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Link baiting?! Link bait?!

I subscribe to a job board that lists companies who want to hire SEO Managers and SEO Gurus of one type or another. One of the job qualifications that seems to be popping up more and more these days is:

“..must be proficient in link baiting strategies…”

Like much SEO jargon, link baiting is simply a new term for activities that people have been doing for some time already. Link baiting are the activities of creating online content to which other people want to link. - i.e do something great that other websites will link to.

Here’s a brief list of some link-baiting techniques.

Note that for businesses, some of the techniques might require ongoing internal efforts - such as a marketing intern or in-house staff blogging on a regular a basis.

Create a valuable resource for your industry or niche and post it online.

The resource could be a top 20 list, a special report, how to guide, or story about your industry (or people in it) that few know. Keep in mind - your goal is not to sell but to inform and entertain - provide something of value that others will want to link to and share with colleagues.

Interview prominent people in your industry and publish the interviews.

You could interview someone via phone or email. Or record the interview and publish it as a podcast. There are “rock stars” in any niche. No matter how small the industry or group, some people stand out. Talk to them. And when someone searches for that person’s name on google? They find your website and your interviw.

Tie some of the interviews to specific industry events. Is there a conference coming up? Interview the organizer or one of the keynotes. They will be happy for the free publicity and you will get conference goers to take a look at your website. They may even link to your interview.

Write regular blog posts and articles.

You have experts on your staff, do you not? Let them share their expertise online. Have them write interesting and informative articles or publish technical information that few people know.

They could be the first to write about news and developments in your niche. Do it often enough, and you will get repeat visitors and, um LINKS.

Run a newsworthy ‘event’ such as a contest.

Do you have a new product or product line coming out? Offer a prize to the person that gives you best name for it. or who can write the best description, or gives the most unique use for it.

Use Your Imagination: Do something new that has not been done in your niche.

Be the first to research and document something in your industry and then post it online. Or be the first to doing something on the internet - could the CEO in your company be the first in your industry to blog? Do you have someone on staff that could create a free tool or application and give it away?

Coin a new acronym in your industry and get people to talk about it.

This one should be fairly simple. Ever heard of the Nagy Method? Me neither. But let me see if I can make it up. N = NEW. A= AND G=GREAT Y=?? Yodelling? Yoda? Y2K? Aha! How about YouTube? Nagy stands for another link-baiting technique: Create a New And Great YouTube video. In other words, C. Nagy.

On a cautionary note, you may want to view a brief post and discussion on some possible limitations to linkbaiting on the SEOMOZ website

It has been known for many months that if you have a Google account, google can track your web history and sites visited (see Search Engine Land for a brief overview). This can be a rather interesting phenomena as Google has been using it to tailor organic search results to particular users’ tastes. For example, I have done keyword searches on my laptop and then done identical searches on the computer at my local library and the University of Utah library. I noted that the search engine results were different. My website appeared higher on the list when I searched for it on my home computer. It was lower when I searched on the library computers. I have repeated the search process of several months and it replicated each time.

However, I recently noticed something even more interesting - Google appears to be using my searches to serve ads on unrelated searchs. I had heard they were doing this, but I only noticed it recently. I was doing a brief SEO/SEM site analysis on a company called, “Checks In the Mail” Checks in the mail is a lovely example of company that successfully moved from direct mail and phone ordering to internet-based ordering.

As I was going through and checking some of their product lines and rankings, I typed in “Spiderman Checks” on Google. Next, I was interrupted by a phone call and then did a search on another topic. Lo and behold - There in the paid placement (i.e. PPC ads) was an ad related to my previous search on checks. Fascinating! I am going to keep my eyes open for other examples of this.

Have you noticed something similar? Post a comment and let me know.

I have also noticed that a PPC ad that I clicked on the New York Times website several weeks ago keeps appearing on the website. However, they may simply be doing site specific advertising.

I am surprised by how motivating it is to have a PayPal debit card attached to my PayPal account.

It’s great being able to buy a cup of coffee, or a meal, or gas, with money that comes directly from my passive income streams. Someone in France, the U.K, the U.S or god knows where else - buys a download. Then the money goes automatically into my PayPal account, where I can access it instantly through the debit card.

