Free Content Links

Recently, I have started using systems such as SEO Linkvine and Free Traffic System to get free content for my sites. These systems allow you to receive automatic posts to your site from other members. I believe in theory that this is a good way to keep your site's content fresh. I run about 15 domains, and it is a real chore to keep updating them all with fresh content on my own.

The problem I am visualizing is that all this content has outbound links to the sites of the content authors and is bleeding off link-juice from my site. These systems also allow you to publish your articles (spun) on other member's sites, thus creating back-links to your site. You can calibrate how many automatic posts to your site that you want published. In a one month period, I received about 1000 pieces of free content to a particular site, all with at least one outbound link, while only generating about 100 back-links from my articles published on other members' sites.

So, finally, the question is...am I shooting myself in the foot by using this method of free content/link generation?

 

Each article is published on a new page on your blog. Each new page doesn't have much Pagerank or "juice" so in this respect you aren't really bleeding off link juice from your site. Plus, two or three outbound links per page is not going to make much difference. It would be a different story if you were linking out from a strong page, like your home page. The only real problem you'd have with respect to outbound links is if you link to bad neighbourhoods.

If you want to generate more of your own backlinks you'll need to start using the system more as an advertiser rather than a publisher, or use some other method to gain backlinks.

 

If you want to keep fresh content on your sites but you don't want to do it yourself you could always outsource it.

 

like they say, there is no such thing called free lunch. while you think you are getting free content for your site, in reality you are giving the article author link back form your site in return which is a fair exchange.

whether you are shooting your own foot or not really depends on how you look at it and whats your objective form the site. if you want to run sites with very minimal work and dont want to write your own content/pay writers to write your articles, then this can be a hands free methods of getting content for your site. but if you want high quality site with good quality content for a niche specific site, then you will be better of with your own content.

 

SEOLinkVine does have a limit for the number of posts, but FreeTrafficSystem doesn't seem to have a limit and blogs can get buried by repetitive submitters.