In stead of listing the most interesting topics of the past week, this is the first time that I’ll post the most interesting image of last week.
Masterbaiter Lyndon Antcliff caused quite a lot of stir when he published that the news item about a boy ordering hookers with a stolen credit card was in fact a linkbait. Jonathan Crossfield almost instantly responded asking if this is a ‘right’ approach, but with 500k in traffic and over 1,600 links, you can’t deny that it was a very successful linkbait.
And also:
Planning is a skill that every marketer should have, but only a few are actually good at this. I certainly am not, but Debra Mastaler apparently sure is. How on earth can you work on a new design, write three excellent posts (Is traffic the new Pagerank? No!, It’s hip to be link square and Falling in love with link love), run a company AND keep your clients happy?!? Respect!
An interesting discussion is the one that Hugo Guzman (partially) started, with his post about how clients can help you with the link building campaign they’ve hired you for. Brian Turner mentioned a few excellent points in his reply to Hugo’s post; Why link building is risk management. In my opinion, the ideal situation is, like Dana Larson added later on in the discussion as well, that a link marketer should work together with the client to get the best links possible.
And also:
I’m pretty sure that I’ve never seen ‘David Hasselhoff’ and ‘how to get more links’ in the same blog post, but Debra managed to do this. While that (and the examples she lists) may may sound funny, Debra’s main point –”the hardest part of my job is telling someone you won’t be able to secure the authority links they so desperately want because their site is a boring, forgettable mess”– is sad, but true. You can try to be creative in order to get a link profile that’s as natural as possible, but having to explain to your customer that their baby is too ugly to get links is a whole different ballgame…
If you have a blog and hate the ‘great post’ or ‘thanks for info’ comments as much as I do, please do the same as I do: send an email to the commenter’s address with a link to both SearchMarketingSage’s post about Dofollow link building and to DoshDosh’ great article about Rethinking blog comments. That’ll teach ‘em. (well, probably not, but it’s worth a try 
)
And also:
Brian Turner published a few great posts during the past few weeks at InternetBusiness.co.uk, including one titled ‘Google was a links-driven search engine‘. This post not only shows a bit of Google’s history (and how links were -and still are- Google’s Achilles heel), but also shows Brian’s view on the future.
And also:
And a few recaps of the SBM & SMX:
The discussion about relevant and/ or irrelevant linkbaiting got fired up again last week thanks to Matt Inman’s post at SEOmoz about his JustSayHi widgetbaits. Google’s current stance in this situation (In Matthew’s words “adding a keyword-rich link from a widget to our own site was an ultra-mega-Google-NO-NO”) is just hilarious and I’m not the only one who feels that way.
And also:
Sometimes it looks like every blogpost I run into has something to do with link building, while during other weeks it’s hard to find good link building related stuff. This week is just one of those low-on-links-weeks, so it seems (if I missed you or something interesting, please let me know!). I guess everybody’s busy preparing for the holiday season, like Debra
Patrick Winfield has been busy this week. He not only explains how you can turn a stock photo into a unique picture that says more, but he also mentions how you can improve your linkbait headers. Using his tips will make sure that your piece of content meets the fifth component of great linkbait.
And also:
