In actual fact the best linkbait is to create a useful resource that people reference when they are writing about a particular subject. If you can create a few thousand of these resources and each one gets a couple of links per month then that equates to thousands of natural links per month, all with great anchor text % contextual relevance.

For me Wikipedia is just one giant linkbait website, do you know anybody who has managed to get over 135 million links by writing Top 10 articles? 135 million links is a huge amount and all of them are the result of somebody thinking that Wikipedia was a great resource to link at when they were writing an article – in most cases Wikipedia probably wasn’t the best resource possible but it was better than the other resources on a particular subject.

It isn’t going to be easy but if you really want to linkbait in your industry then the path is quite straightforward:

• Find all pages on Wikipedia that relate to your niche
• Write more detailed versions with better images
• Email all the people who link to the Wikipedia pages and gently point them to your new page
• Find subjects where Wikipedia doesn’t have a page
• Create a quality page on these new subjects
• Use your existing link equity to help the new pages rank
• Wait for people to find and link to these pages

In 18 months this strategy will probably give you enough links to outrank Wikipedia for every term you target.

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Forget linkbait, just copy Wikipedia

The fallout from this has driven Lyndon underground to launch an exclusive new linkbait coaching program.

I decided to interview Lyndon to find out the truth about what’s been going on and see if he really knows how to linkbait.

Hi Lyndon, the fallout from the hoax linkbait was pretty convenient happening a few weeks before you launched a coaching program. Was it all just a big linkbait ploy?

Yes I always like to get Fox News to cover my linkbait before a product launch The reality of the situation was, I had been trying to launch a coaching program for many months now. A number of people who have been moaning at me to get my finger out and crack on with it will testify to this.

A moment happened, and moments like this happen probably once every two years. Where you are faced with something that is much bigger than yourself, and you have to decide where you want it to take you.

It’s been a surreal trip, something that I would love to take all the credit for. But, I realise that I was actually a very tiny piece of this. I think I tapped into some kind of online social consciousness and raised an issue that people wanted to address. I think I happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right kind of linkbait.

So, although I did write something specifically designed to push the buttons of a specific social tribe, I think the resultant kerfuffle was more to do with a collective need for a debate on the subject.

Therefore, what I mean to say is I saw the opportunity, decided the time was right to do what I had been planning for some time.

A lot of people have heard about linkbait and have even tried it. What separates the thousands of unsuccessful linkbait articles published every week from the ones that actually go viral?

It’s actually very simple. The successful ones give people something that makes them want to tell someone else about it. Be it in the form of a link, sending an IM or telling people about it on your radio show.

So, the trick is being able to craft something into a thing that inspires the reader to pass it on, without telling the reader that is what your goal it. On that note I think some people would like to pass a law where all viral marketing and linkbait was all labeled as thus.

Perhaps Google will be coming out with a linkbait meta tag in the future.

To me, the word that separates the two is “seduction”, and I absolutely mean this in the romantic sense. People must fall in love with the content. It has an emotional connection between it and the reader. Rationality is irrelevant, and that’s why I think the Ralph Hardy story had such strong legs, people suspended their disbelief because it was such a wonderful story. It hit them in a very emotional place. I haven’t time or space here to deconstruct the pychological motivators of the piece but it managed to reach into parts of the mind that other linkbait does not reach.

For most people Digg is the first stop for linkbait and, rightly or wrongly, it can make or break a linkbait piece. Given the huge difficulty of getting e-commerce sites onto Digg what suggestions do you have for success in this area?

Diggers like anyone respond to those who give them respect. So if some e-commerce site simply treats digg like it’s own personal traffic bank, it’s going to fail. But, if it learns how to interact and hold discourse with the digg tribe, that tribe will pay back in kind.

Getting into specifics, I would first define what the e-commerce site’s objectives are. Any campaign wishing to attract diggers to their content must take this into account. There are lots of obvious technical things like having little advertising on the page, keep corporate branding to the minimum etc.

But, the essential thing they must do is present something to the tribe which they will accept and honour. Rather than making them respond by burying you in the sand, dribbling honey over your head and adding the flesh eating ants.

