You are right that it’s a long process. In fact it’s so long, i am surprised no one has cried foul and hyped up the ‘death of widgets’.

I think you can call it *part* of a link building strategy, but until one actually gets it embedded anywhere it’s just another bit of marketing candy floss.

The fact remains that widgets are a lot cooler than links so even if they built the thing and never supported it, they at least put their best foot forward. And then decided to have a rest. It’s heavy werk y’know, t’widget buildin’!

We’re talking an SEO with no widget-building skills. There was no assumption of any creative or code input - just sort of ‘tell them to build a widget, put a link to it on their home page and it’ll go viral’

My issue was with doing something like that and calling it link building. That did not involve any effort.

Is it worth $10,000 or whatever to a client for consultation on link building if the company then doesn’t do anything to seed it, push it, promote it or anything?

Yes, widgets are involved in link building. Yes, actually making an effort to seed the widget and info about it is link building. Dropping an app on a home page and walking away I don’t feel is the same.

I’d say at *least* blog about it, post to forums, get the site to promote it, maybe do something with banners if relevant… do something! Don’t go off, tell someone else to make something, get another company to build it, get the client to slap it up and walk away.

Maybe I’m just old fashioned

Maybe this is called widgetbaiting, not linkbaiting. Do I get to coin a new term or is that one that already exists?