Link baiting your way to success
You've probably heard me say this before, that links are the currency of the Web, at least as far as search engines are concerned. Therefore, no links = no rankings, and lousy links = lousy rankings.
I am speaking at a MarketingProfs virtual seminar on Feb. 16 on "Inside Secrets to Building Links for Online Publicity, Buzz and Search Engine Optimization" along with link guru Eric Ward. Sign up now!
One of the many topics we will be discussing in next week's webinar is "link baiting" — making your site an irrestistible link target for bloggers and site owners. The Art of Linkbaiting has some great suggestions (particularly if you've got a blog):
- Offer a niche-specific blogroll, tool, How-To, or compilation of news stories.
- Post a scoop.
- Expose a story as flawed or a fraud
- Be a contrarian about a story, product, or prominent blogger's opinion.
- Be humorous. Good topics include a bizzare pic of your subject, "10 things I hate about...", and "You know you're a
when..." - Publish or commission some original research
- Creative-Commons-license photos you made of an event you're blogging about
- Make available for free a theme, plugin or piece of software
- Start a meme that others can replicate and that links back to you (e.g. buttons/stickers/tools for bloggers/webmasters to post on their sites, contests, quizzes, surveys, etc.)
As you can probably tell, building links is both art and science. It requires a great set of tools and tactics, as well as loads of creative ideas.
One might even go so far as to valuate a site, such as a blog, on its links. If you have a blog, for fun you might try out the free tool at the Business Opportunities Weblog and see how much your blog is worth. The computation is based on the link-to-dollar ratio of the AOL-Weblogs Inc deal. According to the tool, my blog is worth over $40,000. Not bad for some random musings posted on an irregular basis! ;-)
2 pingbacks
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[...] Stephan Spencer aptly puts it: …links are the currency of the Web, at least as far as search engines are concerned. Therefore, no links = no rankings, and lousy links = lousy rankings. [...]
Pingback by Isulong SEOPH | Power to the Piso » The art of Link Baiting [Visitor] — 06/14/06 @ 21:30
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[...] Link bait is content or a tool that people want to link to or blog about. Viral marketing is creating content that spreads like a virus! Content that gets emailed to friends and passed along. A great way to get a ton of traffic is to get your content on Digg.com. Digg is all about user powered content. Everything is submitted and voted on by the digg community. If the community “Digg’s” your content and you are fortunate enough to make it to the homepage of Digg you can expect to receive 30,000 – 60,000 unique visitors ! The start of either is having a great piece of content or tool. I recently created an “Age Calculator“ tool. I received a php book for Christmas and after a bit of trial and error I wrote the code for this calculator. You input your age and the calculator returns many interesting and funny results such as: [...]
Pingback by My First Attempt at Link Bait and Viral Marketing and the TEST at Online Money dot Net [Visitor] — 02/02/07 @ 07:04
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