The problem e-commerce sites have is they do not speak the digg tribal language, they need interpreters, which is where professional linkbaiters come in.

The success of a story can often depend on the trust social media users place in the source it’s published on. A breaking story published on the BBC stands a much better chance of getting links than the identical story on a small blog. What steps can small blogs take to solve this and appear more credible?

digg is always going to give the bigger publishers the advantage, I constantly see sites like the Times.co.uk and dailymail.co.uk make the front page with content I know would fail on smaller sites.

Make sure the content is submitted by a digg power user, if it’s great content a digger would love to do it as they love getting the front page too. Also, improve your social network, make it big enough so that the same people don’t digg your stuff all the time. This can be a job in itself. A lot of popular blogs have a large enough fan base for this not to be a problem.

But, doing those things are pointless if the content you are starting out with is poor quality. Your content must be the best it can possibly be.

Teaching people how to linkbait is a tricky business. What will you do if some of your clients are a lost cause?

Lol, take them out the back and shoot them. I think the people who are motivated to join such a course and lay down 200 readies for the chance to be coached in such techniques already have the correct attitude. To me, it’s all about attitude.

Most blogs out there touch on the practical aspects of linkbait, which is great. But, few touch on the theory and it’s understanding the theoretical aspect which will turn you into a success. Most people learn this without even knowing, by repeated application and experimentation.

So, if I can break down the theory into practical application and get people to come to an understanding of how the constituent elements brings together a great piece of linkbait I think I can teach anyone who is properly motivated and has the right attitude.

Have you ever had to give up on a project because it was impossible to linkbait for?

No, there is always some angle. I have wished I could give up on some clients, as some come to me with unrealistic expectations. But, most of the time you can come up with something, the problem is, will the client allow you to go down that path to make the content desirable enough for people to be attracted to it.

I am no longer taking new clients though so hopefully will never have this problem again.

Some websites are impossible to bait links for because they are just static 5 page brochure sites. If your client was in an industry full of these sites what steps would you recommend they took to find link targets?

If the client does not allow you to create content on their site, getting links to that site is going to be tricky. Although if we discount linkbait for such clients there are a number of creative ways to get links and there are also some “old school” linkbuilding techniques that can be applied.

Basically it’s about looking at the motivation behind another webmaster dropping a link to the specific site. If there is nothing of worth to link to, you have to start thinking about getting creative and putting on your grey or even blackhat. Depending of course on the amount of risk the client is willing to take.

What is your favourite headline of all time (excluding fake ones)?

I would have to say my favourite is “Soviet Revolt Grows”, I managed to nab the large poster from an Evening Standard newspaper box, back in 1991 I think. It was on my wall for many years.

But, “Boy Eats Own Head”, is a classic from the National Enquirer.

Thanks Lyndon.

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What the hell does Lyndon Antcliff Know about Linkbait

This has been the mantra of the UK tabloid press for years and it makes for very entertaining reading, taken with a pinch of salt.

Let’s take a look first at Nick Coates who last year made The Sun and Daily Mail (aged just 17) with a story about him turning down £8.5 million for a website that didn’t look to have any traffic at all. After the publicity the site was worth 100 times the original amount (still not £8.5 million of course).

Then there was Alex Tew and his milliondollarhomepage.com which was picked up by the BBC and every other website in the world. Do you really think Alex sold any pixels before his PR company started pitching the idea to newspapers? In reality he probably gave the first 200,000 away and then made his money on the final slots. The story was in the fact a young student had made loads of money even though he probably hadn’t.

You need to fake it until you make it whether you are marketing online or offline.

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How to use fake news to promote a website

Let’s say you wanted to rank highly for some of the insurance search terms. Most guesses would say that to have a chance you need 24 months and 100,000 natural links. The value of a naturally ranking site is at least £1 million (perhaps more).

If a linkbaiter charges £1000 per article with 5 such articles per month then it will cost £60,000 a year to build links. If each linkbait gains 1000 links then after 2 years you have spent £120,000 and have 120,000 natural links and a site that’s worth £1 million.

In the UK there are perhaps 5 people that offer high end corporate linkbait services designed to build a lot of links over a long term period. The reason there are only about 5 isn’t just because it’s so hard but because the demand isn’t high enough to support too many more.

