Link Baiting Case Study from Search Engine Journal
Link baiting (or linkbaiting) is the emerging art of building a useful tool, writing an interesting article, or running a newsworthy ‘event’ on a web site which naturally attracts links. Examples of some link baiting may be running a contest which includes multiple sites (such as blog contests or niche site award contests), testing a new advertising format (which was great in more ways than one for those of us who had Google AdSense up and running the days it launched), and throwing a wrench into a breaking or popular news story via attacks, a new spin, or a dash of humor. If anything, the social web and blogosphere have made linkbaiting a reality which only existed for a select few who already enjoyed broad reach and incredible viral marketing skills years ago.
I’ve even had an influx of links by not linking, like when Jeremy Zawodny ‘attacked’ me in his blog for forgetting to link to a quote from the Yahoo Search Blog. This led to a huge leap in traffic, ad revenue, and RSS subscriptions for the day before I even showed up at work and realized what was going on. It also led to a lot of constructive criticism of this blog from a very select focus group in Jeremy’s comments; which was taken to heart.
After looking up the term “link baiting” on Google I noticed that the Search Engine Journal was #1, and #2 for “linkbaiting” (following Performancing); hence I reckon this makes us an authority on linkbaiting, special thanks to Rand and Rob.
Speaking of link baiting, I’m quite proud of the job SEJ did with our Search Blog Awards, which generated hundreds of links from sites and blogs which are completely relevant to our theme, content and market. Here’s how it worked out:
1. I noticed that there are all kinds of cool blog awards and search engine awards, but no specific search blog awards. So I created one.
2. I started with nominations to see which blogs prove to be popular among the SEO/SEM crowd
3. Aaron Wall and I then categorized those nominations into SEO, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine News, Blog Search, and other categories, including some special head to head voting; Matt Cutts vs. Jeremy Zawodny, and SE Roundtable vs. Threadwatch.
4. I then sent out a handful of emails to some choice bloggers whom I have a trusted relationship with, blogs then started posting links to the awards.
5. Then, other bloggers cover the story (and link to SEJ) and bloggers who I did not know found mentions of their blogs on other blogs, they of course wanted to win the competition, and linked to the SEJ.
6. As the week went on, Jeremy Zawodny and Matt Cutts get competitive as the awards gain momentum, and place posts about the competition on their VERY POPULAR blogs : Jeremy’s post and Matt’s post.
Matt Cutts, Senior Google Engineer even wrote : “By the way, funny, creative awards attract link love. Loren, lots of SEO blogs will link to you as a result of your blog awards. Smart, very smart.”
7. More blogs and sites then picked up the contest. I thought to myself “How the hell did I pull this off?” and pondered ways to capitalize on the momentum even more, like releasing the news of one winner per day next week on SEJ.
8. This link baiting effort took me about 4 hours of work and resulted in quite valuable natural links to the site, and not a bunch of links from offbeat directories or sites which have included me with 1,000′s of irrelevant links to my content. In essence, the linking results of the Search Blogs Awards were more or less perfect.
Results :
* The results of the contest led to the winning blogs announcing they have won and linking back to Search Engine Journal, which was not required.
Here’s a review of links gained:
Nominations Announcement Post : Yahoo : 32 backlinks
Vote for Favorite Search Blogs Post : Yahoo : 1,960 Backlinks
* 1,960 links to the contest announcement page is pretty good, even if 10% are judged to be quality back links, that’s still 196 more than I had beforehand. If $100 per link is the going rate for an organic & valuable link to a web site, then the four hours I put into this contest resulted in $196,000 worth of links. That’s one valuable idea.
* Given the contest was over less than a month ago, it’s difficult to judge the effects on search ranking, but I am seeing a lot more web search generated referrals over the past two weeks, which I’m assuming are a result of this contest (and over 2,800 pages of content).
