Initially Search Engine Journal was going to include Best Linkbait as a category in our 2nd Annual Search Blogs Awards, but not all linkbait is done on a search blog.
In fact, some of the best linkbait of the year was outside of the searchosphere realm and made its way outside of the barrel (thanks to viral marketing, social optimization, and good ol’ press & public relations).
Salary.com’s Housewife Salary Calculations which came out on Mothers’ Day is a great example.
As for publisher oriented linkbait, who will forget Chris Hooley’s DrinkBait? Or the V7ndotcom Elursrebmem SEO contest?
So, as a follow up to the 2006 Search Blogs Awards Nominations and Awards (which are currently now up for voting), please take the time to nominate your favorite Linkbait campaigns of 2006 in the comment fields below.
Elf Yourself (http://www.elfyourself.com/)
187,000 plus links according to Yahoo Site Explorer.
Some of the burgerking stuff this year really rocked – I love the pocket bike “kings pain is your gain” commercial.
The “shave everywhere” campaign.
Drinkbait still wins hands down.
Lonelygirl15
Zillow housing price estimator tool
Red Paperclip Guy
Million Dollar Homepage
Awesome suggestions Rand & Neil.
And thanks for adding a metric to the listing Neil, ideally such metrics should be part of judging the competition.
Perhaps:
* Yahoo Backlinks
* Technorati Links & Buzz
* Diggs
* Bookmarks
* Compete.com Snapshot
* Keotag Link Lists?
Todd, didn’t Chris Boggs use the Shave Everywhere example in his presentation, I’ll have to look that up. Thanks, Loren
I have no life outside of our industry, and I have a short memory, so here it goes…..
My pick for “Best Linkbait of 2006″ goes to
The SES Chicago 2006 Comic Strip by Rebecca Kelley and SEOmoz/Rand that funded the whole thing :)
It was a small group of people that it appealed too, but it was something very unique.
Including pictures of dozens of highly active bloggers in a comical way is an awesome way to encourage linking.
I’m sure I can think of other great examples of link bait but this one was very recent and had a definite impact on me. A lot of it has to do with the fact that I have such fond memories of SES Chicago…
But hey, Linkbait that appeals to the emotions is just plain smart!!
Great idea to have some sort of Metrics to judge by.
It would also be great to have a description or some links to describe some of the finalist.
I would really digg an article that has all the top 10-20 linkbaits of the year, has desciptions/links, and provides some hard data/metrics to back up the results.
Great idea Jarrod… Can you digg it? I knew that you could!
The PubCon Drinking Game even though I didn’t make the list.
V7ndotcom Elursrebmem wasn’t really link bait. It got us a ton of links, but when I think of linkbait I think more of the HatBait stuff.
Diet Coke/Mentos video
I say
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/search-engine-marketing-scholarship/
In may have not gotten the most links, but it sure got the most widespread links over many pages of the website. I pointed over 200 links to only my article.
I vote for this failed attempt:
http://www.nonbot.com/blog/google-post/new-seo-shirt/78/
LOL ;)
I gotta agree with Jarrod on the SES Chicago comic strip. Definitely linkaitable and I was there which makes it more memorable.
Drinkbait would be a close second though and I wasn’t there but it did get a lot of notice.
Rand & Rebecca’s Comic Strip
Diet Coke & Mentos
That 1938 Dude on U-Tube
and……
Weird Al Yanokovic’s “Don’t Download This Song”
oh, and just for kicks
Anything that Stuntdbl does *haha*
One red paper clip
Oh man, if we are going to actually MEASURE then DrinkBait is screwed. I bow to anything Neil has ever produced. In fact, I am in the process of hiring the dude right now
I did a linkbait awards 2006 post not long ago if you want to see it: http://www.seobuzzbox.com/linkbaiting-awards-2006/
Can we nominate ourselves for something?
If so, I’m gonna nominate us for our web 2.0 awards:
http://web2.0awards.org
Can’t beat over 100,000 links :)
Thanks Aaron. Matt, of course you can nominate yourselves.
http://www.shaveeverywhere.com
Diet Coke & Mentos
One red paperclip
The SNL “Dick in Box” sketch is spreading like wildfire right now!
However, my vote is for DrinkBait. Go Chris! :P
- Ze Frank and his duckies
– Drinkbait!
– SEOBook’s 101 Link Building Strategies
– YouTube (All of it, especially their hostile takeover by Google)
– Time Magazine – Person of the Year (nice call by Darren Rowse)
– Burger King /Xbox 360 Ad Games
– Democrats in Washington FTW!
– EliteRetreat’s pricing strategy and convenient timing.
– PayPerPost vs. ReviewMe on disclosure policies
– SEOmoz’s “How Pagestrength Works” – love the angry monkeys!
Egobait of the year: Jason Calacanis – I finally know how to spell his name after typing in his domain so many times to see how he was reacting to the Digg/Netscape lashback.
I engineered a Search Engine Results tool that searches Google, Yahoo and MSN and crawls 4 pages deep. I offer this tool for free.
http://www.webmastermydomain.com/current-ranking.php
This award thing’s gotta be linkbait too right? I nominate it! :P
The Best link bait award is a great award :)