Not bad for a small vinyl cube!
Start-ups, artists and all kinds of projects have the opportunity to generate incredible amounts of money from the people their ideas resonate with.
Not to mention test their ideas and see if they have an audience before they launch them.
But what does all of this have to do with link building? Well, allow me to explain…
Every donation comes with a benefit to the donor. Although some of them come with “warm fuzzies”, some of them have tangible benefits, like links back to your website.
Take a look at this offer-
For a small $25 donation they’ll include a link back to your website.
Which just happens to be a DR64 domain-
Not only that:
But it’s a bargain for what may become a super successful piece of advertising as well.
By finding enough of these projects you can quickly and easily get links back to your site.
So I am going to show you how to find and capitalise on this technique and grow your link profile at warp-speed.
PRO TIP: Before starting any link building campaign, it’s best to determine how many backlinks you need to rank and archive your goals.
10 Crowdfunding Sites Every SEO Should Know About
Before you get into the weeds about how to do crowdfunding link building…
There are lots of different options out there – with hundreds of crowdfunding sites that go really niche – but these are the platforms I feel you’ll get the most benefit from:
Take a minute or two to familiarise yourself with them and find if any sites will be a better fit for you (or your client) than others. Then you can jump over to the next section.
This Is How You Do It
The crowdfundung link building process is pretty straight forward-
- Find opportunities
- Make a donation
- Your link is placed
It really is as easy that. The hardest bit is finding the opportunties but I am going to show you how to automate this later.
First, you can use these two Google searches to find link building opportunities-
- site:[website url] inurl:projects +“link to your”
- Site:[website url] inurl:projects +”donor page”
The first is to type the following into your search bar (replace the words in brackets with your specific URL):
site:[website URL] inurl:projects +“link to your”
This will show the results of projects that are offering a link to your website as part of their bonus scheme.
If I did this for IndieGoGo that would look like this:
Now, be prepared to comb through lots of results to find the right one for you.
Head through the next few pages and look to see what you can find. You want to pay attention to keywords or topics that are relevant to your website.
The next option would be to use this Google search:
Site:[website url] inurl:projects +”donor page”
This will show results for campaigns that are offering a donor page to their, well…donors.
If I did this for Kickstarter it would look like this:
Much like the last search, you’re going to have to work your way through some pages of search results to the find the gems. But they are there.
For example…
If you were in the art or photography niche, this result would be great for you:
You could also add a keyword into these searches to narrow down your results.
This will produce less results but they will be more targeted to your niche.
Below you can see if I was to add the keyword “science fiction” to my search, it still brings up 53 results:
Once you’ve done a search and exhausted your current options, you can also set yourself up for future success by setting up automated alerts for these opportunities.
BONUS: Learn how to build powerful edu backlinks.
How To Automate Your Crowdfunding Research
Google Alerts allows you to get automated alerts for new content based around a search term delivered directly to your inbox (or RSS feed).
To active them you can just copy and paste the search terms for the sites you want to receive alerts about into their search bar:
Hit the “create alert” button and this will send immediate updates to you as soon as a new piece of content that fits these search criteria becomes available.
Why work hard when you can work smart, right?
Although I tend to find that Google Alerts provides a lot less results in general that it has done historically. So you might want to setup alerts from some of the other web monitoring tools.
Wrapping It Up
Crowdfunding link building is a great opportunity to find high quality relevant links in your niche without much effort.
Finding these opportunities can be as simple as using a Google search to find results containing those keywords.
Or you can create a Google Alert to get notifications delivered right to your inbox – what more could you possibly want!?
Well there is one thing:
In the next section we are going to be looking at event link building.
93 Responses
This was really helpful,I am off to try it out
Give it a shoot, and let me know how it goes!
Nice idea. All the campaigns I can find, however, are all closed and no longer accepting donations. A lot of the campaigns are years and years old.
Is there a trick for finding active campaigns? Using the “past year” filter on Google yields almost no results.
I will be using the alerts to hopefully find fresh opportunities if anything does come along.
Hey James,
There is no trick. I guess that Covid has stopped many people from starting new projects which is why you can’t find “fresh” donation opportunities.
I guess the best thing to do is set up alerts (as you suggested) and wait…
Good luck!
Matthew, thank you for this valuable post!
Glad it was helpful! Cheers!
Hi Matthew, thanks for the detailed guide, I will definitely try this out. However, should the donations be niche relevant?
What do you mean?
Does this still work in 2021
Yes, it does :)
Thanks for always bringing the premium ideas. Really appreciate this!
No worries, Agboola Damilola!
Hi Matt,
I don’t understand very well this post.. How can help me with the crowdfunding link building?
Thanks and nice site.
Hey Laura. What is it that you don’t understand?
If this strategy is too confusing for you, you should take a look at these ones: https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/link-building/strategies/
Hi Laura
Im about to launch a crowdfunding campaign too, can we share some helpful tips to succeed in this journey.
Also, very helpful strategy Mr matthew. Big fan.
As ever very useful tips with practical examples.. My new site is now only a week or so away from being completed so need all the help I can get.. BTW do you have ties to Tunbridge Wells?
every time i come to our blog post i learn something new Matthew.
Thanks for sharing this LinkedIn building method, this sound better easier and affordable than guest posting :)
would be good choice for clients with limited budget.
Absolutely!
