Recap of ‘Linkbaiting and Viral Search Success’ – SES San Jose 2007

It’s a good thing unauthorized videotaping isn’t allowed at SES…if it were, the cameras might have caught me drooling with a faraway look in my eye for most of this session.  Three of my absolute favorite SEOs in the world (Rebecca Kelley of SEOmoz, Cameron Olthuis of CameronOlthuis.com, Jennifer Laycock of Search Engine Guide) led the panel and were “completed” by a new favorite of mine, Chris Boggs of Brulant, who also happens to be an avid golfer!  Chris, thanks for squeezing me into the outing on Tuesday morning :)

The goal of linkbait is to get content that lives on your website in front of a tech-savvy audience.  Why is this such an important strategy?  This audience, composed of bloggers, web researchers, and journalists, is collectively known as the “Linkerati.”  It is this community which has the singular ability to give your company PR, as in both traditional Public Relations as well as PageRank, via their stories about your content and the resultant links to your website from their blogs or media outlets.  Through this community your content can spread virally, attracting many more eyeballs and many more links than you could ever hope to garner from a traditional 1:1 link-building program.

Stuck on what content would make for good linkbait? Search for keywords related to your business on some of the major Social Media and Social Networking sites: Digg, Reddit, Fark, Netscape, and other sites of their ilk.  See what’s been successful in the past, and what hasn’t.  Learn who the big players (submitters and voters) are in your field and find out what’s scratching their itch these days.  You want a piece of content that’s going to create buzz within this highly targeted niche, because this niche is what’ll get your snowball rolling.  You might even do a little Pre-launch PR and ask the opinions of some of these people you hope will pick up your content.  They’re more likely to help spread it and share it if they had something to do with it.

Rebecca’s words to the wise:

• Be sure you target your keywords in the title of your submission and also the title tag of the page you’re submitting — these are going to get picked up by everyone who blogs about your topic & you’ll want to get the maximum bump from anchor text that you can.
• Manage your traffic at launch–you’ll likely see a huge spike within the first hour of submission & you don’t want your server to crash!  If you have to buy more bandwidth to prepare for this spike, do it.
• Try to use static pages, as these are going to be easier to link to and will take less bandwidth.  But if they have to be dynamic, have a static backup ready in case of a massive influx of traffic.
• Put ANOTHER great piece of content up shortly after your initial one to retain the most visitors & keep your site ‘sticky.’

Rebecca’s presentation was a tough act to follow, but Cameron did a better-than-admirable job.  He echoed Rebecca’s sentiments about finding out what kinds of content have worked in the past for your industry, noting that he often searches Del.icio.us bookmarks as well.  Brainstorm your content with as many different people as you can–often you’ll come up with not just one, but several ideas that you can use to keep your site ‘sticky.’

Because people don’t actually spend a lot of time on the Social Media sites themselves, good titles and descriptions, along with proper categories are essential. Your submissions need to be eye-catching and on the radar of the people who are most likely to be interested in your content.  And what seems to me to be the biggest key to Social Media: make sure you have a power user submit your story.  This will give it better visibility and instant credibility among the hundreds or thousands of ‘friends’ of that user.  Yes, it will take time to develop a relationship with these kinds of users, but the inherent value in social media is likely to make that time well spent.

Jennifer followed Cameron up with a few tips of her own before launching into a terrific case study about her own ‘pet’ small business website, The Lactivist.

• A fundamental tenet of linkbait is that the cost of the linkbait is the cost of the idea.  Unlike 1:1 linkbuilding campaigns where you need to spend time and energy developing relationships with hundreds of potential linkers, and even (gasp!) spend money on these links, the tough part of linkbait is coming up with a worthy piece of content.  (I’d actually say this is only partially true, since as Cameron pointed out you need to know a power user, to whom a lot of people just pay money in exchange for their help with submissions.)
• In brainstorming ideas, don’t forget to browse the forums and discussion boards of the grassroots sites in your community…find out what’s sparking the most passion and the most conversation in your potential audience and make your linkbait piece something that people will want to blog about themselves.
• If you can answer yes to the following question, chances are your linkbait will be successful: “Will my audience put their reputation on the line linking to this piece.”  If it’s only a marginal piece of content, you’re not going to get the kind of response you’d hoped for.

The Lactivist is a website promoting breast-feeding and human milk storage.  It’s basically a non-profit, as the proceeds from the T-shirts Jennifer sells on the site (with hilarious slogans like “Eat at Moms” “My Kid Sucks” and “Stop Staring at My Baby’s Lunch”) go to the Ohio Milk Bank.  Apparently, the Pork Council of America didn’t take kindly to one of Jennifer’s T-shirts which read “The Other White Milk,” and sent Jennifer a Cease & Desist letter threatening a suit over trademark infringement.  It struck several nerves as a perfect storm of overzealous lawyers, David vs. Goliath, breasts, and pork, and through Jennifer’s expert use of Social Media brought plenty of positive buzz and notoriety to her site.  (Apparently Big Pork received so many emails and phone calls from angry moms and other concerned parties that they asked Jennifer how they could stop it & made a significant donation to the Ohio Milk Bank.) :)

Chris’s presentation was short by design, as he was anxious to get to the audience Q&A.  He did give a great tip, though, I thought in suggesting the use of Venn Diagrams during brainstorming.  Any topic that is tangential to SEVERAL areas of your core business, or to the tech audience, is likely to make a good piece of bait.

Great job with this panel, guys, & I hope there’s an ongoing “reunion tour” at future conferences!