Leveraging Linkbait
Editor’s Note: In the second post of our series on traffic-driving tactics, Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz.org, discusses “linkbait,” one of the newest social media tactics that savvy websters are using to get users and customers to take note.
For the vast majority of web marketers, three unique elements define the goals of nearly every project—traffic, conversion and branding. When implemented properly, Linkbait is a great tactic for achieving two of these three goals (traffic and branding) directly, and the other (conversion) indirectly. In this post, I’ll outline what linkbait is, how it works and how you can implement it to benefit your business.
What is Linkbait?
In the offline world, companies often hire public relations specialists to plan a viral media campaign that will attract attention from major news outlets (radio, TV and print). The worst of these are often slammed as “PR stunts,” while the best help a company achieve positive association through a trusted media platform. In the online world, linkbait serves the same function—as a short-term, burst-like PR effort. Basically, linkbait is content on a web site that targets link-friendly audiences such as bloggers, news sites and social media aggregation portals.
Linkbait can be nearly anything from a simple photo or “Top 10″ list to an interactive web-based application, or an entirely new business. It can also combine the practices of viral marketing with current popular technology trends in order to create compelling, link-friendly content. Generally, linkbait content fits the following rules:
- Intended to target widely-read online portals (Digg, Fark, Yahoo! Site of the Day, Boing Boing)
- Fits criteria for being viral-worthy and link-worthy (creates a discussion, sparks controversy, provides something revolutionary or is exciting/interesting to viewers)
- Easy to link to, email, blog about, excerpt and share
- Timely, topical and useful
How Does Linkbait Work?
A successful linkbait operates in four basic stages:
Stage 1: Linkbait Launch
The content is released, shared with prominent bloggers, and submitted to portals like Digg, del.icio.us, Reddit and Netscape.
Stage 2: The Long Tail of Links
If the content gains traction and visibility at widely-read sites, medium and smaller outlets and personal blogs will likely point to it, and RSS feeds of the link and content will spread across the Web.
Stage 3: Residual Traffic and Attention
Even after the initial buzz from your successful linkbait campaign dies down, your site’s traffic may stay on a slight increase due to a “linkbait bump” that keeps users circling back to your site.
Stage 4: Search Engine Rankings
The massive influx of links will cause a direct boost of the link popularity of the content piece, as well as an overall boost in global site popularity—and search engines tend to reward links with rankings.
Examples of Successful Linkbait
Web 2.0 Awards—This site rates more than 300 Web 2.0-style sites. It has garnered more than 50,000 unique links (see Yahoo!) and 250,000-plus page views since March and ranks in the top 10 for “Web 2.0 searches.” (Sorry, Rand, but you fell to number 11—Ed.)
Zillow.com Launch—This real estate site estimates home values in many U.S. markets, and has been mentioned in nearly every major publication in the U.S. It also ranks number one (last I checked) for “real estate estimates,” “home values” and dozens of other massively competitive terms.
Servers in the Movies from the Vibrant Blog—This funny little entry on the Vibrant Blog highlighted servers in movies, such as “Tron.” Wouldn’t seem like a very compelling subject, would it? Well, Vibrant’s linkbait campaign got the article mentions on Digg (929 so far), Slashdot, Del.icio.us and many popular tech blogs, plus more than 1,000 links and tens of thousands of visitors.
7 Tips for Linkbait Success
Find Appropriate Linkbait Portals
Identify those news outlets, blogs or social media sites that you’re seeking to get a link from. In the areas of technology, Digg, TechCrunch and Slashdot are great candidates. For humor or offbeat news, Fark and Reddit may make better choices. Depending on your content, sites like the popular blog Boing Boing, Yahoo!’s Site of the Day or Netscape may make good choices.
Understand Your Audience
Normally, you’re building content targeted to your site’s visitors—people who want your products, services or content. But for linkbait, you need to also appeal to an entirely different audience—one that can help your site achieve mass appeal in the niche that you select. I advise reviewing the coverage you see for other links in your area; using del.icio.us tags and blog archives can help with this process.