This is just one example of a quality linkbaiting campaign and as linkbaiting grows, especially with an ‘unofficial’ endorsement from Google via Matt Cutts, expect the link generation idea market to heat up in the SEO and Internet Marketing (since linking is essentially for traffic generation) industry. How can you produce a successful linkbaiting campaign for your niche market?
Loren Baker
Latest posts by Loren Baker (see all)
- Everything I Know About Link Building I Learned in 1998 - April 2, 2013
- Speaking at SES NY, Pubcon & Interactivity Digital - March 19, 2013
- SEJ is Hiring – Managing Editor - January 31, 2013
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good…your site rocks information…Thanks
How about an update on your stats?
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Pretty impressive.. now I need to find a award type scenario for my niche site..
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No Doubt link baiting can provide us alot of links in no time but shouldnt we have to do it daily.
As on digg.com every second home page stories are shifted down.
Whats future of this social bookmarking thing ?
Cant we see 1000 of sites like digg.com – like i just saw one of indian guys site http://www.Tagza.com
Where this storm will end by the way ?
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any body have an idea what king tool will be useful, and i will develop. Thank you
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I’m looking for two types of case studies. I’m interested if you’re based in Scandinavia and run local search marketing campaigns, or have run campaigns for companies selling products or services in Scandinavia.
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Blogs are becoming the main source of knowing about things certainty,its
importance,idolizing,either in a marketing way that one can differentiate.I
enjoyed to be at here because one of my point has been cleared here.
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Many people don’t know how to write link baiting articles. I would suggest to register st http://www.newwaylinks.com/ and don’t spend time to build incoming links. Concentrate on your business.
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Lots of questions in this comments section, no answers.
I hate to see when blogs get big and they feel like the dont have to acknowledge their readers anymore.
Wow. What an amazing idea. Too bad I didn’t think of it first :)
SEO @ Antarctica Digital
http://www.antarcticadigital.com
i m new to websites so tryin to learn stuffs
thnx
Its seems like link baiting is changing the face of algorithm driven search. While am in agreement that attractive sites with high quality content are the types of sites that attract links on there own, it seems that more and more second-rate sites are using link baiting to attract links they would otherwise not receive. Does anyone have any thoughts as to how major search engines including Google are going to address this??
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can you give me some more details about this
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Thanks! A really interesting look at how a simple idea can turn into somthing big!
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Hey,
Thanks for the article – I’m new to link baiting and this article has helped me to understand how link baiting works.
Thats really great if you can encourage people to do it, seems like alot of effort though for a ‘maybe’ outcome
after i read this article, i interest to optimize my blog again. great article.
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This information is very useful, Keep it up Man. :)
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Interesting post, this will help me a lot.
Thanks man…
Great case study, going to have to see what I can think up now in my market!
This type of information becomes more and more useful as we move farther and farther away from the directory model of building links. Thank you for a very informative and useful article.
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Great article. Just going through the linkbait brainstorming myself, tempting to try something daring but have to be careful to maintain brand.
This is a really valuable article, however, linkbaiting shouldn’t just aim at link acquisition, it should aim to form a rapport or relationship with the people the campaign will be targeting as well. That way, it won’t just be a matter for search engines advantage, but one which will be of tremendous benefit to the people.
I just came across this webpage and found the reviews quite useful. It contains a list of the best linkbait Scripts with a short review about.
Hallo,
ich bin gerade auf einer kleinen Reise quer durchs web. Nun bin ich also auf dieser tollen Homepage gelandet und muss sagen: Der Besuch hat sich gelohnt! Ich werde deine Seite auf jeden Fall wieder mal besuchen! Wenn du Lust hast, kannst du ja auch mal auf meiner Homepage vorbei schauen. Ich würde mich sehr freuen. Nun wünsche ich eine tolle Zeit!
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Can you give me some example about Link baiting?
grt info:) thanks it will help me
Good article but I thought it would be more about how to write an effective link bait.
Awesome stuff nonethless.
this is that i need..!!!, thanks. very useful for newbie like me.
this is that i need..!!!, thanks. very useful for newbie like me.
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