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6 Real Linkbait Examples and the Lessons Learned – Part 1

fishing-hookLinkbait can be a very effective tool for search engine optimization. Social media is important for marketing your small or large business in 2009. The sky is blue. Women have secrets. Thanks for nothing, Dave. We’re actually dumber for having listened to you just now. You’re so very welcome, and do you know of a bank in the vicinity where I can cash your seminar check?

Preach vs. Practice
You learned absolutely nothing from that first paragraph which you didn’t already know. Simply telling someone to consider linkbait, link building or general social media as a means to drive both direct and eventually organic traffic to their site is like lending them your car and forgetting to give them the keys. A big heap of useless nothing. Don’t be that guy. The interwebnets are already flooded with them. And for God’s sake don’t pay them to tell you all those things. Ask for specific examples of their own linkbait work that can actually teach you something practical about applying the strategy to your own business. Don’t let them get away with simply talking about those damned blender videos again.

One of the reasons I am a fan of Montreal SEO maven Gab Goldenberg’s blog is that he provides real-world examples of work he has done for actual clients. As a result he is never even in the running on those days when I get so overwhelmed by my Google Reader backlog that I decide to start culling the RSS feed herd. I thought of possible ways in which I too could provide something particularly helpful today and dug out six of my previous linkbait project URLs. I’m not saying they’re ground-breaking or even especially good – but I did learn a lot from them and maybe you can too.

What is Linkbait?
Simply put, linkbaiting is the creation of something online which you feel has the potential to go viral. “Going viral” means a piece of content is so engaging, funny, helpful, life-saving, disturbing or a combination of all five that people feverishly pass it around amongst their friends via IM and email. Scores of bloggers link to it because they want to share it with their audience. It becomes bookmarked naturally in tons of social media sites. The benefits are twofold. In the short term the popular webpage gets tons of direct traffic and brand recognition. In the long term the domain encourages many one-way incoming links which is a crucial factor the major search engines take into account when deciding where to rank your site for specific keywords.

Here are some great articles regarding the construction of effective linkbait if you’d like to read more on the basics. I’d rather spend my bloggy time today showing you some real and original examples of linkbait I myself created – and then looking into the reasons they worked, didn’t work or could have been improved upon. I didn’t make these with enormous production budgets or teams of semi-conscious, hungover marketing interns at my disposal – but I did use my imagination with some degree of tangible success. Perhaps this article should be called Linkbait Ideas for Small to Medium-Sized Businesses. Perhaps this article should be skipped altogether.

Linkbait Best Practices
I tried to follow the golden (and vague) rules that I’d been reading about since the term “linkbait” was originally coined. Use media. Make it informative. Make it funny. Put it in a “top 10” format. Include prominent social media submission buttons. Include an “email this to a friend” form. Make sharing easy. Consider paying off some prominent Diggers (did I say that out loud?). Put it in a subfolder on the client’s domain without any branding and then move it under the main template after it has been live for a few weeks to disguise its true marketing purpose. Sacrifice a chicken and pray. Read up on Chaos Theory.

Original Linkbait Examples
I’m going to link to these 6 examples using the specific keyword phrases they were designed to draw traffic for. This is partially because I’d like that strategy to be abundantly clear and partially because this is my blog and it’s my perogative to keep flogging these pieces even years after they were created should I want to. A good, timeless piece of bait can continue to draw relevant traffic indefinitely.

valentines-dayValentine’s Day History
A client wanted to drive traffic for terms related to Valentine’s Day because they sold many products specific to the holiday. Product terms (“valentine’s day cards” etc.) were understandably extremely competitive. There were some related terms, however, that were far less contentious yet still had reasonable relevant search volume attached to them. I had a glance at the day’s Wikipedia entry and was fascinated to learn how many truly awful things had transpired on February 14th over the centuries. The dim, filthy lightbulb in my head clicked on and thus “14 Horrible Moments in Valentine’s Day History” was born.

  • The Good: The piece definitely went viral, doing well in networks like Digg and Reddit, attracting many natural links from bloggers and was even linked to by some high profile news sites. It continues to attract lots of seasonal traffic and new incoming links to this day.
  • The Bad: Not much – this was definitely a success and made the client very happy.
  • Lesson Learned: The vague advice I’d been hearing was true – Decent linkbait can indeed drive tons of direct, relevant traffic and have considerable ongoing SEO benefits lasting years.

funny-custom-bbqCustom BBQs
In the middle of Summer 2007 I was asked to create a linkbait piece designed to attract grill and barbecue related keywords to a client’s bbq review section. I wondered if I’d be able to find photos of some custom made rigs having recently seen a homemade beer keg smoker at a friend’s house. Needless to say, I was not disappointed. Yeeee Haaaa! You’ve got a pretty mouth.

