During the past few years, link building has changed drastically. At least, for me it has. Where it used to be part of SEO, link building has turned into a search engine friendly way of marketing. PR (the Google version) has been replaced by PR (the old-fashioned version) and Indian link building armies have been replaced by creative copywriters.

Image via Will Lion

The growing importance of content as a link building tool has made the life of a link builder much easier, a lot more fun, and much more diverse. There are so many things you can do with content that will result in links, whether it’s on your own website or on third party websites.

Define: content

Before I start, there’s one more misconception that I’d like to address. The word content is not equal to article. An article is probably the most common form of content, but there are many more content types you could use during a link building campaign.

Just a few examples: applications, audio files, awards, badges, blog posts, contests, eBooks, FAQ lists, glossaries, guides, how-tos, images, infographics, interviews, link lists, maps, news, press releases, quizzes, reports, research, reviews, testimonials, tools, tutorials, videos or widgets. And that’s just a selection…

Guest content does not have to be online content, by the way. You can reach lots of people (and get indirect links) with offline coverage or even email, too.

Self-hosted content

Content that is hosted on your own website has the most potential in attracting links and traffic. After all, when people visit the page or link to the content, your website will notice that directly.

Traffic (either directly, or indirectly via search engines) will end up at your pages, leading to -hopefully- more subscribers, newsletter subscriptions, sales and/ or repeated visits. In the long run, providing good content on a continuous basis will lead to an established brand and a loyal visitor base.

Although publishing the content on your own website gives you limited control over how other websites will link to you, it is the best way to attract as many links as possible, and to let the link strength flow to your own website. This, indirectly, will lead to better rankings in search engines, resulting in more sales, targeted traffic and -eventually- more conversions.

However, hosting the content yourself also has two disadvantages. Firstly, by publishing the content on your own blog or website, you are talking to your own, already existing audience only. Perhaps a few visitors will find the article, blog post or video through search engines or other websites, but that is usually about it.

Additionally, links in your own articles that point to other pages of your own do not carry the same value as when those links would have been in articles on other websites. This is because search engines weigh internal links in a different way than external links.

Both of these disadvantages do not have to be a problem, by the way. After all, when your content gets linked to from other websites, you divert the traffic- and link problem. However, in order to get linked to regularly, you’ll need to establish a solid brand and reader base first, or you would need heavy push-promotion.

Pros of self-hosted content
+ Link strength flows to own website directly
+ Exposure, bookmarks and traffic will have a positive impact on the perceived value of your brand
+ Self-hosted content adds value to your own website, as well as for the user experience as for (indirectly) search engine traffic
+ Self-hosted content marketing is great for aiming at specific, important link targets
+ Full control over the content itself, including subject, writing style and what to link to

Cons of self-hosted content
- Traffic to the content is mainly limited to the own (existing) audience
- Links in your own content do not have the same value as links from other websites
- Limited control over how other websites will link to you

Goals and audiences

From a link marketer’s perspective, there are two types of self-hosted content. You either publish content that is targeted at a general audience (for example a regular blog post or the home page of your website), or you try to target a specific audience.

Specifically targeted content does not have to be targeted at just one website or webmaster, but can be aimed at larger groups as well.

Define your content goals
Just like with any other action you take, it is important to set a goal for each piece of content you create. This does not have to be an extensive goal, but it should be enough to keep you on the right track while creating the content. This ensures that your efforts will have maximum effect.

For example, the goal of an article could be ‘to attract links from a select (predefined) group of websites’. In that case, you should write the entire article in a way that it is optimized for that select group of bloggers, journalists or others. An article that supposed to ‘attract as much traffic as possible’ should be interesting for a very large audience, and an article that has the goal ‘to be written within 15 minutes’ requires yet another approach.

Define your audience
This far down the content marketing process, your general audience should have already been defined. However, different articles, videos or contests could be targeted at (slightly) different audiences. This means that it is important to get a clear view of your audience before you start creating each individual piece of content.

Again, this does not have to be an in-depth analysis of the average reader, but some general thoughts about it would be very useful.

Even on the same site or blog, the exact audience may be (slightly) different per article or page. For example, writing for beginners requires a different approach, writing style and promotion strategy than when you are writing about an advanced topic.

Choosing the right platform

Every type of content has an ideal publishing platform. For a blog post, that would be probably your blog, for a video it might be a (Youtube) video channel (with embedded links from the website or blog), and for most specifically targeted content pieces, it would be somewhere else on your website.

Try to determine what the best publishing platform is for all content that you create. This is usually something you will do automatically, but it is still important to think about it.

Mixing it up

A website with a mixed content marketing strategy, and therefore a broad selection of content, should be able to build a diverse and strong link profile. Different types of content attract links from different types of websites, and continuously broadening your audience (while never moving away too far from your initial audience!) builds a large visitor base.

A diversified content marketing strategy builds a diversified link profile, which in turn can lead to better rankings for your website.

Before you start

Make sure that you have a clear picture of what you are after before you start. Determine your content marketing goals and strategy based on your overall goals and targets. Try to come up with content ideas that will allow you to reach these goals and targets.

Additionally, try to set some goals for your blog and content sections of the other websites as well. This can be in terms of links, traffic, subscribers, or nearly anything else you are after.

Determining where you want to be in X amount of time, and creating a matching strategy to achieve these goals, ensures that you are focused, and that you know which actions you will have to take, and why.

Externally hosted content

Besides publishing the content you have created on your own website, you can also choose to publish it elsewhere. Whether it is guest posting, writing a column, or giving an interview; literally thousands and thousands of websites are looking for fresh content every day. Since you can add some information about yourself and your company to most of the content you publish elsewhere, this turns these websites excellent link building and branding opportunities.

Although hosting content on your own website has more benefits than hosting it on a third party website, publishing content on other sites can be very useful and effective for three important reasons;

1. More traffic and/ or subscribers
Publishing content on other websites and blogs will increase the amount of traffic and/ or subscribers of your website. Interested readers of the third party website or blog will click through to your site, and hopefully become subscribers, regular visitors, or maybe even clients.

The actual traffic you receive depends on many things, like the quality and popularity of the target website, but it also depends on how prominently the webmaster links to the new content and, within this content, to you. That said, you will usually see your ‘referring sites’ traffic increase if you publish content elsewhere regularly.

2. Branding and exposure
Even if you don’t get lots of direct traffic or subscribers, promoting your brand via high profile blogs will give your brand an authority and visibility boost. Also, having written for a big name blog is a great benefit in opening doors for opportunities in future, as it can serve as social proof. Guest publishing also allows you to reach new audiences that would normally be difficult for you to reach directly.

3. Links
When, for some reason, you do not receive any traffic or subscribers from an article that you have published elsewhere, you still end up with one or more links back to your own website, coming from an on-topic source, and possibly even with an anchor text of your choice.

Not only that, but do a good job and the website owner might link to you more often in future as well. After all. The Principle of Consistency works for bloggers, journalists and webmasters, too.

Keep in mind that there are some (minor) disadvantages of hosting content elsewhere. For example, instead of receiving all traffic that ends up at the content page via search engines or links from other sites yourself, the third party websites received it all.

Also, because you will have to comply with the content guidelines of the third party website, you are not completely free in the way you write your content. In most cases, you will have to use a similar page lay-out and writing style as the site that will host the content, but as you will only be writing for highly relevant websites, this usually is not much of a problem.

