Although I don't personally agree with this method, it can be effective for generating website traffic that is relevant to your site, which is the best kind as far as Google is concerned. Making the traffic relevant to your site is easy - target your competition in a friendly way.

Hold a contest where the rules require you to post your entry on your site, then post a link to your entry on the contest host site. This generates back links between the two sites, and if they are relevant, gets you higher rankings on the search engines.

The advantage to you is obvious:

• you get links to your site
• you get visitors to your site

The real winner in this method is the contest host who:

• gets links from every site that posts an entry on his/her site
• they get many

This makes their site appear as an authority on the topic. This helps them get higher rankings on search engines which means your potential clients will find your competitor instead of you.

The bad side to this, which I consider a scam, is that you are helping your competitor get more traffic and relevency than each individual site gets. I consider it a scam because someone is taking advantage of you for their own personal gain.