Link building is one of the fundamental elements of SEO. While there are various ways to increase your inbound link count – in the trenches of buying, selling, and trading – the most powerful and efficient way is through link bait, the finer points of which are as teachable as “how to pick up girls.”
SEOBook’s Aaron Wall has made a reputation for himself in the world of link building and says he “could create a link bait tomorrow and virtually guarantee it gets listed on Digg’s homepage.”
Of course he’s not talking quantity of links here so much. Wall is talking quality of links, which is excellent as far as Google goes, as the Digg Effect crashes your servers and the traffic pours in from just one place – or a small smattering of places like Reddit, Digg, Netscape, Newsvine, Del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia, Furl, Techmeme or Blognicient.
Wall admits these sites are rather nerd-specific (though he should check out OkCupid’s nerd, geek, or dork test to be sure of that), but they are high-traffic sites that need content every day. “You can’t please everyone,” writes Wall, “but if you get a half dozen organic links a day it doesn’t take long to start building up some serious authority.”
He rightly points out in the beginning of his blog post that a sales pitch is useless. Link bait content needs to compelling on its own, without the cheesy OxyClean guy yelling at people.
“My theory is that every industry (and every brand worth creating or selling) has related stories that people would be interested in sharing. If people do not talk about you then you probably do not have much of a brand.”
Okay, so we still haven’t said how to do it. That’s because it’s hard, unless you’re a creative type. Remember my overly-dramatic lady-killer intro? But Wall does give examples. My personal favorite is “What is in a McDonalds French Fry that you wouldn’t find in a real potato?”
Hmmm. Now that is something we’d absolutely have to find out and share with other Netizens concerned with the McDonaldization of our digestive system.
Professional Internet writer Brian Clark seems fond of lists – 101 Ways to, 25 Tips for, 8 Reasons Why – et cetera. There’s nothing the Internet loves more than nice, straightforward, quick to read lists.
1. Make a list
2. Blog it
3. Submit to Digg and Del.icio.us
4. Wake up and smell the server burn
5. Check to see your ranking improve
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