Ever seen the movie “Pay it Forward” at the start of this century? Haley Joel Osment plays an inspiring role as a kid with a soft heart, believing that one simple idea could change the world. If you haven’t seen the movie, I’m going to spoil it for you anyway. Eugene , played by Kevin Spacey, assigns a project to his class to come up with an idea that could change the world. Trevor McKinney (Haley Joel Osment) raises the idea of paying it forward and starts a chain reaction that no one could of imagined.

What exactly is Pay it Forward?
The idea behind this is to give or offer your help without expecting something in return. However, the person receiving that favor is expected to offer their help to someone else and so on, hence paying it forward (not pay me back). This is something not many of us associate with because of our natural selfish habits (and I mean that in the nicest possible way). How often do we see this happen between online companies? Offering help for free or giving back to society? Usually there’s always a catch. I’ve seen hundreds of emails titled “link partnership”, “link to me and I link to you”, “sponsorship offer (but we want a link)”, “reciprocal link request”, “link exchange request etc. No wonder search engines like Google frown on these methods of marketing. How many webmasters in the search engine marketing world would sincerely link to other sites believing that its worth it or even in this scenario, doing a favor for others?

Pay It Forward Proposition
I was a bit hesitant using the word “pay” with so much talks about paid links and so forth, but the heck with it. It’s nearly Christmas and the whole purpose of this idea is to give. With this linking idea, the “favor” will be semhints (site A) linking to another website which would help site B improve its rankings and hopefully boost a bit of traffic. I’ll be linking to the first site that leaves a comment. Now don’t come spamming here cause there still needs to be rules in place.

Rules of Pay It Forward Link Idea
- Your site must be search engine related, cause lets face it…I can’t really link to a porn site. I wouldn’t be doing anyone any favors in that case (although some of you may have a difference in opinion).
- Your site must be decent at least…please. I’m sure we can all judge a site from first appearance. No need to get into SEO or presentation details.
- The sites that I/you link to will be permanent on a page related to search engine marketing.
- And that’s it!

Progress So Far
I’ll be listing the progress of this plan here until Christmas. Leave your comments and site URLs. SEMhints will be the first to “pay it forward”. Merry Christmas everyone.

Semhints.com (Site A) –> SEO Scoop (Site B)
SEO Scoop (Site B) –> Alliance Link (Site C)
Alliance Link (Site C) –> SEO by the Sea (Site D)
SEO by the Sea (Site D) –>