  • The Good: Although it had a disappointing social media run, it resulted in quite a few links from blogs.
  • The Bad: In retrospect the subject matter probably had a very limited audience. Again, failed virally.
  • Lesson Learned: If possible focus on a subject related to your client’s goods or services with the broadest potential appeal – men and women, old and young, kids and adults. And never, ever launch a linkbait the day before one of the biggest holidays of the year.

ncaa-buzzer-beaterNCAA Buzzer Beaters
This time last year March Madness was upon us and I had a client with a lot of tournament tickets to move. Being more of a hockey/football fan I researched some popular online NCAA discussion topics and quickly decided a list of “buzzer beaters” would be a good idea. I’d yet to use videos for a piece and got myself all excited about it. Everyone from the Director of Marketing to the CEO approved my final piece which took several days for me to write, research, collect and code. Then the NCAA (who were partnered with my clients in some respects) refused to let us use it. “Why on Earth did you even show it to them?” I remember asking them in frustration. I ended up using a revised, non-video version of it on my own semi-related hockey fights site. Cause hockey is a sport too, get it? I really just didn’t want it to go to waste. You can see the original video linkbait preserved for all time on my personal blog.

  • The Good: It was a good exercise in incorporating video into linkbait and I was able to repurpose it as an NCAA article (with SEO-friendly links) on several blogs and free article directories without alerting any ambulance chasers.
  • The Bad: It was nipped in the bud. Also, I found out that the client-side resource who offered to help with my bulletpoints and research completely plagiarized them from another website and had to re-write the entire thing the night before it was supposed to launch.
  • Lesson Learned: Let the CEO, Directors and lawyers see your proposed idea before you spend 20 hours putting it all together. Also, with a little re-writing many linkbaits can be repurposed in text form for alternate uses.

I have three more examples to share with you if you’re still awake, but regret I must get back to my company duties for the rest of today. Namely – plotting my next big viral failure success. Stay tuned for part two and I would love it if people shared their own linkbait creations with everyone right here in the comments.

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Frequently Updated Content is King

Blog this, and blog that. You’re sick of hearing the word. You’ve met 7-year-old kids who have told you your company needs a blog. What the heck are they, exactly – and why do they make a difference to your marketing mix?

At its simplest definition, a blog is little more than an easily update able, content management system (CMS). At it’s most effective, it gives individuals and groups the ability to become authorities in their chosen field. Coupled with a service or retail based website, an objective and original blog of quality can drive scores of relevant visitors who may then convert to customers, employees or new friends.

But how do blogs relate directly to SEO and SEM in general? The original content your company creates is ideally updated every few days. Indexing spiders are more likely to visit, and look favorably upon, websites that have changed somewhat each and every time they drop in for a visit. This will increase spidering frequency, and also improve your legitimacy in the eyes of the major algorithms. Not to mention all of the unsolicited incoming links that objective resources effortlessly attract.

Make it good and make it frequent. Add good, niche subject matter and the rest just may take care of itself. Alternately, you can always go back to knitting dog sweaters.

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Customized RSS Feeds: Search Marketing Godsend

I am a small fish in the Search Marketing Blogosphere, and I make no mistake about it. Let’s get that out of the way right now. SEM is a snowball, the Wild West, an unidentified organic lifeform frigging with colonists on LV-426 (nerd alert). One of the only ways to stay on the cutting edge of this strange new beast is to read a staggering amount of related blogs every day. It’s hard to get through them all, and taking a few days off leaves you with a backlog that makes it tough to try and put a dent in all the posts at all. My point is, I have to choose the personalities I spend my time with very carefully.

There are my trusted favorites, and my new fancies – all of whom have proven themselves to be sources of hard information and advice, and not just links to other people’s information and advice. Many SEO blogs point to other SEO blogs with little original content. There’s nothing wrong with that if you’re looking for high-level industry happenings. But I have to concern myself with straight poopy poop dope, and little else. Practical tips and strategies that go into painful detail are what I need, and aren’t just general blabber about ‘social media’ and how important it is right now. I have a housepet that could tell you that.