Pros of externally hosted content
+ You reach a different audience, resulting in an increase in direct traffic and more subscribers
+ The exposure will have a positive branding impact
+ Guaranteed backlinks to one (or more) of your own websites, on websites you have selected yourself
+ Almost full control over where you link to, and which anchor text you can use

Cons of externally hosted content
- Search engine traffic ends up at the third party website, instead of on your own website
- Finding and contacting third party websites takes additional time and effort
- Not having full control over the content itself, as you will have to adjust to third party guidelines, and to a new audience

Where to find guest publishing targets

Now that you know why guest publishing can be useful, it is time to get out and find websites that may be open for hosting your content. The current popularity of guest blogging has resulted in websites like My Blog Guest, but apart from such services, the most efficient places to look are;

Your network
Take a close look at the people you know, for example in their Facebook or LinkedIn profiles, and try to find out if they are connected to high profile websites in a relevant industry. It does not matter if it is a blog, website, or a portal – as long as it is relevant. Contact the people who are directly or indirectly connected to such websites, and discuss the possibilities of hosting content on these sites.

Websites you visit regularly
Try to find out if websites you visit regularly -and hopefully leave comments at every now and then- are open for guest content. Some are easy to spot, carrying ‘Write for us’ buttons or having ‘Become a contributor’ links, but others may not publicly show that they are hosting other peoples content.

When even a peek in the blog categories (is there a ‘Guest post’ category?) or a site: query cannot be of any assistance, the only way to find out is by contacting the website directly.

Blog rolls of high profile blogs
The large majority of all blogs has a list with links to related websites or blogs in their sidebar. These navigational link lists (blog rolls) can be a great starting point when you are looking for new websites to write for.

Start at the high authority blogs in the most relevant niches, and work your way down from there. After all, websites and blogs that receive links from high authority links carry a portion of that authority themselves as well.

Blog award lists
In many industries, large and small online awards are being given away every year. Examples are the SEMMYs or (in other industries) the Lonely Planet Blog Awards or even the Times’ Business Blog 50.

These lists, which can contain up to 100 or even more websites, contain high quality and very related blogs, which may be interested in publishing your content.

Visit the websites that are listed in these Award lists (especially the top 10 ~ 25), and look for signs that these websites occasionally publish other people’s content.

Google searches
Whether it is the ‘regular’ search engine, or Blog Search, Google can help you to find new prospects as well.

You can try searching with basic keywords, but using advanced search queries may help you to find possible targets even quicker.

A few examples are:
- {keyword} “guest blogger” OR “guest post” OR “guest article” OR “guest column”
- {keyword} “become a contributor” OR “contribute to this site”
- {keyword} “write for us” OR “write for me”
- {keyword} inurl:category/guest
- {keyword} “submit guest blog” OR “submit a blog post” OR “submit guest post”

By using different keywords, you can use Google to compile a very large list of potential targets.

Competitive research
You will (hopefully) have gathered quite a long list with interesting link targets during the competitive research you did earlier. Some of these link targets (or maybe even websites that your competitors link out to) will be interested in publishing free content, so it’s recommended to check these sites for guest publishing opportunities as well.

How to approach third party websites

When you have created a list of websites that may (or may not) be interested in publishing your content, it is important to evaluate and sort them before you start contacting the people behind the websites.

I would not advise contacting the most important websites on your list first, as testing out different approaches and creating a solid track record is definitely recommended.

While there is no ‘prefect approach’, there certainly are some factors that may work (or not) in specific industries. For example, the SEO industry is quite an informal industry, making the approach process easier than in the legal industry.

It always starts with sending a message. Whether it is sending an email, a quick call, using a contact form, or a DM’ing via a social network; you need to send a brief note asking if they would be interested in publishing guest content.

Some websites have a page on which they openly invite submissions, but in other cases you may have to explain what guest posting is first. In such cases, it is important to highlight the possible benefits for the person you are contacting; a free piece of valuable content that you would be happy to promote via social media channels. Always keep WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) in mind, and explain What’s In It For the person you are talking with.

Although you think your proposal is a win-win and risk free, the person you are contacting might think you only have commercial intent (or might even mistake you for a spammer), so you need to reassure him or her of your honesty and quality. Showing examples of your previous work is a great way to do so, so make sure to provide one or two links to articles you have written in the past.

When you have received a first and positive reply, you can start discussing possible ideas. Also, if no clear guest blogging guidelines are being displayed on the website, it is advisable to ask about these. This avoids disappointments later on in the process.

In most cases, it is not advisable to start creating the content for the website you are contacting straight away. It is much safer to discuss ideas first, for example by creating a list with possible headlines of the article.

This way, it is less likely that you end up with an unpublished, but fully written article that you cannot use anymore in the future. Also, the website owner might have some great ideas they are burning to get written, which saves you the trouble inventing headlines.

Make sure to get all agreements clear, and that you know the answer to questions like;

- What will you have to write about? Make sure that you have the writing style, website audience and article length clear as well!
- Is it clear that you will insert one or more links into the article?
- When do you send the article, and should it be sent via email?
- Should you send the article formatted as Word, HTML or plain text?
- Who will add images to the article?

Who to target first?

Especially when sending out emails and trying to get your content published elsewhere is new to you, it is recommended to start with contacting a few easy targets first. This way, you can get a bit of a feeling with it, and be as efficient as possible.

Websites that are clearly open for guest content
Blogs and websites that publicly show that they are looking for guest writers, for example with a ‘write for us’ button or link or by being member of a guest blogging network, are the easiest to approach. After all, they have already let you know that they are interested in publishing third party content. Emailing the owner (either directly, via a contact form, or via a social media channel), asking if he is still looking for guest content will definitely get the ball rolling.

Websites that seem to be open for guest content
Slightly different from the previous example, but the approach is pretty similar. If you have found guest content on the website (for example articles from the author ‘Guest blogger’, or content in a ‘Guest posts’ category), but cannot find a clear sign that the website owner is still looking for contributors, it is simply a matter of asking.

Mentioning that you have found occasional articles from guest writers, while providing links to these articles, and asking if they are open for new contributions usually works perfectly.

Mid-profile targets
When the first easy targets have been crossed off the list, and you managed to get a few articles published, it is time to use this experience for the next level of targets.

In case you cannot find any signs that the website has accepted guest content in the past, it is recommended to highlight the benefits for this website clearly. Like mentioned before, ‘What’s In It For Me’ is a very important question to answer.

High profile targets
Save the high profile targets for when you have built a momentum, and feel confident enough to contact the most important websites in your industry.

Analyze all previous correspondence, and look for reasons why unsuccessful outreach failed to get results. Try avoid the mistakes you made earlier, and give it your best shot.

It is absolutely not a big deal if some bloggers or webmasters don’t respond or decline your offer. You can either move on to the next target on your list, or ask the person you have contacted if he or she would know any interesting websites to write for.

Getting the most out of externally hosted content

When you have received a positive reply and have agreed upon all details, you can start writing the content you have promised. The quality of the article itself, the links in your content, your promotion and responding to comments can help you to get the most out of your guest content.

Which writing style to use depends on the website, as it is always advisable to let your content blend in a bit. You can still try to keep your own style, but adjusting to your new audience makes your article easier to read for the website’s regular visitors.

Also make sure you bring your best work, as you do not want to be known for writing mediocre content.

Adding links to your content
One of the goals of writing guest content, is to grow a better link profile. This means that you will have to add links your website to the article you are submitting. However, it is very important to do this with care. After all, you do not want to give people the idea that you have written the article with linking back as the only goal.

