Fishing for link love
I’ve blogged and spoken many times under the heading content is king. It’s good old-fashioned white hat seo. If you produce good content, then it will be useful to your prospects, and Google will like you.
The added advantage of writing juicy content is that you produce link bait. Link bait is content that baits viewers to place links to it from other websites. Search engine optimization (SEO) specialists will often charge you for producing content which achieves this goal.
Matt Cutts defines link bait as anything “…interesting enough to catch people’s attention”; which sounds like a reasonable criterion for all copy.
When you’re writing copy for your site, you should be thinking about about the following target audiences:
- Your prospects
- Your clients
- The Googlebot - how does the content look to Google? Use the site:yoursite.com command in the Google toolbar to get a quick view.
- Other site owners (link bait targets).
Remember inbound links are a key metric for search engine ranking, and quantity and quality count.
Here are some common examples of link bait:
Informational Hooks : These provide information a reader may find useful. Bloggers who have specific expertise in an area of common interest often yield great links. David Warr’s blog on tea and coffee is a good example of this.
News Hooks: provide fresh information
Humour hooks: stories, anecdotes, images, or video footage, which do the rounds on Friday afternoon email.
Evil hooks: the Simon Cowell of link-baiting. Speak the unspeakable, criticise, lambast - standard PR noise really.
Tool hooks: create a tool, e.g. SEO ranker, carbon emmission calculator, that people will link to.
Comments
3 Responses to “Fishing for link love”
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Hi Phil - nice post as usual. Content is definitely king!
I think it also supports the point that consistent navigation and clear brand templates/messages are essential throughout a site - whether the page is buried deep in the site, or only a level or two in. If the content is good enough, many users will arrive via a search engine a few levels in, most likely missing the carefully-constructed branding on the front page.
Good old-fashioned white hat seo.
Thanks for the information.
Entirely true as long as your content is accessible and usable.