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Rand Fishkin’s Whiteboard Friday on Embedded Content and Linking video this week took me back a few years. I have used that distributed content concept for a long time to build out my personal backlink network.

In a nutshell, you publish content on your site that people can embed on their sites. By giving people permission to embed part of your content on their sites, you can expect a link back to your site (a 1-way link, usually). Some people have managed to turn this technique into a spectacular failure. Other people have used it to earn billions of dollars.

But Rand pointed out that it requires work to create these types of content. True. And it’s a maintenance hassle. I’m still fixing scripts for one widget I created about 8 years ago. Every now and then someone hacks it, I move servers and break it, or something changes somewhere in the universe and the gods and pseudo-gods go crazy.

Still, you get a lot of links from these types of widgets and they can be easy to produce with today’s technology. Here are a few suggestions, followed by a few suggested guidelines.

Search box – Do you have a lot of content on your site? Do you have a deep database? Even if you’re charging for access you can distribute a search box widget to other sites and let people see what you have. Search box widgets work best when backed by good indexing tools, so be careful how you set this up.

RSS Feed – It’s been done a thousand times and the SEO community seems to fall in and out of love with this idea. Nonetheless, it works when you do it right. First, you need to create frequent, high-quality content that people want to read (link lists rarely make the cut). Second, you need to make it easy for people to embed your headlines on their site. Third, your content needs to be relevant to other people’s visitors so that they feel adding your headlines to their content increases the value of their site.

Image Rotator – Do people steal your bandwidth by hotlinking to your images? You have two choices and I’ve tried both. First, you can block all hotlinking (which I currently do). Second, you can allow people to embed a widget on their sites that rotates thumbnail images from your archive. I got good traffic and referrals (and links) from such a widget but keeping it updated was a nightmare for me because I’m neither a photographer nor a graphic artist. Still, if your business has an endless supply of images, make them available to other Web sites in a diminished value format and you may find you solve two or more problems with one technique.

Mutual Advertising Widget – You don’t have to join a large network to get advertising. You can band together with like-minded (or unlike-minded) Webmasters to share advertising. There are plenty of free and low-cost banner network scripts out there. By serving targeted advertising to a niche community you’ll find that passionate visitors click on the ads. It only needs one person to step forward and take on the bandwidth and administration responsibility. Niche networks can handle 100-200 sites. The network administrator gets a free link on every site. And you don’t have to use just banner ads — you can create text ads, flash ads, video ads, etc.

Video Channel – I know YouTube allows you to do this. You set up a video channel and let other people embed the channel on their sites. You don’t get anchor text-passing links but you do build up a viewing audience. If your business model revolves around promoting videos, think outside the page-trap. Create visibility and brand value for yourself by letting other people embed your channel on their sites.

So now that you know how to create easy widgets for link building, here are a few suggested guidelines. The more you respect these suggested guidelines, the more benefit you will reap from widget-based link-building. The less you respect them, the less likely you’ll enjoy your experience.

1. Never bait-and-switch. The only time you should change the link on a widget is when you actually move the destination. Bait-and-switch linking is a totally black hat, unethical, spammy tactic and you will deserve any downside you get from it.
2. Exercise restraint. Link greed and anchor text greed have been the undoing of many a Webmaster. When you set up a widget, leave it alone. Don’t try to squeeze more value out of the links. Create other widgets to get other value.
3. Be considerate. Some widgetmasters demand specific placement or otherwise burden people with ridiculous rules. Screw them. You don’t need their content and if you’re a widgetmaster with rules I don’t need your content, either.
4. Watch your resources. Be careful not to overextend yourself. Your Webhosting service may not be as forgiving as Darth Vader’s emperor.