Make sure to add links to interesting, highly relevant content that is not yours as well. This can either be links to other pages of the website you are contributing to, or to relevant pages on other websites. Do not link out just to link out though, but only add links in places where it seems relevant and adds value.

In content links
In the article itself, you can add one or two links to your own website, but only where it seems relevant. If it does not, simply leave them out, as you will get another opportunity.

Linking out to other guest content you have written can also help, as that would be promoting your own content, and indirectly promoting your own website.

Images and references
In every article you create that contains images, it is not more than appropriate to credit the owner of the image by linking to him or her. Whether it is for a Creative Commons image you found on Flickr, or it is for an image that took yourself, in such cases is linking very normal.

The same goes for references. When you quote a person, a website, a study, or anything else, it is common to link back to the original source. And if that source happens to be yours, that would mean it is a link back to your website.

Author bio
Most guest articles start or close off with a short author bio, introducing the guest writer.

This is your opportunity to tell who you are and what you do in just a few sentences, and to link back to your website(s). This is also the place where you can use the most optimal anchor text, as this may look a bit artificial in the body of the article, but is more common in the author bio.

Promote your content
When your guest article has be put online by the third party website, you can still do a few things that increase your chances of getting the maximum out of it.

Helping to promote the article, for example by sharing it via social media websites like Facebook or Twitter, or by voting for the article if it has been submitted to a social news platform. The more traffic and links your content receives, the more juice you will receive from it, and the more likely the webmaster will be interested in publishing more of your content.

Linking back to the article from a (future) page or article on your own website, or mentioning it in another one of your guest articles will also help getting the post some extra attention.

Responding to comments
In case your article has raised questions, or when people leave comments in general, it is appropriate to respond to these comments.

This not only underlines your professionalism, but will also improve your relationship with the website owner. Both readers and webmasters will appreciate it that you take time to read what they have to say, and to respond to it.

Which one to choose?

Actually, it’s not a matter of choosing between link baiting or guest publishing, it’s a matter of when to host the content yourself and when to host it elsewhere. After all, a natural link profile has all kinds of links, which makes both link building tactics perfectly suitable to include in your overall strategy.

Still Bored?

Do you still think link building is just a boring task that should either be outsourced to India, or taken care of with cheap automated solutions? Then I’d strongly recommend you to read this very thoroughly, as I suspect that you’ll be needing it.

Are you interested, but you don’t know where to start, or you don’t have the time? Then you should check out this page ;)

This post, Link Building with Content: Link Baiting vs. Guest Publishing, was published on Wiep's link building blog. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.

When I was talking at Distilled‘s (excellent!) ProSeo event earlier this week, this actually was one of the things I mentioned. When doing link research, it’s not important to find out where people link to, but to learn why people link out to those sources. Try to find out what makes people link in an industry or niche you’re targeting. Find out what people like, or what the industry’s red cloth is. For SEO’s, it’s still “SEO is dead”, apparently.

PS – No, I’m not linking out to any of those SEO is dead-type posts or reactions. That red cloth simply does not work on me, so you’ll have to find another one if you’re trying to bait me :)

This post, SEO is Dead, was published on Wiep's link building blog. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.

In my opinion, there are five important success determining factors for a link bait, and you’ll have to score at least 4/5 in order to reach the results you’re after;

• The idea
• The title/ headline
• The content
• The promotion
• Luck

In this article, I’ll try to give you some directions for finding good ideas that match your situation. That leaves you with only having to fill in the other four :)

Everything starts with having a goal

Before you even start thinking about link baiting, you should have some goals prepared. These goals usually come from your marketing or business plan, and should be followed up by an evaluation of your current situation (or the other way around, depending on your business process).  During this evaluation, you’ll take look at where you’re at right now, if your goals are still achievable, and what you’d have to do in order to achieve those goals.

If the goals seem to be within reach, you’ll have to decide what kind of link building strategy would probably be the most effective in your situation. And if it turns out that link baiting is the appropriate weapon of choice, you usually have three options.

Single target link bait

This is where you create a piece of highly targeted content, in order to obtain a link from just one or two -very valuable- websites. In case you’re desperately looking for high authority websites, it might be worth it to devote some extra time to getting your dream site to link to yours. Writing guest content for high authority websites in your niche is single target link bait as well, in my opinion. If your site doesn’t seem to be trusted enough in the eyes of Google, make obtaining a few highly authoritative links your main goal.

Best matching link baiting hook: Education & information.

Limited target link bait

Another option is to create a piece of content which is targeted at a relatively small group of very relevant websites. A great example of this is the recently re-launched ‘Top 100 Online Marketers‘, which is well-targeted at the egos of 100 online marketers and their followers. With a specific audience of high profile internet marketers, the result of this campaign is probably quite some awareness amongst (and links from) a relevant group of people and websites. If your link profile lacks relevance, a limited target link bait is your friend.

Best matching link baiting hook: Resources.

Mass link bait

The most well know version of link baiting is the mass version, where a piece of content is created that is supposed to reach a very large audience. You can see examples, including 20 amazing facts about beer or this amazing shark pic, waiting for at you at Digg or Reddit’s front page every single day. Although the average relevance and/ or the quality of the links that a mass link bait campaign can result in is usually relatively low, the amount of links can be very high. If you’re mainly looking for plain numbers, a mass link bait is probably the way to go.

Best matching link baiting hook: Entertainment, widgets.

Know, and understand your audience

Each of these three link baiting options requires a different approach, because you’re dealing with different audiences. Your audience is not only the people who end up visiting your website, but also the people who link to you and (either directly or indirectly) help you to promote your content. If these people think your content is good enough, they’ll spread the word – it’s as simple as that. But how do you know if your audience will like it?

Define who your audience is

First, you’ll have to know who your audience is, and this depends on the type of link bait you’ll be using. It’s relatively easy with a single target link bait, but it can be more difficult for the other types of link bait. Once you’ve identified your audience, write it down on a piece of paper, so it’ll remain clear for you in the future as well.

Know what moves your audience (into linking to external sources)

Now that you know who your audience is, you can try to find out what you can do to make them link to you. Find out why they have linked to other websites before, find out which of the principles of persuasion they are most likely sensitive to, etcetera. When it comes to mass link baiting, try to find out what moves the larger groups you want to reach (and their influencers), for example by learning more about them.

Analyzing for new ideas

Now it’s time to move on to the part where you can actually try to come up with good ideas. Finally.

I have explained a few brainstorming methods earlier, but here are a few additional tips.

Single target link bait brainstorming

This is the easiest to do. During your situation analysis, you have (hopefully) identified a few ‘link building must-haves’; websites that are highly authoritative in your niche, and which would be really valuable to add to your link profile. These websites should be worth it to put in some extra effort for, otherwise you’d have to target them either via a limited target link bait or a mass link bait.

Try to find out:

• What the most relevant pages on their website are.
• What kind of websites they’re currently linking to, and from what pages they link to them (for example via Bing’s linkfromdomain: command).
• What kind of content they’re missing, or which content is incomplete or incorrect.
• What kind of content is popular on relevant social media platforms, such as Delicious.

Mix these things up, match it with your audience, and try to come up with an idea.

Let’s do this with an example – let’s say you’re in internet marketing :). It shouldn’t be hard to find a few key influencers and websites that get linked to a lot in our industry. Like I mentioned before, guest posting would be an option, but you could also try a Cuttbait.

Limited target link bait brainstorming

Now you have to broaden your view a little bit. In stead of taking a look at just one target, you’ll have to look at multiple different targets at the same time, and look for commonalities. With relatively small groups, ego baiting (such as the earlier mentioned Top 100 list) can be very successful.