The reason for this is simple. For the past 3 years large SEO companies have been taking on very big clients and immediately buying as many links as possible. These companies then go to the top of Google and everybody is happy. It is much easier for the SEO company to buy 50,000 links for £20,000 than to spend time and money trying to learn about creating the links naturally.

Some of these large SEO companies are now struggling to deliver results for clients using paid links, directory submissions and on-site SEO and their clients are leaving, one by one.

In 12 months time the fees that UK linkbait experts charge will be five times higher than at present as demand will far outstrip supply.

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The value of linkbait

Now I love SEOmoz as much as everybody else but in this case I really don’t think it was good linkbait. If an article gets on the Digg front page the average number of links is 300. This article got more Diggs than average and has just 66 links and a lot of those are from the scrapers that publish everything that gets on Digg.

I would class this as social media bait rather than linkbait because there isn’t a hook to encourage people to link to it. The reason so many people fail at linkbait is because they start publishing articles like this with no thought to why people would link to them – nobody links to linkbait without a reason.

The best viral campaign I’ve seen recently got 20 diggs (less than 100 times the number SEOmoz got) and currently has 15,000 links. That’s linkbait.

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It’s good but is it linkbait

The problem with linkbaiting is that no matter how good the linkbait is lot of the links will come from blogs that are less than 3 years old. This means that the links probably don’t count for very much compared to a link from a really old and trusted site. There are some blogs that are a year or two old that have lots of trust with Google but they are few and far between.

How many blogs have ruined their ability to pass PR by doing things like paid posts and selling links recently? How many blogs rank highly for really competitive terms? Lots and not many are the answers.

If you want great rankings from linkbait you need to be getting links from the Gizmodos and TechCrunch’s of your niche. Personally I’ve baited links for clients from the likes of the Guardian, CNBC, Wired and the Times in the past few months and my belief is that they are worth 100 times more than a link from your average blog.

Having said this I always recommend linkbaiting blogs for two reasons. First of all e-commerce clients need to have defensible links – Daves clients might not have better rankings but they now have lots of natural links whereas most of the competitors are relying on the sort of links Google is trying to devalue which is not a good position to be in.

Secondly links from blogs are like a fine wine – they get better with age. So in 5 years time the effort e-commerce sites put into linkbaiting is going to give them very strong sustainable rankings.

In summary I agree that linkbait isn’t a quick fix. However if you are prepared to develop a long term sustainable strategy for linkbaiting and can get links from some really trusted sites then it will pay off in the long term.

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Is Linkbaiting Overrated?

The first step to creating long term linkbait is to create some timeless content such as a pillar article or tutorial that can be referenced by other sites. For example my Google Analytics tutorial is quite helpful and will continue to attract links as long as it remains current and updated.

Marketing Strategy

1. Promote on social news sites
2. Pitch to bloggers in your niche
3. Pitch to people who have already written about the subject and hope they add a link to your article as well
4. Get your article to the top of the Google results so people researching for future articles can find it
5. Set up Google Alerts to notify you about any new articles on related subjects. Email the writer and suggest your article as an additional resource.

The idea is that you create the best and most comprehensive article about a certain subject and then make sure that any articles written in the past or the future include a link to your article. Simple but effective.

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How to promote long term linkbait

I would like to know how you go about optimising for clients who run companies that might not be able to create typical link bait articles.

For example, SEO for a funeral directors? Or kitchen fitters? I can think of a few funny videos that would go great on a funeral site, but I don’t think the client would find them suitable!

The first thing to remember is that some industries that are hard to linkbait for are not very competitive. For example if I was looking at the links for people ranking for “funeral directors leeds” the site ranking second has only 4 links. My strategy would be to add articles and quality content to the site so it passes a manual review by Google and then replicate the link profiles of sites already ranking (don’t replicate the low quality links). Add to this a few articles syndicated on real sites (not just directories) and you should be able to rank quite well.

Linkbait for something like this shouldn’t be about “Top 10″ articles, it’s about creating quality content and tools and then finding places that might want to link to them. Alternatively find a place you want a link from and create an article or tool for them to either use on their site or link to.

