SEO News and Analysis

We have reached the end of our series, and today I would like to discuss the last important detail about link baiting and viral marketing, and that is specific content ideas to help you attract the most attention. When it comes to deciding on what kind of content format to use, you should always look at what is currently bringing in the most attention at the moment. Some will also be constant, and will always bring in a fail amount of traffic no matter what is currently popular.

Top 10 Lists

Lists are always your number one. Everyone loves to read a good “Top 10 of the Coolest Things To Happen During That Year” list. It gives them a quick bullet of a basic genre for them to enjoy. If you provide pictures, it is even better, but it isn’t necessarily needed. You can also consider a meme a list type, and provide something in that format.

When posting it, be sure you provide simple keywords on the page, and within the text. Make the title itself SEO targeted, as that will give you more hits on any search engine, and bring people directly to you. You should also make sure to write it in the most interesting way possible, but keep it succinct. You don’t need long passages, just a paragraph or two per item, to keep it snappy but interested.

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Last week, we spoke about the use of certain types of viral content that can be used for easy linkbaiting. These included blogs, articles, tools, and social networking applications. Today, we will cover the others, in what is one of the last of our 10-week series on viral marketing and linkbaiting. There are still several that can be used, and they are by no means the only ones. Creativity in creating new methods is a basic part of effective advertising and marketing.

Widgets

Different than the standard application or tool, a widget is something designed specifically to be unimportant, or for entertainment purposes only. These are some of the most popular of viral types on the web, especially with the increased ability to post basic codes into blogs, journals, social networking profiles, and onto web pages. They have also increased in complexity over time, and so are easy to make, and even easier for even the more computer illiterate visitor to use.

The trick is making it easily posted onto these sources. Having several code types, for example for forums, HTML, and social networking codes, will allow it to be spread further. A link can be provided for anyone who wants to use the widget for themselves, which will also provide them with a source for the person who created this.

On the other hand, players can be used as widgets. If you have a band, a video channel, or anything media-oriented, a widget can provide an easy way to share your content. It can also be attached to existing widgets, such as in the case of the Myspace media player, which allows users to create a playlist with their favorite songs.

Badges

Badges are similar to a name tags, or perhaps security tags. You can embed them as an image within an HTML code. Not all sites can use badges, but if you can then you really should take advantage of this. Have some really cool badges for your site designed, and encourage people to put on their sites for you.

How effective these 2 options listed above are? Can be quite effective. Recently we released a free cool looking Zencart template, and we asked people to please keep the link back to our site if possible. Not everyone did, but some did leave the link where it is (which we greatly appreciate), and as the result we have seen great improvements recently in term of traffic as well as conversion rate (more potential clients contact us after checking out the site).

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There is a general type of linkbaiting method that is often used on the Internet, much more so that specified marketing campaigns. These are especially useful for those that have content-rich sites, such as blogs, or anything that is meant to sell information via traffic, rather than through a direct product. This is general viral marketing and linkbaiting, which can be applied in several difference ways. Each one should appeal to a different source, and slightly alter the way that traffic is created.

Blogs

Quickly becoming a staple of the online world, blogs are a better place than ever to generate interest. Because they are so easily shared socially, they make great viral marketing foundations for your website. This is also true of generating links. Blogs will commonly link to one another, and they have to do legally use a source. Using the day’s top interest points, or targeted niches, will help to ensure you regularly bait links through your own blog.

What you have to decide is the purpose of the blog itself. Most will probably have it stand alone, and put all their time and effort into updating it, and branding it. This is commonly seen with news blogs, gossip blogs, technology blogs…anything that moves quickly and has to shift from day to day. This will always bring in the most links.

Next, you have general interest blogs. These don’t bring in as many links, but they do often get dedicated followers for the information you provide. For example, you may create a site dedicated to offering all natural beauty tips, or reviewing video games and movies. They won’t be updated on a day to day basis, but they will generate a good deal of interest, and continue bringing in links on the same topics for a long while.

Last, you have SEO blogs. These are sites that have posts created specifically to anchor links. These can be beneficial for advertising purposes for another website, but they can also be easily caught. You should think of these as hit and miss options. They may help to boost you in small spurts, but those are not lasting. They are like the Mario Energy Stars of the linkbaiting world….effective, but not at all permanent.