Try to find out:

• What the most important influencers in your target group are. When one starts, the rest usually follows.
• What (kind of) pages the majority of the target group links to.
• What kind of content is popular on relevant social media platforms, preferably social niche websites.
• What kind of websites the most important influencers in your target group currently are linking to, and from what pages they link to them.

Let’s use the same example again. Websites like Sphinn can help you to find even more important influencers, and you can keep an eye on link posts to find important websites and inspiring content. Asking people to help with research or creating an industry award could be good options. A quiz might work as well, but you’d be targeting a much bigger group with something like that.

Mass target link bait brainstorming

This is the easiest to do. During your situation analysis, you have (hopefully) identified a few ‘link building must-haves’; websites that are highly authoritative in your niche, and which would be really valuable to add to your link profile. These websites should be worth it to put in some extra effort for, otherwise you’d have to target them either via a limited target link bait or a mass link bait.

Try to find out:

• What the most important influencers in your target group are. When one starts, the rest usually follows.
• What pages/ websites the majority of these influencers links to.
• What kind of content is popular on relevant social media platforms, such as Digg or StumbleUpon.
• What kind of content, which is relevant to yours, has made it to leading news/ entertainment/ etc. websites.

Back to the example; broaden your view, and take a look at the tech section of the Guardian or WSJ, and find out what kind of content gets mentioned. Besides news related stuff, creating a bunch of useful tools, a much more general award, or developing a dozen or so great plugins could work perfectly also. Still not big enough? How about a layoff tracker?

Conclusion

Coming up with good ideas isn’t difficult, but finding the right idea that perfectly matches your situation can be pretty hard sometimes. Knowing what you need (authority, relevance or quantity) is important in this process. Not with getting more creative, but with helping you focusing on the right type of ideas, and therefore finding the right solution.

Please note: Just like with nearly anything related to marketing, there is no ‘scientifically proven method’; this is just how I look at things and try to get links. Do you have additions, or do you use an other approach? The comment entry field is down below ;)

This post, My Link Baiting Idea Generation Process, was published on Wiep's link building blog. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.

For those who know a thing or two about cars – in my opinion, choosing between good content and excellent content is like choosing between giving away a BMW, or giving away a Bugatti Veyron. A BMW (I just couldn’t resist :) ) is a car. It’s a great, luxury car, but it’s still a car. You can see them in your street, on the highway, in the city, etc. And although most people can never afford a BMW, it’s nearly a commodity.

A Bugatti Veyron isn’t a car, it’s a space ship. It’s a dream. It’s the most exclusive car in the world. You might know someone who has a friend, who has a neighbor, who’s cousin has once seen a Bugatti Veyron, but that’s about as close as you’ll ever get to a Veyron.

Giving away a BMW is good. You’ll definitely attract some attention with the campaign, and some people will think “Whoah, I’d definitely want to win one of those”. However, a campaign like this has probably been done by others at least a few times, so it basically isn’t something new. Participants will enter, and move on with their life.

Giving away a Bugatti Veyron is amazing. It probably hasn’t been done before by someone else, so it’s unique. People will go “What the….? Are they out of their mind? Hey Mike! Come take a look at this, someone’s giving away a Veyron!”. They will participate, tell their friends about it, and keep a close eye on the contest to see if they’ve won. And even when they didn’t win, they’ll keep telling their friends that they’ve ‘nearly won a Veyron once’.

The first contest, just like good content, will probably result in some solid links and an increase in traffic. With the second campaign, just like with excellent content, you’ll see all kinds of press jump on it. If you promote it the right way, it can lead to dozens of excellent links, hundreds of other mentions, and a shitload of traffic.

My point is that, with linkbait, it’s well worth it to put in a few extra hours, dollars or whatever to shift your content’s quality from good to excellent. The simple equation below, which I use for link marketing, confirms that statement.

To explain the equation, in case it’s not clear to understand (I usually suck at making myself clear :) ) – the result is always fixed, because you’ve (hopefully) set yourself a goal.

Let’s say that the result you’re after has to be 100x. With an offer value (and your content usually is your offer) of 10x, it means that you’ll have to put in the same amount of sales to reach the end result of 100x. However, if you double the quality of your offer, you’ll only have to put in half of the effort that you originally needed.

Keep in mind that the sales quality (the quality of your pitch, how you use your network, etc.) plays a role in this as well. A low sales quality raises the amount of effort you need to put in, but a high sales quality can decrease that amount.

To make a long story short: increase the quality of your content, so you can take it easier on the promotional efforts to reach the same result. Or even better, put in the same effort you had planned, and achieve much better results.

This post, Linkbait: Good Content Isn’t Good Enough, was published on Wiep's link building blog. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.

7 Internal link building strategies

1. Make sure that your navigation is spiderable. Either use (anchor text carrying) text based navigation, or an image based navigation with relevant alt attributes attached to each image link.

2. Breadcrumbs are a great internal linking tool. Use them for usability and anchor text differentiation.

3. In-content links not only tend to have a higher click through rate and perceived trust, but are also able to add more relevance to a link because of the surrounding text.

4. Use a sitemap. A good sitemap is useful for visitors, useful for search engines and, therefore, useful for you.

5. Link to topically relevant pages on important pages of your website. Link to important pages on every (or most) topically relevant page of your website.

6. Be consistent in linking behavior. If you link to homepage.com, always link to homepage.com, and not to homepage.com, homepage.com/index.php and homepage.com/index.php&id=123.

7. Identify your most linked-to pages, and make sure that the link juice flows to your most important pages from there, in a well-optimized way.

10 Easy link building starters

8. Optimize your existing links. Contact the webmasters of prominent websites that link to you and ask them to change ‘click here’ to an anchor text that contains relevant keywords, an anchor text that encourages clicking through, or -ideally- a combination of both.

9. Monitor your 404 statistics. Keep track of whoever links to old pages or misspelled URLs, which is data that Google provides as well. Contact those webmasters and provide them a good URL which they can link to.

10. Create a ‘link to us’ page, where you provide information about how people can link to you and which URL(s), logo and/ or anchor text they can use. Update this page regularly in order to diversify the anchor text.

11. Contact family, friends, colleagues and other people you know and let them know about your website. Some will send you useful feedback, others -who happen to have a website of their own- might link to you.

12. Do you block search engine bots from indexing certain parts of your website via robots.txt or meta-noindex? Find out if people link to this section of your site. If so, contact the webmasters of these sites and kindly ask them to link to an other page of your website.

13. Use your spell check. People will more likely link to correctly spelled articles than to content that’s full of grammatical errors.

14. Search for websites that already mention your business name or URL, but haven’t linked to your website. This works excellently in Yahoo!.

15. Look for websites that mention your personal name, but currently don’t link to your site. Use Yahoo! for this as well.

16. Leave comments on the blogs you visit every day. Hey, you’re visiting them anyway, so why don’t leave a (relevant, useful!) comment?

17. Find out which website your company owns. If you work for a small company, there may possibly be several. If you work for a large company, the number will probably knock you off your shoes. Link these websites (carefully!) together, or redirect the most important and/ or relevant ones to your main website.

12 Old school link building techniques

18. Search for related websites by using relevant keywords. Filter out all interesting websites and contact them. When you did this for your main keyword(s), there are still tons of other combinations possible.

