Red Evo made a comment on a guest post I wrote for Searchenginepeople.com. I ask what would you call linkbait if you couldn’t call it linkbait, his reply was “good content”.

No. Linkbait is not good content. Linkbait is exceptional content. All your content should be good at least I hope it is. Linkbait is the kind of content you spend ten days crafting. If you did that with all your content you wouldn’t get much done. Linkbait is targeted at a specific target, whilst content is simply targeted at the users of your site.

Someone else claims linkbait used to be called, “Killer headlines”.

No, a killer headline is part of what linkbait is but it is not what it is.

Yura asks a sensible question about using linkbait just for links, well that’s what linkbait is. It’s a tool in the seo tool box you use to get links. That is it’s purpose. If you want to get another outcome you use another tool.

What this tells me is possibly that the seo community still does not get linkbait. It does not surprise me , over at linkbaitcoaching.com the first questions I usually get aksed is “how can I build my network so I can game digg”. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but it’s not as important as other components of linkbait.

You cannot really blame the seo, they tend to be an odd sort. Getting excited over web traffic stats and obsessing over keywords. I know because I am one, or rather was. Can’t really call myself an seo anymore.

The jump that the seo has to make from what they do to creating linkbait is quite a big one. It’s something I am learning whilst teaching how to linkbait. But once an seo does get it, they have an edge over their neighbour who doesn’t.

Categories: Social media marketing

Want to know the real way to get links?

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Categories: Linkbait

As you may have noticed I have not been making much effort to sell Linkbait Coaching, the reality is I haven’t needed to. The first month filled up very quickly and I have a bunch of people who missed the frist wave. So I am upping the membership number to 40, I doubt it will increase that figure as the service I offer is personal requires a large time investment from me and I do not think I can squeeze any more juice out of my day.

Linkbait Coaching is not about giving you static lessons and letting you get on with it. I am there to answer your questions on the forum and to help you come up with linkbait ideas and help with headlines for your specific niche.

Help is also there for advice on building a social network and building social media power accounts. Read More →

Categories: Linkbait

What makes me link these days is not something that is obviously useful, but rather something that gets me to think. Members of Linkbait Coaching, hopefully know that if they want a to linkbait me, this is what they have to serve up.

So what got me thinking this morning was this post, titled, Don’t Be Popular, be Useful, which in turn is a response to a Jonathon Morrow at Copyblogger titled, How to Stop Being Invisible.

I also read an article in Wired about Juliet Allison, someone I knew nothing about till today. Maybe I should read Gawker more, yeah right.

The Barone article, crystalised a lot of what I had been thinking. Read More →

Categories: Blogging

Do you groan when you read, “Did you know that content is king?”. I do. But only because it’s an old phrase that has be over-used and misused countless times.

More and more this year I’m thinking it’s the year of content. Last year was the year of Linkbait. But, lets face it, linkbait is content. A “ten cups of Colombian coffee an hour”, kinda content, but content never the less.

When thinking of content, in the context of a web page, think other words too. Don’t just read this post, think about content in the context of your own web properties. Read More →

Categories: Content Creation

I am no longer following people who follow me on Twitter. Read More →

Categories: Blogging

I love keywords. Hell, I love words. So looking through a list of keywords is also entertaining, and as words are also my business I can claim I am being productive. Here are 500 words culled from Google Analytics, words and phrases and symbols which have been used to bring the stuff I create in front of peoples eyeballs. Kinda cool when you think about it.

I don’t waste much, if any time trying to get google traffic to this blog. I no little use for this data except for entertinment purposes, about it is interesting to observe how people search.

I will link to anyone who also posts their keywords, kinda like a mini-meme. That’s if your brave enough ;)

cornwall seo
ed dale
social bookmarking list
linkbait
h1 tag
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Categories: SEO Test · keywords

Turning clicks into customers

I usually don’t mention when a site gets a redesign, but this is a little different. I first blogged about Conversion Rate Experts, aka Ben and Karl way back in 2006. I could see then that these guys were special.
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Categories: Social media marketing

“Unfortunately the algorithm does not only look at submitters. Before a submission is promoted it must reach a certain number of votes within a 24 hour period. If every time User A submits a story, Users B-Z are the first to vote, the alarms are going to sound. It’s likely that when this happens, User A has jumped on his instant message or microblogging client of choice and spammed his buddy list with the link to his submission or the direct like to the blog (which sequentially has a button to vote on the story embedded within the page).”

Interesting post from nethackz Read More →

Categories: digg

Patrick Altoft continues the conversation started over at Louis Gray

Basically, the word on the streets is that getting links from blogs is less effective than it used to. This may be true amongst the uber bloggers, but I think it’s still very effective lower down the food chain. And lets face it, if you produce information that is going to solve peoples problems you are going to be popular and get links.

The more narrow the blogs focus the more obvious that it can solve specific problems and so attract a niche audience. The problem with most blogs is they are not narrow enough. If there are not enough bloggers in your niche, attract those who are not. Go sideways, think lateral.

Categories: Blogging