Link Building via Wordpress Themes (Considered Golden)
Posted on September 14th, 2008 by Web Freak under Link BuildingWhat are the benefits of sponsoring a Wordpress Theme?
Theme sponsorship can be an effective method of link building that may help your SERP (Search Engine Results Page) ranking because you have the option of choosing the specific anchor text to use for your link.
This can be a long-term link building strategy that helps you to increase your keyword rankings, which means a lot more search engine visitors to your website and higher ad earnings as well as product/service sales.
Successful theme sponsorship may also help you to rapidly increase your website’s Google Page Rank, because it will receive a large volume of one way incoming links, each with a certain amount of PR and authority.
While nobody knows for sure how Google calculates its Page Rank algorithm, we can assume with some level of certainty that a large variety of incoming links with PR can help to positively benefit any website’s Page Rank.
An Example of a Sponsored Word Press Theme
All (or most) of the themes from Thomas Silkjaer aka the Undersigned, a popular Wordpress theme/plugin creator, feature sponsored footer links.
Here are screenshots of a theme with a specific link to an advertiser site.
Note that you can find many live examples of blogs using his themes by running this specific Google search.
The white theme above is known as Water 1.1 and is one of the 10 most downloaded Wordpress themes (with over 22,000 downloads).
As a result of this theme sponsorship, there are literally thousands of blogs with sitewide links to a website that sells Poker Tables. A peek at Weber Poker Table’s backlinks with Yahoo Site Explorer confirms this.
Theme Sponsorship As Link Building Strategy
Most of the Wordpress theme designers I’ve come across are rather discreet about their sponsorship arrangements. However, I recently noticed that several webmasters have started explicitly pushing theme sponsorship as a link building strategy.
One of them is Themey, a website that openly promotes Wordpress Theme sponsorship and purchases. They are currently charging a minimum of $200 for a footer link in their Wordpress themes.
An excerpt from their website on the topic of theme sponsorship reads:
Wordpress 2.x has had over 1.2million downloads (and that statistic is from October 2006), whereas themes.wordpress.net has less than 1,200 themes for users to download (as of today, 21 January 2007).
Some very quick math shows that there is only one theme for every 1000 Wordpress downloads.
Imagine the cost of buying a text link ad on 1000 blogs?
Popular themes can easily achieve more than 1000 downloads in matter of weeks so I think the estimate above is reasonable. It should be noted that not all Wordpress users agree with the practice of leaving unrelated sponsor links in the blog template and some have actively taken steps to remove the advertiser links. I do however think the majority of Wordpress users either do not care about that extra link or are oblivious to its presence or function.
My personal take is that if you don’t like themes with sponsored links, you shouldn’t use the theme. This is because using it and removing the sponsored link might not cohere with the designer’s stipulated copyright regulations.
Making Money with Word Press Themes
From the perspective of a website designer, Wordpress themes can provide you with a relatively decent source of side income. Let’s suppose you produce one Wordpress theme a week and charge $150 for a link. You’ll make around $600 a month for your efforts.
Judging from the recent theme sales in various webmaster forums, one can safely assume that there is a strong demand for Wordpress theme sponsorship.
Perhaps we can assume that there is a steady market of webmasters out there who view theme sponsorship as a viable long term link building tactic.
Where can you find Wordpress Themes to sponsor?
If you’re interested in getting your link in a Wordpress theme, I would suggest privately contacting specific Wordpress Theme designers and asking if they could create a custom designed template that allows you to sponsor a specific link.
Another alternative is to browse around the various Wordpress Theme websites and email specific theme authors who have a history of allowing sponsored footer links in their theme.
Occasionally, theme authors will also hold theme sponsor auctions in various webmaster forums and you might want to visit Digital Point Forums if you’re interested in participating in a theme sponsor auction.
Yeah sponsoring is a great way to get your name across the web. It’s another great way just to interlink your niche or microsites as a start. Just open up a few blogs about a certain topic add a wee bit of content on each, start interlinking and slowly build content on them. Works wonders.
hmm interesting link building method! hadnt thought of this good article thanks
This is an excellent post. I had considered having my own theme designed but instead went with a sponsered theme. But I had never thought about sharing the theme and getting backlinks from it. Or maybe selling the sponsered by link.
Scott S.
I have sponsored a couple of wordpress themes and it did generate a good amount of backlinks.
This is a brilliant idea, never heard of this method before.
Thanks for sharing
I think it’s a good idea if the theme gets popular. You can apply this to other ideas. Thanks for the post
Yeah, of course a WP themes that yield 22,000 download will helps a lot in your SERP. But the challenge is looking for a good themes designer and a third party promoting the themes rightly.
Personally I had spent almost $1,000 in sponsoring WP themes but the results are just poor. Perhaps you can write more about ‘where to find good WP themes to sponsor’ in future? (No, too many scams and big talker in DP – most are just a waste of money and time.)
kk
The most popular blogging platforms called Wordpress, have trouble finding the perfect theme due to the amount of new themes created daily. Searching via Google and other popular search engines for the term “Wordpress theme” will result in many pages of both new and out-dated themes,If you using a free Wordpress Theme, make sure to keep the footer links intact to give proper credit to the author of the theme. The authors work so hard for free, Check the original author’s site for questions regarding theme modifications and special requests. A lot of the time, they will be more than happy to help you with simple requests.Finding the right theme can be a tiresome search, but if you find the right template for your website that only requires some modifications, it will payoff. Especially when you try to convey to your readers what your site is about and want to stand out from the growing population of wordpress users.