Brainstorm Effectively
You want to find ideas that are so compelling, they blow you away. Imagine pitching your idea to a writer at the New York Times; would he or she be likely to write about it? If so, you’ve got a gem.
Build Beautiful Bait
The user experience, graphic design and usability of the content you build need to have the look and feel of success. A professional layout and tasteful headlines, graphics and embedded content will go a long way toward selling your audience on your content’s worthiness.
Create a Reputation
Linkbait is difficult to launch the first few times if no one on the Web has heard of your brand. Once you’ve spent some time in the blogosphere and social media space, you may find that a lot of your content goes viral without any effort on your part. Thus, creating a reputation is an important part of making linkbait successful. If you need some help, try leveraging industry contacts that have pull with prominent bloggers and respected profiles at social sites.
Grab Their Attention
Writing the headlines and initial descriptions to submit to the social sites, emailing bloggers and appearing in search results is a critical part of linkbait. Many readers will see your headline, and in the early phase it’s critical that they follow your link and help to spread your message. Check out Brian Clark’s two posts on writing great headlines, here and here.
Don’t Be Manipulative—and DON’T SPAM
You might have to try linkbaiting several times before you get good at the process; in the meantime, make sure that you don’t burn bridges by spamming bloggers with email requests to cover your piece, or repeatedly tagging your own content at the social media sites from the same IP addresses.
Linkbait Resources
SEOBook—How to Identify Different Types of Linkbait
SearchEngineJournal—Linkbaiting for Fun and Profit
Performancing—The Art of Linkbaiting
There’s also a good bit of discussion on the topic in this thread at HighRankings – Just What Is Linkbait Anyway?
Linkbait is one of the most challenging online marketing techniques that you can undertake. The key is to brainstorm a lot of great ideas, release them one at a time, and gauge your success. While the risk is high, the return can be phenomenal!
—Rand Fishkin, CEO and co-founder, SEOmoz
Read Comments (60) | Post Comment | categories:: Guest Columns, How-to's
January 18th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Great post. It’s nice to see a Yahoo-ian talking this way.
I wrote a series of pieces on linkbait too which starts with an introduction to linkbait. I hope someone finds it useful.
January 18th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
[...] Over at the YPN blog Rand (a guest poster) writes a useful post on Leveraging Linkbait. Nice to see some exploration of the topic on an official Yahoo blog. For more on linkbait you might also like to read my mini-series on the topic: [...]
January 18th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Thanks, Darren. Our users should find your article useful.
Cheers,
-M2
January 18th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
[...] Leveraging Linkbait [...]
January 18th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
Have we got timing or what?
Search Engine Land today published its “2007 Guide to Linkbaiting:”
http://searchengineland.com/070118-074231.php
In it, they discuss what they call “widgetbait.” Guest poster, Lawrence Coburn, will discuss widgets in the next intallment of this series. Stay tuned.
-M2
January 18th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
[...] Yahoo! Publisher Network » Blog Archive » Leveraging Linkbait [...]
January 19th, 2007 at 9:41 am
[...] Rand’s “Leveraging Link Bait” article has posted to the YPN blog. [...]
January 19th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
[...] Finally, the man who looks like the leader of the social media optimization movement – Rand Fishkin – has a post that’s featured over at the Yahoo Publisher’s Network blog discussing how you can leverage social media (of all things). It contains, as you would expect, good information for those of you looking to take part in the social media movement. I’ve covered Rand’s take on this topic in the past and his information at the YPN blog is just as valuable now as it was before: Intended to target widely-read online portals (Digg, Fark, Yahoo! Site of the Day, Boing Boing) [...]
January 22nd, 2007 at 3:40 am
Leveraging Linkbait…
For the vast majority of web marketers, three unique elements define the goals of nearly every project—traffic, conversion and branding. When implemented properly, Linkbait is a great tactic for achieving two of these three goals (traffic and brandin…
January 24th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
[...] However, not only has the term not gone away, it’s gaining strength. For example, we have this and this and this and this, and also this and this thus far in the first 24 days of 2007. [...]
January 24th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
This interesting article about the “social media press release” may be useful as well: http://www.briansolis.com/2007/01/social-media-killed-press-release-star.html.