So as I make my bones as an SEM blogger, speaking largely at the moment into a vacuum, it’s time to decide what side of the road I want to stand on. I’d like to eventually be considered as some sort of twisted marketing resource, so my new SEO Tips category is thus born unto the Pony. I’m no knowledge hoarder, people. And with no further ado, here is the first:

The Yahoo! News RSS feed usually looks great when aggregated, as opposed to Google News which can look absolutely terrible. The Y! articles don’t usually double up from multiple sources, and the 100 word excerpts look like you painstakingly wrote them yourself. The best part is yet to come – the feeds are completely customizable. You can create an RSS feed, which is fully compatible with Squidoo, HubPages, Google Reader, BlogLines, etc. simply by typing in your desired keywords. Be sure to visit the feed customization page and bookmark it immediately (scroll down to get to the form). Here now are some practical applications:

  • You can employ exact search criteria with quotes to pinpoint and filter content.
  • Build a feed for your company or website name to monitor brand reputation around the web. Read it every morning.
  • Use feeds on any number of social media sites where RSS is enabled for great updated content.
  • Build Squidoo Lenses, HubPages, etc. about your company and filter in new Press Releases mentioning you automatically.
  • Hook up easily locatable RSS feeds near the tops of your pages for easy syndication. This is a core best practice of social media marketing: make your original content easy to bookmark, vote, syndicate etc.

And, I’m spent. I sincerely hope that this – or some of my future battleground tips – set off a spark in your head that wasn’t there before you started reading. Although if you literally have sparks in your head, you probably have more important things to worry about.

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Blog Memes: Viral Like a Bad Cough

Dan just tagged me with some silly meme that’s going around like a nasty flu, but I’m a good sport (and complete narcissist) so I’ll play along. I am also in full agreement with Darren Rowse – namely that transparency lends to a better site visitor experience. So with no further ado, Toto – please pull back the curtain for a minute.

5 Things you Didn’t Know About Thirsty Pony (Dave Pye)

  1. Dave is Canadian and was born in Ottawa, Ontario in 1973. I will be moving back to Toronto in early 2007 and am anxious to get in contact with any SEO enthusiasts that may exist in the T-Dot.
  2. Dave has jumped out of an airplane attached to a tall German. The girl who jumped out of the plane right after me hit the side of a house and nearly died. I take this as a sign that I got off easy and am better suited for land travel.
  3. Dave maintains over 35 websites, in varying degrees of incompletion and disarray. The one which makes the most AdSense revenue is a silly dog sweater site he made for his sister 4 years ago and rarely touches.
  4. Dave loves movies and maintains several lenses devoted to his favorites, including: SlapShot, Blade Runner, Blazing Saddles, Rocky and Goodfellas. Believe it or not, Squidoo affiliate revenue actually pays my internet bill every month. Ladies, form a line to the left.
  5. Dave and his friend Chris maintain a hockey fights blog that has been mentioned in the New York Times and too many related sport blogs to mention. We write regularly, interact with readers at every opportunity and introduced hockey podcasts this year which we try very hard to make funny.

And this is all providing, of course, that you give a rat’s behind. If not, enjoy some Tiny Prints Coupons. I have chosen to tag Jennie Smash as she links to me in her sidebar and I know she’ll come up with some worthy answers.

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Corporate Bloggin’ Ain’t Easy

By now there are Amish people who can tell you blog marketing can work wonders driving traffic and leads to your business. But after you take the time to build one on your site, don’t expect Shoeless Joe Jackson to immediately show up and start hitting runs for the home team. Blogging is hard work, and the internet is littered with the bones of thousands of abandoned ideas, usually with “ramblings” or “musings” somewhere in the title.

Momentum is a tough thing to perpetuate. For every day you don’t post on your blog, you can almost devise a mathematical formula that will exponentially measure the traffic you’re going to lose forever. If you aren’t naturally prolific, and you’re not paying someone else to keep your company blog oven fresh, there’s some easy rules of thumb that will help you through.

  1. Write what you know: Start a blog on a topic on which you’re passionate and that you’ll be able to maintain without losing momentum. Your business is a darn good start, obviously. If you can’t write passionately about your own business, you should probably be collecting shopping carts in your local mall parking lot.
  2. Find your niche: Focus on one topic, and don’t blur your subject matter. Use a sniper rifle, not a shotgun, and you’re more likely to attract and keep an interested audience. If your website sells a wide range of electronics, for example, pick one related facet of what you do and focus on that. Product reviews, free digital photography tips, etc. Maybe start a new domain that’s just a branded blog which links back to your retail site.
  3. Make time to write: Not every entry needs to be the Winds of War. Link to an interesting article you’ve read and write a sentence or two summarizing or sharing your thoughts about it. You can even quote part of the original article Ask for some reader feedback on a topic relating to your business. Talk about a recent happening within the company or repost a press release. But, for the love of Bo Jackson, just do it!

Maintaining a company blog is a lot like having a puppy. If you don’t give it water it will die. Don’t adopt a blog until you realize the responsibility attached to keeping it alive. And if you’re still interested afterwards, remember my three simple tips. Housetraining WordPress is up to you.

