The Top 10 SEOmoz Linkbait Articles
Over the past 2 years SEOmoz has used social media more effectively than any other internet marketing blog and has ended up with over 1.35 million links as a result.
In this article we will discover which of the SEOmozzers linkbait attempts were the most popular and, most importantly, how you can use the same ideas to emulate the success of SEOmoz.
This post has been somewhat of a labour of love for me and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing and researching it.
Firstly it is useful to take a look at the SEOmoz Alexa data which shows the phenomenal growth of the site during late 2006.
December 2005 – Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization
Referenced everywhere the Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization became the default location web marketing newbies were sent when they asked about learning SEO. 2 years later the article is still one of hte leading beginners resources in our industry and fully deserves the 4,689 links it has attracted.
January 2006 – IP location
The first piece of SEOmoz linkbait to hit the Digg front page was in early 2006 and used the new Google Maps API and some cool AJAX technology to create an AJAX Powered IP Location Lookup tool which went on to attract 9,566 links. The tool hit the Digg front page with 1352 Diggs and also received a lot of attention elsewhere with 1280 Del.icio.us bookmarks.
May 2006 – Digg Bait
Next on the list was more Digg bait than long term linkbait. The Interviewing Web Developers – 20 Good Questions to Ask post attracted 800 links to both the old and new versions of the url as well as over 1200 Diggs.
This post was ideally targeted towards the web development community on social networks such as Digg.
July 2006 – Digg
Rand is clearly getting the hang of the Digg audience and figures out that the one thing Digg users like to Digg more than anything else is a story about Digg. The Top 100 Digg Users Control 56% of Digg’s HomePage Content post attracted over 4485 Diggs and around 700 links in total.
August 2006 – Linkbait Headlines
Matt is back with another good post this month about 5 HTML elements you probably never use (but perhaps should) which attracted 1400 links and over 3500 Diggs. This post has a perfect linkbait title and appeals to a wide range of web design blogs so the link potential is much higher than some of the other linkbait posts.
Still in August comes a golden linkbait headline – 21 Tactics to Improve Blog Traffic which, although not doing quite as well on Digg, attracted 1200 links.
October 2006 – tricky client
Matt clearly had a difficult client in October as the two stories on Digg were about How to convince a client their site doesn’t need background music and How to Convince a Client They Don’t Need a Splash Page. These two posts attracted 700 links between them.
Also in October, and living proof that getting Dugg doesn’t give you loads of links, is the Why is Yahoo! Competing With Itself? with just 32 links.
Page Strength
The Page Strength tool is a great example of long term linkbait and has attracted around 6,000 links to the various different urls it has occupied.
February 2007 – Web design
Once more the theme is web design as Matt offers 8 Web Design Tactics to Help You When You’re Stuck attracting 1791 Diggs and an impressive 3000 links.
Another success this month was 15 CSS Properties You Probably Never Use (but perhaps should) with 2600 links
Web 2.0 Awards
Lets finish off with my favourite and the ultimate linkbait, the Web 2.0 Awards with 66,000 links (and 27,000 to the first version).
What can we learn from SEOmoz
Attracting links from within a specific niche is difficult purely because of the limited number of related sites that may link to you. The tactic SEOmoz has used is to create more generic linkbait that appeals to a much wider section of the online community. If Rand had restricted SEOmoz to pure search engine optimisation content the site would not have seen anywhere near the growth or links from outside the SEO community as it has.
As long as your linkbait is loosely related to your core subject area it is important to embrace off topic posts and thrive on the links you gain from totally unrelated websites.
Post category: Linkbait, Search Engine Optimisation Tweet
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3, a Leeds SEO & Digital Agency specialising in SEO, Web Design, Development & Social Media.
Comments
Read the 6 comments below, or add your own!
Not only were these great examples to learn from, I learned that a list of good linkbaits makes for good linkbait itself
Great great article. Things like this that make it all worth reading the WEB…. I’m definately going to be trying to set some sort of link baiting up for my site now that I’ve read this article. GREAT IDEAS. GREAT LINKBAITS. They certainly are the masters.
Looking at the articles that attracted the most links, what struck me the most is that most of them provided something of genuine value. Sure there’s some purely ‘baity’ articles, but the beginners guide to seo and lookup tool are really good stuff – another example of great content that wins out.
Great analysis.
They had a lot more front page Diggs than that. Here is a post there they reveal their traffic volume from Digg. It seems that repeated exposure is the key to maintaining that kind of traffic volume.
This explains the marketing success of the “Idiots Guide to…” series of books. Nothing new here, just an age old principle applied to a new channel that works because it is well executed. Great article.
I’ve never realized that IP location was made by the SEOMoz until I read your article. Nevertheless, great post!
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