January 26th, 2007 at 2:50 am
[...] In Nederland weet men nog amper wat linkbait is en wat voor enorme voordelen het kan hebben, terwijl in Amerika de eerste stemmen opgaan om gewoon met reguliere linkbuilding bezig te blijven in plaats van linkbait. Hele discussies worden op alle blogs, magazine’s en fora gevoerd. Nou vraag je jezelf af: wat zijn dan nou de voor- en nadelen van linkbait en linkbuilding? Wat is linkbuilding? Linkbuilding is vrij simpel; het vergaren van goede links voor je website om je ranking in de zoekmachines te verbeteren. Wat zijn dan goede links? Goede links zijn links waarbij er een keyword in de anchor tekst staan. De anchor tekst is de daadwerkelijke tekst van een link. Google en andere zoekmachines hechten veel waarde aan de linktekst. In Nederland is het niet gebruikelijk dat men in een tekst linkt, met uitzondering van de blogosphere. De waarschijnlijkheid dat een blogger naar je linkt is stukken groter dan dat je een link krijgt van een autoriteit. [...]
January 29th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
[...] Useful: * Gaim. I’ve used Trillian for years and finally switched to the open source Gaim for my management of my multiple IM accounts. Trillian didn’t handle reconnection all that well. Plus, Gaim just feels less bloated. * Opt out. A great post on lifehacker summarizing a few easy ways to unsubscribe from and opt out of various solicitations. I’d highly recommend opting out of credit card offers – these offers are frequently used in identity theft and there are far better ways to pick your credit cards than through mail solicitations. * Building a Digg Funnel. How to build a website such that it funnels traffic to stories you are hoping to get Dugg. * 7 tips for linkbait success. A few good pointers on making linkbait successful. [...]
January 30th, 2007 at 9:16 am
[...] MyBlogLog—MyBlogLog is a distributed social networking service that allows blog owners to embed a visual display of thumbnail photos of their blog’s readers. Blog readers can message each other and post public notes for each other via their MyBlogLog profiles Widgets represent the next stage of the Web 2.0 phenomenon of ceding control to your site’s users. If Web 2.0 is about giving the keys to your site to your users, widgets are about providing your site’s content and functionality in a “to go” bag for your users (and your users’ readers) to consume wherever and whenever they want it. (But Larry, dude, widgets can also totally be linkbait—Rand.) [...]
February 6th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
[...] In addition, you can now share your linkbait success with the world by adding a Yahoo! Site Explorer badge to your site. This widget has a counter that displays how many links are coming into whatever page that it’s deployed on. When you or your users click on the badge, they’re taken to a page that lists who is linking to that page. As of this writing, our blog home page boasts more than 3000 links. [...]
February 9th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
[...] Leveraging Link Bait (Yahoo) [...]
February 16th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
[...] A few weeks back we published a guest column by search scenester and SEOmoz CEO, Rand Fishkin, about the art and science of “linkbait“—i.e., “content on a web site that targets link-friendly audiences such as bloggers, news sites and social media aggregation portals” in order to gain links, attract viewers and help improve in search rankings (and maybe even your CTR). [...]
February 22nd, 2007 at 2:56 pm
[...] Editor’s Note: When I heard Louise Rijk speak at last fall’s Webmaster World, Vegas conference on a panel with Lawrence Coburn, Rand Fishkin and Lee Odden I was immediately struck by the depth of her knowledge in guerrilla marketing and asked her to pen a piece on the subject of her talk, “Word-of-Mouth Marketing,” or WOMM. In the fourth chapter in our ongoing series on driving traffic, Louise introduces you to the concept of WOMM and shows you how to find the right “influencers” who can make a difference to your brand. [...]
March 8th, 2007 at 6:13 am
[...] Leveraging Linkbait [...]
March 29th, 2007 at 5:07 am
[...] Leveraging Linkbait [...]
April 17th, 2007 at 10:15 am
[...] • How-to’s, including: Optimizing for Relevancy, Driving Traffic with Linkbait and avoiding Blogging Faux Pas. [...]
