Linkbait, Linkbait, Linkbait…..it’s all I’ve been hearing this past week.
In case your reading these words, and you don’t know what linkbait is, do a search in Google (one word or two words) for Link Bait, There’s pleanty of fresh papers on it.
In simple terms Link Bait is the act of doing something that causes others to link to you voluntarily. In many instances, it’s easier to get 100 links by causing some type of sensation rather than asking thousands of people by hand to link to get to get those 100 backlinks.
When we created our Free SEO Tools, that was linkbait….the word linkbait just hadn’t been invented yet. Almost everything I write is linkbait…well kinda…maybe my papers on “How to Become a DMOZ Editor“, or my “screw the sandbox, buy an old domain” are more linkbaitish type articles. I’m a link hound by nature….so yea, I’m always looking at things from the angle of “will this get me links?”.
I almost fear now that anything you or I do from here on out will be categorized as “Linkbait”….and people will forget that what ever idea it was that got some links…well, it just might have been a good idea….link bait or no linkbait.
A few days ago Marc had an original idea of putting big name SEO’s head to head for voting….in a sense, it was perfect link bait for the SEO community….now if someone would do the same with big name bloggers (pitting them head to head), you’d get even more link (since bloggers just love to link) … opps, did I just give away an idea to Andy who’s offering up to $1000 for link bait ideas?
hum…what if I said that Andy was a cheap Bas*&^% for only offering $1000 and that I’d offer $3000 for anyone would could bring webuildpages.com an ideas that could generate 100+ backlinks…well just this news could bring us both lots of links….but I’m not calling Andy any names (I respect Andy….I was just kidding above), and I’m not offering $3000 (at least not today)…but you get this link bait idea thingy….(one way is to cause controversy).
I had a client who created a National Holiday for his product…he had people dancing in the streets of New York City with his product, and he got on the homepage of AOL, MSNBC, and got mentioned in 1000’s of newspapers….now that was linkbait, before linkbait was coined, and it might not have even been done with the idea of getting links…but it sure did bring in links.
The million dollar homepage idea of making money has sprung to everyone seeking the million dollar link bait idea.
What do you think?
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[tags]links, link building, search engine optimization, SEO, SEM, internet marketing[/tags]
12 Responses
I agree with you. It seems like all kinds of contest with somekind of money prizes are “linkbaits”. Spend couple hundred bucks and you can get hundreds of unique links pointing to your site. It’ll be interesting to see how many backlinks does v7n.com (and Matt Cutts without www) have when May comes.
Just made a post on my blog (see above.) I wasn’t going to say anything about it, but after I read your post I figured what the hell.
For those unlucky enough to have missed the few critical soc papers back in the 20th, I’ve got a little secret: Man, King of Social Apes, seeks the attention of his fellows. After reigning in the ‘net, what else is he to do in the cybersphere? I think the answer is obvious. Start blogging.
I hope the link bait idea that wins the BizNicheMedia contest is a good one. An honest one. I’m not sure what to think. On the one hand, as a professional blogger I understand that tempting ideas (which can be honest or not) will invite (lure?) visitors to a site, and then maybe bring it revenue through clicking on ads or making purchases. That’s fine with me, as long as it’s not just seeking traffic for traffic’s sake. I posted my thoughts about this linkbait contest and would love to hear anyone’s feedback on my thoughts there.
Thanks Jim. Really appreciate the link. You could have gone higher, but you have two profiles…somebody’s trying to game the system in your behalf hehe jk 🙂
Marc
Marc,
feel free to delete one of those profiles. Not sure why someone would add one when there was already one there.
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