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As you continue on the round to successful link baiting you might notice something that most marketers end up seeing at some point: content only draws in backlinks for so long. It doesn’t matter how good the content you have created it, or how many links it attracts during the first few weeks. Once a campaign has run its course, whether that be over a month, or over a few hours, it is done. That same content cannot generally be resurrected again.

There is one main exception to this rule. That is when you have written a second part to the original, and link it through that content to the original source. This may bring in some backlinks as new visitors seek it out for reference. This is a good strategy to keep milking a particularly helpful bit of content a little while longer, but won’t work long term either, as that second part will eventually go out of vogue as well.

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Today I would like to talk about using linkbaiting as a means of establishing positive public relations for your company or website. When used correctly, you can use a few well placed items of viral marketing to create an image of professionalism and trust for your business. It is the proper way to go about using this method or marketing, and it is another reason that it is so important to be mindful of what kind of content you use.

It is also a method of using the viral content itself to draw in links, and it is a much more effective way for medium-sized businesses and websites to compete with larger ones, which have a great deal of funding at their disposal for advertising campaigns. Just think of the videos, commercials, ads, contents, and gimmicks that have been used in the past.

An example is the recent release of a website for the movie ’2012′. They created a fake organization called The Institute for Human Continuity, which offers a fake lottery to become one of those saved when the world “ends” in 2012. They created a well formed website, professionally done, to cause a hype, and they didn’t announce it as a marketing campaign. They even managed to secure a .org domain to increase it’s realism.

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The primary purpose behind linkbaiting is self evident: you are trying to capture more links for the sake of exposure. But what are the other reasons? As a basic marketing strategy, there are several other primary purposes behind using linkbaiting to bring in traffic for your site. Each one is a way of building on the original purpose, and when you keep them all in mind you will be able to create better content for the sake of backlinks. If you don’t keep them all in mind, you will lose several key resources, which means wasted time, and lost profits.

Establish a Base Audience

There is nothing so precious to a webmaster or company than having a group of people dedicated to their website/product. Not only will this ensure a group of regular visitors, but it will lead to users spreading the word about you. They will tell friends, create links, and provide a crucial network beyond that of which is provided by affiliates and standard marketing.

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We covered the first tier of the ‘Linkerati’, the people who are most likely to help you to gain exposure using viral marketing tactics. While these three will always be your number one priority in getting your name and content out onto the great expanse of the World Wide Web, there are three others that can prove beneficial, as long as you provide content that will be directly related to their interests. Unfortunately, the two out of three can be difficult to expand to, but knowing of their existence will be the first step into catching their attention, and provide a secondary resource to linkbaiters.

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Last week we touched on the subject of your target audience, namely knowing who they are, and giving them what they will want. Today we will expand on that concept, and discuss the different groups that make up the satirically named ‘Linkerati’. These elite members of the Internet are the main focus of linkbaiters and viral marketers, as they are the hubs from which information is most widely spread. Think of these people as the center of a spiders web, with each strand spinning from that middle point, moving out into a wider and wider circle. The idea behind a member of the Linkerati is that they own powerful websites, blogs, or positions of information sharing. They are separate from the average webmaster whose site may or many not rank high in Google ratings, or receive a wide amount of traffic on a daily basis. They are a source for people to go to for information, entertainment, or services. From there, other Internet users will pass content along, ensuring it is seem by the highest number of people possible. Some of these Linkerati include:

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Last week we took some time to look at exactly what linkbait is, and how it works within the context of viral marketing. We learned that linkbaiting was the process of creating any kind of content as a means of attracting links, and so increasing traffic to a particular website. We also learned that viral marketing is an important tool for linkbaiters, as the very natural of viral marketing is to be shared among a large number of people.

Today, we are going to look at some of the basic rules that you will want to follow when attempting to linkbait. These are all important guidelines, specifically because creating content for the sake of links will often cause webmasters to delete and ban your content long before it reaches a target audience. If you don’t do it right, you might as well not do it at all. Taking all the necessary precautions will bring in a lot of work, but not a lot of results.

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Google has been on the warpath to dispel some of the rumors that have been circulating the net about their policy towards duplicate content. Not only have various videos been made to address this issue, but several have been created to specifically explain what the real policy towards websites that post duplicate content for the sake of increased Google rankings.

Greg Grothaus of the Search Quality Team is one of the many members of Google that has taken the offensive on this issue, and posted a new video on his team’s YouTube channel to explain the difference. It gives a great, simple explanation about the differences between duplicate content and spam, and denies some of the information that has been posted online.

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