Dave has posted an interesting analysis of linkbait and asks Is Linkbaiting Overrated? Here are my thoughts.
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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