April 25th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
[...] Being audacious draws links and attention. When the singer Pink did what Simes thought looked like blatant rip-off of a comic book heroine’s look, he blogged it with the title “Up Yours, Pink,” which drew lots of attention. (See our post on Linkbaiting.) [...]
May 24th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
[...] SEO, Meet SMM Danny Sullivan moderates this panel on the new phenom, SMM, or “social media marketing.” Getting your content into social media can help generate links or provide rankings that you might not be able to tap into with your own site. Among the panelists is linkbaiting champ and sometime YPN Blog contributor, Rand Fishkin. [...]
May 24th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
[...] SEO, Meet SMM Danny Sullivan moderates this panel on the new phenom, SMM, or “social media marketing.” Getting your content into social media can help generate links or provide rankings that you might not be able to tap into with your own site. Among the panelists is linkbaiting champ and sometime YPN Blog contributor, Rand Fishkin. [...]
May 24th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
[...] SEO, Meet SMM Danny Sullivan moderates this panel on the new phenom, SMM, or “social media marketing.” Getting your content into social media can help generate links or provide rankings that you might not be able to tap into with your own site. Among the panelists is linkbaiting champ and sometime YPN Blog contributor, Rand Fishkin. [...]
May 28th, 2007 at 4:44 am
[...] Linkbaiting follows the scheme a) Linkbait Launch, b) The Long Tail of Links, c) Residual Traffic, d) Search Engine Rankings. “The content is released, shared with prominent bloggers, and submitted to portals like Digg, del.icio.us, Reddit and Netscape. If the content gains traction and visibility at widely-read sites, medium and smaller outlets, [..] content will spread across the Web. Even after the initial buzz from your successful linkbait campaign dies down, your site’s traffic may stay on a slight increase due to a “linkbait bump” that keeps users circling back to your site. The massive influx of links will cause a direct boost of the link popularity of the content piece, as well as an overall boost in global site popularity—and search engines tend to reward links with rankings.” [Leveraging Linkbait] [...]
May 28th, 2007 at 6:00 am
[...] Linkbaiting follows the scheme a) Linkbait Launch, b) The Long Tail of Links, c) Residual Traffic, d) Search Engine Rankings. “The content is released, shared with prominent bloggers, and submitted to portals like Digg, del.icio.us, Reddit and Netscape. If the content gains traction and visibility at widely-read sites, medium and smaller outlets, [..] content will spread across the Web. Even after the initial buzz from your successful linkbait campaign dies down, your site’s traffic may stay on a slight increase due to a “linkbait bump” that keeps users circling back to your site. The massive influx of links will cause a direct boost of the link popularity of the content piece, as well as an overall boost in global site popularity—and search engines tend to reward links with rankings.” [Leveraging Linkbait] [...]
May 29th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
[...] Linkbaiting follows the scheme a) Linkbait Launch, b) The Long Tail of Links, c) Residual Traffic, d) Search Engine Rankings. “The content is released, shared with prominent bloggers, and submitted to portals like Digg, del.icio.us, Reddit and Netscape. If the content gains traction and visibility at widely-read sites, medium and smaller outlets, [..] content will spread across the Web. Even after the initial buzz from your successful linkbait campaign dies down, your site’s traffic may stay on a slight increase due to a “linkbait bump” that keeps users circling back to your site. The massive influx of links will cause a direct boost of the link popularity of the content piece, as well as an overall boost in global site popularity—and search engines tend to reward links with rankings.” [Leveraging Linkbait] [...]
June 4th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
[...] Yahoo! Publisher Network ” Blog Archive ” Leveraging Linkbait … a series of pieces on linkbait too which starts with an introduction to linkbait. … D-Blogged ” Blog Archive ” The Ultimate Guide to Linkbaiting Resources Says: … [...]
June 4th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
[...] Yahoo! Publisher Network ” Blog Archive ” Leveraging Linkbait D-Blogged ” Blog Archive ” The Ultimate Guide to Linkbaiting Resources Says: … panelists is linkbaiting champ and sometime YPN Blog contributor, Rand … [...]