19. Check which websites link to your competitors. Try to get them to link to your website as well.

20. Check which types of websites link to websites that offer the same services or products as you, but in a different country/ language. This might result in a “I never thought of that…” feeling.

21. Either interview an expert from your field, or try to get interviewed by someone else. Don’t forget to mention your best content: readers of the interview might be willing to link to it.

22. Write guest posts for relevant websites in your niche. You could also write posts about your industry for websites that are slightly related to your niche.

23. Teach. Whether it’s a public workshop (local press), a class at a local college or University (.edu website) or at a business related event (industry links), teaching can result in authority links.

24. Use any search engine advertising program and advertise on keywords that linkerati might use. Try to convert the targeted traffic into links.

25. Use Google AdWords’ content network to determine which (relevant) websites generate traffic and conversions. Contact those websites directly.

26. Join an affiliate program. See #25.

27. Determine who’s linked to you before. Contact them again when you’re releasing an interesting new piece of content.

28. Trade links. There’s nothing wrong, with swapping links with a few, highly relevant, authority websites that can bring in extra traffic. Exchanging links with lots of irrelevant websites, however, might get you in trouble.

29. Donate to a charity. Although buying links is not allowed by Google, there are still lots of ways you can buy links (kind of) legitimately.

12 Places to submit your URL to

30. Most social media websites are only useful for promoting good content (which will get you links in return), but sites like LinkedIn still provide dofollow links with an anchor text of your choice.

31. Some general directories, such as DMOZ, the Yahoo Directory and Best of the Web are still worth submitting your website to. Make sure to submit your site to the most appropriate category.

32. High quality, niche directories can be worth considering as well. Notice the emphasis on high quality.

33. Don’t forget to submit your website to high quality, regional directories. Especially worthwhile for websites that target local markets.

34. Publish stunning, interesting, funny or beautiful images in your Flickr account, that contains a link to your website.

35. Writing an article about a relevant topic, that contains one or more links to your website, and submitting it to article directories such as eZineArticles might work for you.

36. Relevant, non-spammy links in Wikipedia articles, Yahoo! Answers or Google Groups may have nofollow attributes attached, but can lead to (dofollow) links indirectly.

37. Submit your RSS feed to important RSS directories.

38. Blog directories may be willing to link to your blog. Submit your blog to the high quality ones.

39. Use PR websites to distribute your press releases, in addition to your PR agency. Make sure that your press release contains one or more (clickable) links to your website.

40. Got a great design? Submit your site to CSS directories and/ or website design contests. Even well-designed parts of your website can result in links.

41. Twitter. Just published a new post or article? Mention it on Twitter, your followers might visit it and -if they find it interesting- link to it.

12 Ways to make people write about you

42. Send out christmas gifts or birthday gifts to bloggers (or website owners) you know.

43. Offer services or a product in exchange for a review. Don’t ask the bloggers or webmasters to link to you, they most often will do anyway.

44. Create something unique. Top 10s, top 250s, mash-ups, how-tos, best-ofs, surveys, studies, awards. Define the proper hook, create unique content and attract good links. The possibilities are infinite.

45. Try to start a hype, use a new word, get a meme going, or do something else you’re the first at.

46. Link to others. People -especially bloggers- will notice it if you link to them. If you do this several times and offer content that is or might be relevant to these bloggers, they might link to you as well eventually.

47. If you happen to have some breaking news, offer a blogger (or a select group) the scoop. Bloggers love to publish scoops.

48. Say something groundbreaking, shocking, confronting, stupid, weird or flattering. People tend to link to others who are different or act that way.

49. Create something with an amazing design. This does not necessarily have to be your website, just having an awesome business card can result in extra links.

50. Launch an extraordinary offline campaign. People will talk about this online. If you integrate this offline campaign with an online version in a perfect way, you may even receive some extra links from ‘this is how you should integrate offline and online’-articles as well.

51. Create a contest and offer give-aways for winners. This is not only a great way to get attention, but to get valuable input as well, for example when hosting a guest post contest.

52. Build useful tools and/ or plugins that are free to use.

53. Speak at an industry conference. You’ll meet lots of interesting new people, and will probably get mentioned in several conference write-ups.

12 Common business tactics

54. Add a link to your local Chamber of Commerce profile.

55. The Better Business Bureau, and any industry related association you’re a member of are interesting link targets as well.

56. Contact your (preferred) suppliers, manufacturers, other partners. Obtain links from these website if they have a partners page as well.

57. Offer to write testimonials or a quote to your suppliers, if they are willing to link back to your site in or near this testimonial.

58. Ask clients to write testimonials about your product or service that they publish on their website, in exchange for a discount, extra fast delivery or any other benefit you can provide.

59. Hire a publicist. Press agency employees usually know the right people in the right places, which can result in a higher acceptancy rate of your press release.

60. Join relevant forums. You can either link to your website on your profile page, in your signature or in your posts. Notice how this one is listed under ‘Business related tactics’ in stead of ‘Places to submit your URL to’? There’s a reason why: forums are not places to drop links, but to join discussions.

61. Sponsor something. There are tons of possibilities, such as an industry conference, a sports club, a relevant forum, a local happening, or just any offline event that happens to have a website.

62. Hire an intern. You can let him or her work on a piece of research, which you can in your link building process. Also, don’t forget the website of the University you’re intern is attending.

63. Offer awesome product or services. People love talking about great stuff they’ve bought. If your products are ‘just’ good in stead of awesome, make sure that your after sales or customer care is excellent. People love talking about companies with a great service as well. Of course, offering crappy products or a lousy service will also result in links, but I don’t think those are the links you’re after.

64. Look for companies that went out of business. Either acquire their website, or contact the website that they’re currently getting links from and ask these sites to link to you in stead.

65. Turn your colleagues into link developers. Each of them has his or her own specialty and group of contacts. This not only take works off of your hands, but is very efficient as well.

4 Important considerations

66. Hire a link builder or an expert. Either let somebody you trust manage (a part of) your campaign, or visit a link building workshop. Especially when you’ve been building links for your own site for several years, a fresh mind can bring new ideas.

67. Hang in there. Link building isn’t something you can do in just a few hours, or something that you only have to do during one week in a year. Building a brand can’t be done in a single day, the same goes for a solid link profile. It’s a continuing process that takes time. Lots of time.

68. Keep an eye on the news. Follow important and interesting different blogs, in order to keep up with the latest news, trends and tricks. I’m not just talking about link building or SEM blogs, but make sure to follow general marketing blogs, slightly different, creative blogs or industry related news websites as well.

69. If you have to ask yourself ‘is this a legitimate approach’ or ‘should I be doing this’, the answer is probably no. Too much, too aggressive or too shady isn’t advisable. Don’t do things you would be ashamed of when explaining them to your mother. Or Matt Cutts.

0 Advanced link building strategies

There is no such thing as advanced link building. While this list already sums up quite a few different strategies, I’m pretty sure that you can easily come up with a dozen more, that are specifically suitable for your company or industry.

Eric Ward once said that link building is “one part marketing, two parts public relations, and three parts common sense”. I’d say that link building is 10% basic SEO knowledge, 20% business thinking, 30% creativity and 40% perseverance. Either way, there’s nothing advanced to it.

This post, Link Building Strategies: 69 Solid Tactics For 2009, was published on Wiep's link building blog. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.

The Academic Ranking of World Universities, a ranking of all universities worldwide, not only manages to get links from dozens of newspapers, blogs and other media related websites, but they get dozens of links from several top rated universities from all over the world as well. Each year!