Alternatively you have industries such as insurance or loans that are almost impossible to linkbait for and very competitive. For these clients links from blogs and news sites are the key but they can be hard to get. I would start by creating an affiliate program with links that pass weight, then employ a PR agency to get the client in the mainstream media every month and then figure out how to create something controversial enough to get links.

This sort of strategy isn’t easy and it certainly isn’t cheap. The value of getting a site to the top of an insurance vertical naturally is probably in the millions.

Useful link:
Beginners Guide to Linkbait

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Linkbait in difficult industries

Now it’s 2008 and this tactic doesn’t work very well anymore.

Of course some bloggers are happy to point their readers towards an article about the “Top 10 iPhone Applications” but can you imagine TechCrunch, Engadget or Wired picking up on it? To get links from these major sites you need to find a unique news story and break it extremely aggressively.

Picking your story

The best stories to choose are ones to do with a major tech giant. Try to find a story that has either not been seen before or not picked up by any major news sources. Perhaps you found a story a few months ago and can relate it to an announcement made last week.

For example if a search engine was supporting green initiatives and yet 6 months ago had been found polluting a river then you could tie the two stories together.

Ideally the story will be related to your niche as this will make you seem a credible expert on the subject.

Writing your article

Once you decide on your story it is essential that you make your article the most comprehensive resource on the subject. Being a leading resource means that other sites won’t try to write better coverage than you, they will just link to your story. This helps focus all the links towards your site rather than allowing them to become spread over a number of stories.

Use good formatting, images, diagrams, quotes from experts and a title that makes the article appear legitimate. The entire article should appear like it was written by an industry expert.

Promoting your article

One the article has been published spend a few hours sending personal emails to hundreds of major blogs and news sites. Make sure you are promoting the story and not begging for links. You need to get them to read your story, then they can decide if it’s worth covering.

While you are writing these emails start pushing the story on Digg, StumbleUpon and any other social news site you can. You need a strong initial burst of traffic to build up the momentum and encourage news sites to cover it.

Fuelling the storm

Once major sites start to cover your story you need to promote every single one of them using Digg and other social news sites, get enough buzz behind your story and everybody will assume it is a huge story even if it isn’t. If Engadget covers your story it will be a lot easier to get their story onto the front page of Digg than it would be to get your site there. Ideally you might be able to push more than one story onto the front page but this is not always possible.

If every other site is covering something and it’s on the front page of Digg you can bet that people who previously ignored it will take notice.

Photo credit

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How to create a blogstorm

Today I will start with a few tips and then follow up with tips for a specific site.

This week I’ve had a number of emails via the contact form and, thanks to the enhanced contact form I use to track referrers, I can tell that the people sending emails came via a big list of the blogs such as this one or this one. What people are doing is writing an interesting article and then sending personal emails to the top blogs in their niche and informing them about the article.

Most of the time I will read the article and sometimes I might even link to it. The one thing all these emails had in common was that I wouldn’t have known about the article if the person hadn’t taken the time to contact me. These linkbaiters are not relying on Digg or another social news site to get the word out about their great article, they are being proactive and taking the time to make sure the right people read their article.

It isn’t about reaching 50,000 readers in the first 24 hours, it’s about reaching maybe 10 key influencers with maybe 5,000 RSS readers each who will see the article over the course of a week.

Stumble Bait

When you find your linkbaiting gets tricky it can make a refreshing change to start creating content purely for StumbleUpon. For example this article was designed with images, headlines and was targeted 100% towards the community of webmasters that use StumbleUpon.

Over time I expect that the article will attract more than a handful of links purely from residual traffic from StumbleUpon.

Linkbait for styletips101.com

styletips101.com asked for linkbait tips so here are a few:
“How to tie a tie” is something that did well on Digg and attracted a lot of links. Articles that tell people in easy steps how to do something always get links. Try “how to dress for an interview” or “how to dress for a conference” or even “10 Style tips for a first date”.

Also maybe “10 skirts to make you look thinner” would appeal on women’s blogs and social sites. The key is to make sure you read all the blogs in your niche and see what they are linking to. Once you figure that out just start creating the same content.

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Linkbait Tuesday: Easy ways to linkbait