June 4th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
[...] Yahoo! Publisher Network ” Blog Archive ” Leveraging Linkbait D-Blogged ” Blog Archive ” The Ultimate Guide to Linkbaiting Resources Says: … panelists is linkbaiting champ and sometime YPN Blog contributor, Rand … [...]
June 4th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
[...] Yahoo! Publisher Network ” Blog Archive ” Leveraging Linkbait … a series of pieces on linkbait too which starts with an introduction to linkbait. … D-Blogged ” Blog Archive ” The Ultimate Guide to Linkbaiting Resources Says: … [...]
June 11th, 2007 at 8:17 am
[...] to be profiled, everyone will know you’ve been there—it’s like leaving a little link bait everywhere you go. (That’s me in the upper [...]
July 25th, 2007 at 4:11 am
[...] Linkbaiting follows the scheme a) Linkbait Launch, b) The Long Tail of Links, c) Residual Traffic, d) Search Engine Rankings. “The content is released, shared with prominent bloggers, and submitted to portals like Digg, del.icio.us, Reddit and Netscape. If the content gains traction and visibility at widely-read sites, medium and smaller outlets, [..] content will spread across the Web. Even after the initial buzz from your successful linkbait campaign dies down, your site’s traffic may stay on a slight increase due to a “linkbait bump” that keeps users circling back to your site. The massive influx of links will cause a direct boost of the link popularity of the content piece, as well as an overall boost in global site popularity—and search engines tend to reward links with rankings.” [Leveraging Linkbait] [...]
October 11th, 2007 at 9:17 am
[...] come cheap, especially if they’re in the Big Apple. But not to worry. We know people. Like Rand Fishkin, who is giving a talk on Social Media Marketing Essentials. As one of the smarteratti, Rand knows [...]
October 11th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
[...] come cheap, especially if they’re in the Big Apple. But not to worry. We know people. Like Rand Fishkin, who is giving a talk on Social Media Marketing Essentials. As one of the smarteratti, Rand knows [...]
October 14th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
[...] http://ypnblog.com/blog/2007/01/18/leveraging-linkbait/ [...]
October 18th, 2007 at 12:37 am
[...] Leveraging Linkbait – YPN finally came through! Too bad it wasn’t their publisher program though. This is a good [...]
October 31st, 2007 at 8:49 am
[...] commentator on our blog, Gary R. Hess, recently gave us kudos for our January, 2007 post, “Leveraging Linkbait,” by Rand Fishkin of [...]
November 5th, 2007 at 2:05 am
[...] The Yahoo Publisher Network blog blogged about Leveraging link bait tonight. [...]
November 7th, 2007 at 1:27 am
[...] Leveraging Linkbait January 18, 2007 11:34 AM Bookmark with del.icio.us Send Blog via 360° Print [...]
November 7th, 2007 at 3:00 am
[...] Leveraging Linkbait January 18, 2007 11:34 AM Bookmark with del.icio.us Send Blog via 360° Print [...]
December 30th, 2007 at 4:11 am
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December 30th, 2007 at 8:32 am
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December 30th, 2007 at 8:08 pm
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December 31st, 2007 at 4:12 am
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December 31st, 2007 at 4:22 pm
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December 31st, 2007 at 4:50 pm
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December 31st, 2007 at 5:09 pm
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December 31st, 2007 at 8:42 pm
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January 2nd, 2008 at 12:22 pm
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January 2nd, 2008 at 8:27 pm
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March 20th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
[...] to place links to it on other websites. Previously, Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz.org, wrote about linkbaiting on our YPN blog. We thought it would be a great idea to recap Rand’s informative and practical article, in case [...]
May 13th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
[...] major news outlets radio, TV and print. The worst of these are often slammed as ???PR stunts,???…http://ypnblog.com/blog/2007/01/18/leveraging-linkbait/Public Relations SpecialistEmployment for public relations Specialists is projected to increase [...]
June 20th, 2008 at 3:48 am
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October 28th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Linkbait is one element of link building, as is deep linking. In hindsight, the titles are not necessarily the best, and some are more consistent than others, but if you want a short course on link building and how to write linkbait, study these articles.
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Joseph
Link Building
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