Back links don’t work anymore. According to th latest Google changes.
So, it looks like this article is obsolete,
Backlinks still work. It is not about quantity but quality and relevancy!
If you build quality links – the right way – I guarantee you’ll get more traffic to your website.
And more traffic = more revenue!
Great article Matthew!
Cheers!
Only you can think of such ideas, Matthew. I also loved your idea about publishing a well-researched piece, wherein other websites could hyperlink our site, every time they use the material or a quote from the publication. Just brilliant! I’m going to try them out. Thank you and cheers!
Thank you Wajendhar – Let me know how it goes!
Hi Matthew,
It was a deeper one. I felt like reading Brian Dean. I signed in for your Quick win SEO process too.
Thanks for the great work
Great! Let me know if you have any questions.
Brilliant tips, I have just started looking and am finding potential opportunities already. Will let you know how they pan out.
Ohhhh great news Jason – yes keep me updated
good work. had not thought of this.
A useful little strategy!
Awesome. A truly underused link building technique. These are something similar to scholarship links but these will be much cheaper and easier to get.
Thanks Mohsin
Thanks for sharing your great guide. This is very helpful
Thanks Stridec – hope this strategy brings in some good links.
Great Strategy that I couldn’t imagine yet, thanks a lot
Hope you find it fruitful :)
Oh very good info. I try to check Kickstarter and Indiegogo for link options and found.
So, great price for good link.
Thanks Matthew for this info.
Glad you are finding success with this method Robert – thanks for letting me know :)
Hey Matthew,
Is this link building strategy a grey hat SEO?
Hey Sam – I don’t believe in putting labels on things. All link building is technically against Google’s guidelines so making the process appear as natural looking as possible will lower the risk. Don’t fall into the ‘black hat/grey hat/white hat’ trap. Google has an algorithm all you need to do is optimise your site to feed that algorithm.
Wow ! This is pretty good! Thanks Matthew. Always good advice!
Cheers Matthew :)
an awesome Link-Building strategy, I must be try for my website.
Good luck
That is some outside the box thinking, thank you!
No problem – hope it works for you.
Hi Matt,
I just wanted to share that by including intitle:nichekeyword it helps narrow down the results much better than simply placing the keyword at the end!
Awesome, thanks for the tip Derek :)
Thank you for sharing this strategy! I will give it a go.
Thanks Tomaž, let me know how you get on.
Brilliant! Thank you for sharing. I will start doing this today.
No problem!
This is quite a good list- I have a few sites within the gaming and B2B niche and am sure this will be very effective.
Glad to hear it Gregory!
Thanks Matthew for this tutorial Sponsorship link building has a place in your arsenal of tactics, but must be done pretty low key.
Like you mentioned in a previous comment, vet every opportunity so that it is relevant to your site and that it makes sense for you to donate.
Also, this probably shouldn’t be done a hundred times per month, but two three or four donations is just fine.
Just my thoughts.
Thanks again, I’ve bookmarked this page.
Cheers Nikola – agreed.
Interesting am really a great fan of your work.
Thanks Michael
Great strategy. As it becomes even harder to keep up with changes to link building it is great to learn about additional techniques such as this.
Yeah it’s definitely good not to put all your eggs in one basket!
Wow! That’s a new thing for me. I am trying it.
Hope this helps you build some decent links.
thansk matt
No worries!
Awesome tricks Matthew. love your sharing. will definitely try.
Thanks Alex – let me know how you get on with it!
Never have I thought about this and I couldn’t imagine what to expect when I got your email on crowdfunding link building strategy.
I will give it a try.
Hahaha, I like to keep you on your toes :)
Awesome approach! I found this very helpful and it’s easy to build niche relevant at low cost. I would try it.
Hope you build some great links Catherine :)
by the way Neil Patel gave you a shout out!
Awesome!
Hi Matt,
Excellent article! I didn’t know there was that. This strategy is similar to sponsored posts, with the difference that there is no text article with the link.
Let me take a simple question? Do you use a plugin to add the blue bars in the H2 headers to your posts? If so, do you mind saying?
Yeah its a simple technique but an effective one!
That is just CSS
h2 {
background-color: #edf3f4;
text-align: center;
}
I was wondering if this strategy isn’t penalized for being a paid link? Also do the links look good and not like a spammed page?
You will have to review each opportunity. Google doesn’t penalize you for supporting start ups.
Thanks Matthew – really great strategy for link building.
I will give it a go.
Thanks for sharing
No problem!
Great info Matt. I’m going to give this a go
Cheers Mike!
Wow
Thanks for the tips Mathew, will definitely give it a try!
Glad to hear it Reece
Yet again, a materpiece of one of the best SEO’s blog on the planet. Thank you Mathew!
No problem Rob glad to help!
Thanks Mat, new things keeps coming up everyday
Not necessarily new but very underused. Glad to shine the light back on it.
Awesome guide Matthew! I loved it. Thank you!
No problem Sohel! Hope it proves useful :)
This is a brilliant strategy! Sharing with my team members and also via Facebook, etc. Thanks, Mathew!
P.S. I just noticed that your domain spells your name as “Matthewwoodward” – was that intentional?
Great, thanks Dave. Yep that’s how my name is spelt.
Awesome post full of interesting information as usual. Gonna try this for my next link building project.
Thanks
Thanks very much, hope you find this easy!