WEB DEVELOPMENT BLOG

I've tried linkbait myself in the past and it didn't work.

Having looked at the key ingredients — in terms of broader success — the content itself is actually a minor player.

From what I've seen, it's not what you know (or even what you write), it's who you know.

I've seen some pretty abysmal stuff succeed, all because of an army of friends on Digg happy to vote them up.

But that said, you've written a good linkbait primer, Heidi...

Thanks Wayne, I've not yet tried it myself, but I like it conceptually. I just haven't come up with some killer idea.

Your point is well taken about networking. If you post in a vacuum, no one will notice no matter how wonderful the bait may be. Thus bait should be but one element of a broader marketing strategy.

I used to read your articles whenever you sent message via pownce. Keep it up your posting!

hrm. I wonder if I have used linkbait and didn't know it. I always try to write good articles mainly because my blog is pretty new.

Howard,
I think you are right, you have produced some linkbait. I just checked http://www.technorati.com/blogs/ob81.com and it shows that your Do You Remember Your First Experience with the Internet? story received quite a few links.

Actually many of them reposted the whole story, some in ways that make it hard to tell where it originated, though most mention you as the writer and include the link. I guess that's the price one pays for getting Digged.

I was just perusing Wayne Smallman's RSS feed in Streamy, when I saw a link he posted to 3 Ways to Get Screwed by Social Media Marketing. This article adds an interesting twist to our discussion as the author, Aaron Wall, provides examples of linkbait gone astray, campaigns that were so successful that their results made Google suspect their validity.

Now I don't know how many of you are planning mega-sized linkbait projects, but this article is worth a read.

It's a good reminder that linkbait should only be used in conjunction with, and in proportion, to your other marketing efforts.

I use linkbait and its working well for me. In my opinion, quality content is must to succeed in linkbait.

Heidi, I'm glad you picked up on that SEO Book article, because that's exactly the kind of thing that concerns me when discussing linkbaiting with clients, who could potential trigger something like that with their marketing reach.

It's also interesting to note that Google effectively penalize you for good guerrilla marketing strategies, which is lamentable.

Sometimes, I don't think Google keep the pace of change as well as they could. And it's not like linkbaiting is all that new...

I think it's like trying to catch fish with a net while making sure the dolphins don't get caught in the process. While they are trying to penalize the spammers and Black Hat types, a few legitimate folks get caught in the process. When sorting at a certain level of detail, you still need to involve humans in the process...until the algorithms become far more sophisticated than they are now. (And they're pretty impressive, as they stand.)

I just noticed that your post title in the url is different than the title of the post.

In Wordpress speak I think this is called the slug. It's the end part of the url - in this case '/linkbait'.

How did you accomplish this? Is this a MT plugin? I spent a little time over at the MT community site and couldn't find any tricks to accomplish this.

Do tell ;-)

Dave,
The short url option is included in our installation of Movable Type. When you go to your entry page, look for the short name field. Whatever you type there will show up as the end of your url. I didn't even notice it at first, but once I found it I never looked back. It beats the heck out of those 12 mile long urls one can get.

Brilliant Heidi! Just brilliant.

I just mentioned on another post that we are searching for excellent SEO & SEM offerings at higher ed institutions. Not much luck. But glad I stumbled across this site. Some excellent info. Say hi to everyone in Cleveland!

Enter the Secret Amazon Web Pages:

http://bargains-hunter.blogspot.com/2007/10/how-to-find-bargains-at-amazons-secret.html
Amazon Secret Web Pages

Thanks for the link bait article. It looks like this article can be linkbait itself.

I love linkbait- use the method all the time. Typically we run blog swaps where highly respected industry bloggers swap blogs with one another- we'll announce the event in a press release and watch as the rest of the industry links to each of us. I consider that a mass linkbait campaign because more than 1 blog benefits.

Well, when we talk about Linkbaiting, it is often written about in negative terms. ‘Baiting’ can be regarded as a sense of trying to trick or trap an unsuspecting person or thing into doing something that they don’t really want to do. While this is accurate with some forms of linkbaiting it is not true with others.

This is the area of the debate around the term ‘linkbaiting’ and some of the practices that people talk about it incorporating. Some argue strongly that it is just a by-product of quality content, others argue that many linkbaiting strategies border on spam, others seem to talk about linkbait as being the answer to all web promotional problems (increasingly SEO companies are offering linkbaiting services).

Quite frankly, its always been a difficult term to be definitive about as it covers a lot of different practices ranging from running awards or competitions, through to writing attacking posts on high profile bloggers in the hope of them biting back and linking to you, through to providing other bloggers or site owners with tools (with embedded links back to your own site) that they can put on their blogs… In reality the term ‘linkbaiting’ is a new term for something that webmasters have been doing for many years.”

Can developing widgets help with linkbait? I am hearing that widgets are now starting to become devalued by Google.

Any thoughts?

I had a completely different concept of "linkbait" - I don't know that I've ever tried it, but I can see where it could be beneficial

Linkbaiting isn't something I've tried yet. Seems like it would be most successful if you have a large network already. I'll have to brainstorm some great linkbait ideas.
Thanks!

Heidi - I love your thoughts that it's for special occasion - I've been nervous about doing it but you've inspired me. Thanks

Linkbait is useful but the article must still be compelling..IMO..but great info.

Hmmm this gives a whole new perspective of how to write an article... thanks

So far, I do not think I have had any of this happen, but I do see A LOT of power in this. In learning about SEO I am often very hesitant since I really don't know how Google is going to react.

Grat information from the perspective of how we write in the real estate blog world. Thanks.

The word 'linkbait' just seems to conjure up negative things for me. I keep reading things about linkbaiting that make it sound like it's a bad thing to do. And yet, it might not be after all.

Link bait seems to be a huge debate lately in the blogosphere. I have yet to find something great to write about, be linked to, and create some solid linkbait.

I think the term in and of itself makes this sound like it is a sub standard thing to do.

If we called this "search copy" or "websmart copy" it may be perceived as something more innocuous like "call to action" or "tagline", etc.

My two bits.

I haven't tried link bait, and never really understood it that well. Your article helps with my understanding of it. One thing that concerns me, being in real estate, is that I have a lot of potential clients reading my blog (at least I hope they are), and I would be concerned about offending some people who would otherwise use my services. I'm not sure how to get around that. I do appreciate the good info. It is great food for thought.

Karl,
As with anything it depends on your content. What you include should still be relevant to your readers. If it is not then it won't be successful linkbait anyway!

Great information.
Very useful and inspiring.