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Duplicate Content Penalization Truths

Update: 6/13/07

Straight from the horse’s mouth (Vanessa Fox):

“Google wants to serve up unique results and does a great job of picking a version of your content to show if your sites includes duplication. If you don’t want to worry about sorting through duplication on your site, you can let us worry about it instead. Duplicate content doesn’t cause your site to be penalized. If duplicate pages are detected, one version will be returned in the search results to ensure variety for searchers. Duplicate content doesn’t cause your site to be placed in the supplemental index. Duplication may indirectly influence this however, if links to your pages are split among the various versions, causing lower per-page PageRank.”

Sorry to sound like Magnum P.I. – but I know what you’re thinking. Why are press releases and article distribution sites so very useful for SEO and branding, and yet you’re hearing warnings about duplicate content penalization everywhere you turn? Before Higgins releases the Lads, here are a few things you need to know.

If you’re up nights worrying about being penalized for offering an RSS feed or participating in other forms of syndication, you’re taking the term ‘duplicate content’ too literally. A press release or article which appears on more than one unrelated site is not going to get anyone penalized. The operative word here being unrelated. Not every website in the world can be 100% original, and multiple domains are naturally going to aggregate the same news, quotes and other content.

On the other hand, If you sell pet food, and you’ve registered petfoodrules.com, www.buycheappetfood.org, petfoodinmypants.net – and they all contain exactly the same content (copy, tags etc.) – now you’re playing with fire. And gosh help you if you’ve got them all on the same server/IP address. This is what is meant by duplicate content that can get you penalized. Pick one of the domains to focus on, implement 301 redirects on the others and stop being so silly.

If you’re very attached to your multiple domain strategy, and are of the opinion that penalization will never happen to you, bear in mind that one of two things is probably inevitable, at least within Google:

  1. All of your domains will be banned except for one.
  2. All of your domains will be banned, period.

That sort of a slap can be dynasty-destroying. You’ll return to square one in terms of search engine visibility and be trying to get your old job at the liquor store back. Know what duplicate content is, what it isn’t – and then don’t do it. For more detail on the science of DC, including a break down of the different levels of severity, read this fantastic article by Todd Malicoat.

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The Difference Between Press Releases and Articles

The World Wide Web is absolutely starved for content. I mean, collectively we just can’t get enough of the stuff. Spiders devour it, webmasters have to keep feeding the spiders, bloggers have to manufacture content daily or risk losing their audience, press release sites have to keep populating their distribution networks – it’s a feeding frenzy akin to that scene at the end of Piranha 2. So from a marketing standpoint, it pays to know how to throw as many bikini-clad coeds into the surf as possible. One of the ways to ensure some successful visibility for your original content is to understand the difference between a press release and an article.

Online press releases are meant to relay newsworthy information about a company, product, service, event, etc. They are more often than not self-serving, strategic marketing tools. This doesn’t have to be a negative connotation, as many businesspeople want to stay current on happenings within their own company, industry or to keep an eye on competitors. If your press release is hot news, i.e. you work for Mozilla and your release is entitled “FireFox 2.0 Released Today”, in addition to PR networks you may also stand a change in SMO tagging sites like Digg, Reddit and del.icio.us. If you manufacture rollerskates in Toledo, and your release is entitled “ACME Rollerskates Hires New Product Manager”, then maybe don’t bother. Skip ahead to the articles section.

Popular press release sites and distribution networks include PR.com and PRWeb.com and both paid and free submission options exist. It’s worth it to pony (no pun intended) up the money for increased visibility within the networks and to get yourself a hyperlink (not part of the free option) in the process. Totally free PR services – which include hyperlinks – do exist including OpenPress and PRLeap.

Online articles can be about almost anything. If they are written well, and perceived by readers as an interesting and objective source of information, they can spread online like wildfire with a little help from our new friend social media. SMO success depends greatly on your subject’s position and article title. People love lists, and personally I have had great success positioning client-related articles with Top 10’s and the like. Don’t angle your article around the premise “Why You Should Buy Air Conditioners From Us”. Put one together called “How to Store Air Conditioners During Winter” – or better yet, “Top 10 Tips for Winter Air Conditioner Storage”. Do you see where I’m going with this?

Here is a great list of article release sites and distribution networks. Articles are great fodder for Digg and other social media sites due to their versatility and the potential for creative license above the boundaries of what has to constitute a press release. Before you submit an article to the various networks or a social voting site, post it on your own website via a news page or blog. If you’re taking the time to produce original content, repurpose it on your own domain. And again – don’t write an article that is blatantly marketing your company. Write an objective resource that relates to your product or services and then attach a subtle URL to your site near the bottom.

Just don’t ask me why I didn’t entitle this post “Top 5 ways to Write a Successful Article” or something. Obviously, I need to start taking my own advice. And to stop watching Piranha 2.

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