Comments on: Why Link Baiting isn’t exactly the same as Viral Marketing

By: Marcel Feenstra

Marcel Feenstra — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 09:54:49 +0000

Apologies for the belated comment, but I wanted to let you know that I’ve added a link to this page on Startpagina’s linkbait page, since not everyone “gets” the subtle distinction between viral marketing and link bait…

By: Wiep

Wiep — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:03:33 +0000

Marcos; thanks for commenting.
You can look at relevancy from two different perspectives. Like I said in the intro, a linkbait should ideally be relevant. Usually, a relevant link is of more quality than a irrelevant link. This doesn’t make an irrelevant link useless, but, in my opinion, this makes a relevant linkbait (and thus link) better.
Besides link relevance, a targeted link bait often results in more targeted visitors as well.

On the other hand, for most niches, an irrelevant linkbait can be much more suitable if you’re mainly looking for buzz.

By: SocialSEO

SocialSEO — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 13:02:44 +0000

Good points. I agree on the fact that Linkbait is the SEO version of Viral Marketing. That is a nice way to put it.

I disagree though when it comes to relevancy. You are right from a traditional SEO point of view. But this is SEO 2.0. The major benefit of linkbaiting is generating trust in your domain. By acquiring a massive amount of good quality editorial links from the blogosphere and social media sites you are building trust.

Once you got that trust you can rank for whatever you want. I’ll take non relevant links any day as long as they are real, editorial links.

We have seen proof of domains with a significant amount of trust accumulated, ranking for non relevant and extremely competitive phrases with very little effort.