Seriously, if you want to get links from universities (preferably from universities that offer studies related to your product), try to get their attention with things like related award, studies, or a piece of research link the ARWU. Even universities are proud of their awards.

This post, The Mother of All Linkbaits, was published on Wiep's link building blog. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.

Awesome piece of content? Check! Solid preparation? Check! Well, let’s move on then!

The Launch

If your aim is slightly off, or when not all engines light up at the same time, the launch will still proceed, but the target will be missed. No matter how good your missile is. As soon as you hit the launch button, there is no way back.

Launch controller, by Vernk

Timing is important

The timing is an important factor during every launch. However, there is no ‘ideal’ time during the day for hitting the launch button. Although there are some excellent studies on what time might be best to submit your stories to Digg, this still depends on factors like the language of your website, the countries where most of your link targets live, the subject of your content and the market segment you’re targeting. For example, an official newsworthy press release can be more successful in the morning, while an entertaining blog post might work better in the evening. Testing helps to determine what might work best in your situation.

Submitting ain’t that easy

When you submit (or let someone else submit) your piece of content to social media sites, such as Digg, there are several things that can either make or break your submission. The title of the submission, the description, the category where you submit the story to and the visibility of the submitter all play part in the process of reaching the front page. The only problem here is that you need to pass every possible pitfall without falling, one single miss will result in an overall FAIL. Both Marshall Kirkpatrick and David Wallace have written excellent posts about how to submit your story properly.

Pitching pitfalls

Besides hitting the front pages of several social media websites, you also want to reach as many a-list bloggers in your niche as possible. Some of these bloggers might find your content through your social media efforts, but a good pitch to the right bloggers and journalists will result in additional coverage and links as well. Hopefully, after reading part one, you’ve gathered the contact information of several influencing, relevant webmasters and bloggers. When you’re contacting these people, be personal, interested and honest. There are several things you really have to avoid and several things you really have to consider while contacting bloggers, but in my opinion, it bears down to those three factors.

Use your network wisely

A good network is one of the most important tools of a successful marketer. In stead of doing everything by yourself, you can ask friends, relatives or even friends of friends to do stuff for you or to help you out with something. In stead of being alone, you can have a huge team of specialists working together on your piece of content, if you manage to use your network the right way. Imagine yourself what a master of headlines, a social media power user and an expert in the field of your choice can accomplish together. At first, you might think that spending several hours a week helping out other people, or chatting, Twittering, discussing and emailing with them is a waste of time, but this can really pay off in the long run. A good network is worth quite a few bucks…

Monitoring

Like I said before, as soon as you hit the launch button, there’s no way back. It is, however, still possible to adjust the path slightly or to avoid obstacles that suddenly appear. In order to do this, you have to monitor everything, because you’ll have to react quickly.

An ambulance pulse monitor, by Vitiis

Be on top of your stats

Your website statistics can provide excellent data of where your content gets picked up. Use this data to monitor your new backlinks, the traffic every link sends and the average time spent on your site per referrer. You might want to check out websites that send lots of traffic or sites that provide visitors who click through more often, to see what the post or link looks like. If necessary, contact the owner of the site, for example to provide additional info, to request a slightly different anchor text or just to send him or her a thank you note.

Join discussions

Besides bloggers and journalists, you might see several others discuss your brand, product or content as well, for example in blog comments or forum threads. If you only have the slightest idea that it’s a legit website, don’t hesitate to join these discussions. By leaving additional information (or dropping a link to a relevant web page or site), answering questions or -again- just by simply thanking others for the attention and/ or compliments, you’ll show commitment. And commitment builds brands.

Besides your website statistics, there are several other tools that you can use to track these discussions. Google Alerts and Technorati will lead you to the majority of the pages where your piece of content gets mentioned.

After care

The launch was successful and the traffic seems to be over its peak. Now is the time to turn the campaign into a real success, by directing the link juice, expanding your network and planning the follow-up.

Even more beauty awaits after the storm, by ladyinpurple

Directing the link juice

The main goal of link targeted content is -obviously- attracting links. Once you’ve obtained multiple links, whether it’s 5 or 50,000 links, it’s quite important to use the power of these links optimally. Attracting links is one thing, but leveraging the juice of these links the right way looks like a whole different ball game for some.

For example, the brilliant (Dutch) Hema viral campaign for Hema gathered nearly 30,000 links. The only problem is that there isn’t a single link on that page that can pour link juice over the rest of the website…

There are several things that you can do to avoid situations like this, and to let your entire website enjoy the taste of link juice;

• Use in-content links to other important pages on your website. Adding these links to the content page, after the first traffic- and link peak is over, works perfectly fine.
• Slap a nofollow tag on links to pages that aren’t that important, or remove some navigational links on your link bait page.
• Afterwards alterings. Make small changes to the page you’ve promoted, such as a slightly improved title or by adding a few relevant keywords and/ or links.
• 301-redirect the page to a different URL as soon as the traffic slows down. I personally wouldn’t recommend 301-ing in most situations, though. And I’m certainly not the only one (exact same example, btw).

Maintain your new network

You’ve attracted lots of links, both your RSS subscriber number and the amount of Twitter followers have skyrocketed, you’ve participated in several interesting discussions, left numerous comments on other blogs and collected a few email addresses of influential linkerati. Say hello to your new, expanded network. If you can maintain your entire network with care, you’ll make the process launching another piece of content in the future much, much easier.

Follow up

In stead of preparing a single piece of content, make sure to have several more great posts, articles, videos or other material waiting in the queue to get published. It’s much easier to attract additional links when you’re still enjoying your first flow of attention, than when possible linkers have already moved on. The linkerati you managed to get in touch with will also be more likely to link to another one of your pages, when your website’s name is still fresh in their memory. A good follow up strategy builds you a more solid name, it makes sure that you won’t lose subscribers and it avoids the risk of looking like (or becoming) a one day fly.

Conclusion

While some seem to think that a campaign -whether it’s a viral, a link marketing, or any other campaign- is over as soon as you hit the launch button, that’s just one of the several stops during the journey. Monitoring the campaign thoroughly and optimizing the results with care can make or break the outcome. Preparing a solid follow up can make life a lot more easy in the future.

The most important factors of a successful campaign, however, are planning and dedication. If you can manage to think one step ahead, you’ll manage to stay ahead of your competition as well. And sure, you might have success with something that you made in just five minutes, or with something that accidentally came across your path, but you’ll only reach maximum effect if you’re dedicated enough to walk through all steps.

This post, Building Link Targeted Content That Works: Step 3 of 3 – Launching, Monitoring & After Care, was published on Wiep's link building blog. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.

The first part of this series was a selection of tips on how to use your surroundings to come up with interesting ideas that can lead to great amounts of traffic, attention and links. After you’ve carefully selected the idea of your choice, it’s time to prepare yourself thoroughly and to turn that idea into a content page that’s capable of reaching the audience that you’ve always wanted to target.

Creating Killer Content

There are many characteristics of killer content, most of which are important enough to make or break your launch. Misuse of images, boring pages, bad language or other distracting factors can lead to failure. Remember that a even a flagship is as strong as its weakest link.

Your flagship does not necessarily have to be a boat, by DC3-Detroit

Headline

A superb headline can create a massive amount of attention for just a mediocre article, but a bad headline can result in a killer peace of content that doesn’t get noticed. Make sure to give your content the headline that it deserves, but don’t overdo it.
Also, don’t forget to try to get a related keyword into your headline. Because a part of the webmasters that link to your page will use the original title as anchor text, this will increase the possibility that you’ll end up ranking for those keywords. Don’t force in a keyword, though. A good headline prevails over a keyword rich headline.

