Social SEO: ReviewBack.com
A little while ago, you might have noticed that I reviewed a blog in a way that differed from my usual reviews. As I mentioned then, the impetus came from a new service called ReviewBack.com. The site is a kind of SEO-social-network where bloggers bloggers can find similar blogs with whom to exchange reviews and, consequently, links. The end result is that bloggers get (1) exposed to another readership that is interested in their niche topic, (2) some free link juice which is great for SEO purposes, and most importantly (3) access to a roster of blogger who are actually in the same league as themselves and who are, therefore, more likely to respond to their requests.
Socially SEO
So when you get linked, your search ranks goes up, right? In the age of social media, the best way to do that is with linkbait. But what good is linkbait if no one is finding or reading your site? You could write someone with traffic and ask them to link you, but they'll probably ignore you because you're a small-fry. So what you have to do is find people with a similar amount of traffic and work with them to work your way up. But if you're small, how are you going to find other people who are small when neither of you are showing up on the SERPs. ReviewBack.com can help you out here.
After you've signed up for an account, you can browse the other bloggers in the network by category. The categories are kind of broad, and leave something to be desired, but bloggers are able to provide additional tags to clarify exactly what areas of their category that they focus on. So once you've chosen the category, all you have to do is find a couple tags that you like, and click on them to find blogs that are similarly self-described.
Of course, once you've found a blog whose content (and therefore audience) is comparable to your own, and it looks like its worth exchanging links, you still have to wonder whether it's worth it. First, they might be so small that the effort isn't worth it because they don't have readers worth being exposed to. Secondly, a link from a low-traffic site isn't worth anything anyway. Well, ReviewBack.com also provides some assistance here, too.
Alongside every blog listing is both its Google Page Rank and Alexa traffic ranking. These numbers don't always correlate, so ReviewBack.com let's you see both. This way, you can find blogs that are actually worth exchanging links to. If you're really small traffic wise, you get a chance to slowly build yourself up so that you start approaching larger bloggers. And if you're larger, you don't have to waste time and effort on a link that isn't worth it.
If you're still not that sure about trading reviews with another blogger after checkign their traffic and content, you verify their rep as well. Below their blog's metrics are two buttons, and one of them is Review Blog Details. Here you can see how many reviews they've successfully traded, how many they've declined, and how many are pending (so you have an idea of how busy they are).
Once you are sure, however, you simply click on Trade Reviews with this Blogger, and you've taken the first step toward some white-hat SEO via link building. What you have to bear in mind, though, is that (1) there's no guarantee that you're request will be accepted, and (2) it's up to you to correspond with that blogger to negotiate the terms of you review exchange.
Overall, ReviewBack.com is fairly new, so its community is still relatively small, and not yet anyway to determine just what calibre of bloggers are going to dominate the service. I doubt that it'll attract A-listers, but it's not unreasonable to expect a few B-listers to sign on in hopes of breaking the A-list barrier. After all, link-building is solid, white-hat SEO, and any good SEO strategy should include both link-building and link bait. In the end, then, ReviewBack.com offers some interesting potential for any blogger looking to enhance their SEO efforts via link-juice.