First paragraph

Although you may choose to submit your own piece of content to Digg and StumbleUpon (or let someone submit it for you), you’ll probably -and hopefully- won’t submit it to every social media platform out there. If you want to increase the chance of hitting the frontpage of social news sites that you don’t even know exist, you’ll have to make sure that the first paragraph is a great one. People who submit stuff to social media websites regularly -me included-, often use the first (or one of the first) lines of text and use it as the description of the submission. Make it easier for them AND make it more likely to hit the front page by creating your own description that’s disguised as an opening paragraph.

Content

The appearance of a page can either be informational (mostly text), it can be visual (images all over the place), or it can be usable (a tool, or movable objects). Of course, a page can be a mix of the above, but usually, only one will be the upper hand. Make sure

Informational page
If you’ve created an information page, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use images, but use them wisely. The text is the most important of the page, so make sure that the images you use don’t distract your readers. In stead, you could spice it up a notch with graphical text images, a great header, or interesting charts for example. The images must serve the rest of the content. Oh, and don’t forget to use that spell check.

Visual page
If you’re building a page that’s mostly visual, it’s tempting to stuff it with as many images and as many different colors as possible. However, using too many images, a lot of different colors, or even mixing up different styles can make your page look cluttered and unclear. If you focus on a single (or just a few) images in stead, take your time when selecting colors and try to keep the page in a single style, it’ll be much easier to ‘understand’ and to digest. Try to avoid the most common stock images, though, or try to make them look differently in stead.

Usable page
The fact that you’re creating a page that’s meant to be ‘used’, doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be interesting to look at. While the focus should be on clarity, ease of use and the end result, attractiveness definitely shouldn’t be neglected.

About page

Nothing is worse than reading a great post on a blog or a great article on a website, and you can’t find the name of the author anywhere. Or his or her email address.
Provide as much information as possible. This will not only look much more professional, but it’ll also help you to build a personal brand and it increases the chance of someone actually contacting you. You might provide a contact button, but if I can’t find out who to contact, I probably won’t give it a try.

Ask for help

I don’t consider myself to be a very good writer and I really suck at programming. Although I’m trying to improve it, I also can’t design very well. Just like me, you probably don’t own all of these skills as well, so that’s why you’ll have to get some help from time to time.

The relationship between the quality of content and the amount of attention is an exponential one. A slight increase in quality (the difference between your design skills and those of your friend/ colleague/ business partner) can cause a massive increase in attention. Don’t be afraid to ask for help, you can’t be the best in everything.

Besides increasing the possibility of success, asking help also saves you time and it can improve your business network as well.

Preparation

Unlike some seem to think, preparation does not start one day before the planned launch. Preparation starts on the day that you decide what you’re going to build, it’s more time consuming than most people think and it’s a key factor in any launch.

Good preparation ensures a save flight, by The Library of Congress

Network like a pro

Networking does not start after your product launch, press release or whatever you’re distributing. It starts weeks before that. Contact journalists and try building up a relationship. This does not only benefit you now, but it will be an advantage when you’re trying to reach that bigger audience next time as well. A PR pitch has more effect if you know the one you’re sending the pitch to, even if you happen to know this person for just a short while yet.

Try to create a powerful social online profile, such as a Digg or StumbleUpon profile. You’ll need all the luck of the world if you try to reach Digg’s front page with a profile that you’ve created just ten minutes ago.

Use the people you know. Friends, family members or other people in your personal network that happen to know someone that owns a related website or that participates online in any way, might be able to help you promoting your piece as well. Don’t spam them for every thing you publish, though, or don’t look surprised if you have difficulties reaching them again if you do…

Preparing your target list

You’ve already done research in your niche and you’ve probably kept track of your competitors as well. Hopefully, you’ve saved all this data, because this data can jump start your target press list.
Check out which news websites, bloggers and portals have linked to related stories that went hot in the past and you’ll end up with a list of targets that are both interested in the subject and capable of making your launch a success.

Preparation Checklist

Although some of these points may seem silly, there are several things you shouldn’t forget to check. You wouldn’t be the first one that almost launched a very successful campaign, but ended up in a ‘Top 10 Stupid Marketing Mistakes of the Year’ list in stead…

bandwidth
- do you have sufficient bandwidth or do you have shared hosting?
email usage & contact info
- is important info, such as your email address, correctly displayed on your website and does it work?
double check the page
- double check for things like layout and multiple browser compatibilities. Let a friend check it out, for example.
statistics
- don’t forget to include your analytics code on the content page.
misspellings
- re-read the entire page word for word to make sure that everything is spelled out correctly.

In short

Even a slight mistake or less attractive feature can turn a great piece of content into an almost great piece of content. And almost great just isn’t good enough. If you can’t make something exceptional yourself, ask help, input or advice from someone who can.

Although some might try to, you can’t create a successful content marketing campaign overnight. Solid preparation is key and this starts days (but more often weeks) in advance. If you want to be successful next week, you’ll have to lay the foundation today and start building tomorrow.

Stay tuned -or subscribe to the RSS- for the last part of this series, which will be titled ‘Launching, Monitoring & After Care’.

This post, Building Link Targeted Content That Works: Step 2 of 3 – Creating Content & Preparation, was published on Wiep's link building blog. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.

Start Close

While it usually is best to enter a brainstorming session with a blank mindset, it’s even better to check what you’ve got first. Good ideas are often closer than you think.

Things can be closer than you think, by Pictophelia

- Your own website
If your website isn’t a brand new one, you probably have at least a few pages that managed to attract a few or more good links. You can either investigate why these pages got mentioned elsewhere (and use that info for a new article), or find your best one, improve it and launch V2.

- Your own head
What kind of resources are you missing in your niche? What kind of tool have you always wanted to use but couldn’t find? What kind of content would make you go ‘WOW’? Build it!

Brainstorming for Ideas

The great thing about brainstorming is that you can’t brainstorm the wrong way. Of course, there are guidelines you can follow and techniques you can use, but in theory, every method you use to come up with new ideas would be considered brainstorming. Effective brainstorming, however…

Brainstorming, by faroekat

Like I said earlier, it can be quite effective to start a brainstorming session with an empty mind. Because your link targeted mind probably even rattles on in your sleep, it might be useful to invite someone that isn’t that much into links as you are. Some people always invite the client they’re working for, but I don’t think that’s best in every situation. No matter how hard you try, for some types of personality, tunnel vision is an almost certainty. On the other hand, bringing in the knowledge of your client does add extra value.

More tips for your brainstorming session:

• Appoint one person to lead the discussion and to write down all ideas.
• Record everything to make sure that you don’t miss anything. And to be able to provide evidence to the client that you haven’t been drinking all afternoon, of course :)
• Encouraging your fellow brainstormers to participate, encouraging great ideas and encouraging to shout out everything that comes up is key to a harmonized brainstorm session.
• More suggested reads; JPB’s creative pages, MindTools brainstorming and Brainstorming.co.uk.

Furthermore, one of the most important things to keep in mind during a brainstorming session is that you shouldn’t settle for the first reasonably good idea you come up with. Good ideas arise pretty quickly, great ideas need time to grow. The best tip I can probably give you is to just start a session. Brainstorm with a few colleagues about a simple item, such as what you’ll be having for lunch or how you can improve your working conditions. You could even be brainstorming about how to brainstorm. Evaluate that session afterwards and learn from it. Experience will lead to inspiration.

Researching for Inspiration

After your brainstorming session, where you’ve probably generated over a few dozen ideas, you might be tempted to drill the list down to the most useful ideas straight away. In stead, letting these ideas soak for a short while and researching ideas that have worked in the past, researching ideas that have failed in the past and researching your niche might be a better solution. Don’t take a short cut by copying the ideas you come across, but use them as inspiring input.

Doing research, by revlimit

Think Social

The voice of the community will show you what might work.

- Use Digg’s search function
Look for relevant articles, posts or pages that have made it to Digg‘s front page in the past by entering a relevant keyword in the search box. This might give you some inspiration and it should give you an idea of what might work in your niche.

- Stumble upon related pages
Use StumbleUpon to find pages that are related to the content you want to promote. Check what kind of pages receive lots of thumbs up and positive research. You’ll not only come across at least a few great pages you’ve never seen before, but you’ll also get an impression of popular stuff in your area.

- Del.icio.us popular
One way to use Del.icio.us, is to use the ‘popular’ section to see what’s hot in your niche, for example popular in link building. If you can’t find popular posts in your niche, you can always broaden your search query or use the regular tag function.

- Your favorite news site
That news website you visit every day (whether it’s a big news site or just a local one) has historical data of what kind of related articles or posts have made it to the front page. Do a site query to find relevant news articles that got mentioned on the news site earlier.

- Social Niche sites
Is it difficult to find related stuff on one of the big social media websites, or are you looking for more targeted traffic? There’s a social media website for nearly every niche, so don’t just refrain yourself to the mainstream sites.

Think Niche

Only here will history, relevance and authority show up.

- Your competitor
Some people can’t stand it when a competitor gets mentioned on a popular news or niche website. In stead of enviously watching how they get all the attention, you could also see this as an opportunity and investigate why they got mentioned. If you don’t follow your competitors on a regular basis (which I can’t imagine), use a nifty tool like LinkDiagnosis to research which page on your competitor’s website has the most incoming links. Investigate why this page managed to do this and use that info in your advantage.

- Research your ultimate link target
You probably have at least one website in mind that you’re dying to get a link from. You know, that popular blogger or that portal that everybody in your niche visits daily. If you can find out which pages on this website have attracted a lot of links or managed to create a lot of buzz,

- Research your ultimate link target’s competitor
If there are multiple large targets in your niche, you can use the best features of both sites to get links to your own. Find out what the most popular/ interesting/ valuable page of link target 1 is and offer to make a better version of that page to target 2. Now find an interesting tool or feature on target 2 and offer to make something similar to target 1. Don’t forget to mention your own website as the source or author, of course.

- Respond to your ultimate link target
Did the website you’re after just release a great post or did it fire up a heated conversation? Respond to it. Whether you agree or not, responding to a news item or adding something to a discussion can be a great way to attract links from the initiator, participants and/ or other related sites.

- Contact your ultimate link target
It doesn’t get more simple than this. Contact the website you want to get a link from and ask them what kind of content they’ve always been looking for. Build it, let them know where it is (or you could even offer your link target to let them host the entire piece of content) and you’ll get the link you were after. Keep in mind that this kind of target bait is only worth it in a few occasions, but you’ll probably know when ;)

Selecting the Right Idea

After you’ve gathered dozens of great ideas, it’s not important to choose the idea that you’ll be working on, but it’s important to choose the idea you’ll be working on first. It would be a sin to leave the rest of the ideas untouched, wouldn’t it?

Picking the right one, by Maria Dipshit

Selecting the right idea is nothing more than determining which one of the options will probably help you to reach your end goal -whether that’s just lots of links, links with specific relevance, traffic or anything else.

You’ve checked your own site, you came up with dozens of creative ideas and did research on what works (and what probably won’t), so you’ve got enough data. Your client has enough knowledge of the niche and you have enough knowledge of SEO to be able to come up with the best option together. In the end, you’ll find out that the final choice will be one that’s made by feeling.

Oh, and a little tip here; make sure that -if you work for one- your client makes the final choice. If you think he might choose for the wrong option, give him better directions. This ensures a better relationship in the future, no matter what the outcome is.

Use the Results

Now that you’ve done a great deal of research -and hopefully have a ship load of ideas-, it’s important not to forget your research data as well. You just found out that both industry blogger X and related website Y have both linked to that press release that your competitor sent out earlier. Since they’re both linking to this page, it might be useful to include blogger X and website Y in the list of websites you’ll be contacting when you announce your great piece of content. More about this in part two, but don’t forget to save the data you’ve collected. Having to do things twice can be a real pain…

Conclusion

This list is just an indication that there are tons of places where you can find inspiration for creating content that attracts links like a magnet. Some, however, ask themselves if link baiting isn’t a bit overrated, I do believe that creating link targeted content really is worth it – and it sure as hell can be so for everyone (be careful with widgetbait, though). Besides link and ranking related reasons, you shouldn’t forget that the piece of content and the traffic it attracts aren’t exactly worthless.

Next in line is part two of three: Creating content & Preparation

This post, Building Link Targeted Content That Works: Step 1 of 3 – Researching for Inspiration & Brainstorming for Ideas, was published on Wiep's link building blog. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.

I used to have the opinion that you can either try to redirect as much link bait strength to your most important pages by designing your page optimally (or changing it later), or you can try to catch all strength by 301ing the link bait page to one of your important pages. This example completely changed my mind.

Using a 301 on a page that has been generating links in the past is -in my opinion- not the way to go (and can even be dangerous) because:

• It’s not user friendly. Visitors that are looking for specific content and find something that doesn’t correlate with the link that directed them to your website, will be disappointed.
• You’re deleting great pieces of content. Why would you remove stuff that made it to the front page of Digg, Reddit or any other social media website?
• You prevent the page from attracting even more links in the future. Good content will remain to attract links in the future as well. Content that is 301′ed to a heavily optimized page probably won’t.
• You get a wrong incoming anchor text/ page content relationship. Especially when your link bait page isn’t 100% related to the products you sell, your anchor text/ page content relationship will be completely off.
• This can even backfire in terms of bad publicity (gaming the system). What if a few Diggers found out that your website is 301ing several posts that made it to “their” front page. Can you imagine what that might cause?
• You might lose that top Digger. I don’t know how this website managed to let the same top Digger submit several of their posts, but if his Digg reputation is in danger, he probably will refrain himself from submitting more stories.

And the reasons mentioned above aren’t even all reasons. For example, imagine what Google would do if more and more people would use this strategy. Do you think they will remain to handle 301s exactly the same way they do today?

So what can you do to let as much link strength and link relevance flow to the most important pages on your website?

• Make sure to get a relevant link bait title.
• Use in-content links to other important pages on your website (or add these links after the first link bump is over)
• Nofollow pages that aren’t that important, or remove some navigational links on your link bait page
• Provide an RSS feed in your “link bait section”. People who liked your link bait might like (and link to) your future campaigns as well.

Of course, there are some exceptions (off-domain 301s, for example). In some cases it might be better to 301 a link bait page, but I don’t think this is the way to go in most cases. Especially in this case, where it were blog posts and an html page that got redirected, I believe that other solutions might have been better. I can imagine that you don’t share the same opinion (or perhaps you do), so my question is:

do you use 301 redirects on your link bait pages? Why, or why not?

This post, Link Baiting: Do you control the link flow or do you 301 it all?, was published on Wiep's link building blog. Visit the site to read more stuff, or to join the link building conversation.