Previously, I would have to transfer the money to my bank account before having access to it. Somehow the immediacy of the debit card makes the income more real and more emotionally satisfying.

And a brief note about Google Checkout. I mentioned in a previous ecommerce post, that I added Google Checkout as a payment option to my e-junkie shopping cart. I do not have the exact figures in front of me, but there has been a substantial increase in sales. I’d estimate it at 20%.

I took a few minutes this morning to think about my many “failures” online.

One failure is an audio mp3 series, based on the Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education. It is designed to help eliminate back pain. I initially envisioned it as a $97 download that would sell dozens of times per month and create several thousand dollars per month in passive income.

It didn’t sell any copies at $97. In fact, it didn’t sell at $77 or $67. It didn’t sell in any appreciable volume until I had it a $27. Even then, it only sold 5-6 times per month, only making me about $150 per month. A failure, right?

I also used Snaps X Pro to create some video tutorials on how to use E-Junkie. My e-junkie video tutorials, at $19.95 only sell 4-5 times per month, for about $95 per month in sales. However, my e-junkie videos have the added benefit of bringing in a small amount of consulting income. People hire me to help set-up their e-junkie shopping carts and products. Currently, I make about $500 per month from this product and related sales. Another failure?

I put google adsense (advertising) on one of my websites last year. It started bringing in a few dollars here and there. I was intrigued by the idea, so I created 3 new websites specifically for the purposes of putting google adsense on them and gaining a new revenue stream. It took me 3 weeks of consistent work to get the websites up and running. My hope was that each website would produce $5 - $10 per day in advertising revenue and create a revenue stream of $500 - $600 per month. I figured that once it worked, I could start creating new websites, until I created the passive income stream that I wanted.

I overestimated the income. Each website only produced 50¢ to $1 per day in revenue. With the income from my other adsense sites, I get about $125 per month from google in adsense revenue. Failed yet again.

For now, I will skip the details of my other failures - the Amazon affiliate account that only brings in about $10 per month, the E-Junkie affiliate payments that are only $10 - $15 per month. There are others of course, the $7.00 Feldenkrais Breathing sessions that only make me $70 per month. The teleconference calls that I recorded and sell with Bill O’Hanlon…

Overall, my failures bring me aprox. $600 per month of passive income and an additional $2000 per month in consulting income. This does not include my individual coaching client’s and the money I make teaching at the University of Utah.

If I keep failing at my current rate, I will have $1500 per month in passive income by the end of this year. Unless, of course, I screw up my failures and one of them becomes a hit.

How about you? How much passive income are you making from your internet failures, so far?

One hurdle that my coaching clients often have to deal with is learning to sell and market online while staying true to their own values.

I help them learn that they can sell effectively online and do so with heart, integrity and authenticity.

They don’t always think that it is possible, but they do learn. That doesn’t mean that it will be easy (although sometimes it is). And that doesn’t mean that it will happen right away (although sometimes it does).

When I created my first succesfull “sales letter” website, I had my back up against the wall. I had just quit my PhD program at the University of Utah in favor of pursuing my online dreams full-time. My paltry grad student stipend was about to run out. But my online efforts were not yet paying all my bills.

What to do to fill the gap? I thought that the University was going to give me classes to teach, giving me backup income, but I was not entirely certain. And I didn’t have the luxury of waiting to find out.

I needed a back-up plan.

I needed some extra-income from the web and I needed it YESTERDAY. Not sure what to do, I went to a local coffee shop, grabbed a cup of coffee and thought about what I could do.

I ran through a bunch of options in my mind. I could create some new downloadable products such as an audio MP3 or a marketing ebook. I could quickly schedule a new workshop and market it online. But all of those things could take a couple of weeks or even a couple of months and I wanted immediate income.

Suddenly, I remembered having a bunch of survey data that I had collected from a community to which I belong. I had gone to an online forum which I had been a member of for several years and had asked the members several questions about internet marketing. For instance:

What’s your single most important question about selling online?

How difficult has it been for you to find the answer to this question?

If I really want to delight you by teaching you something you not only didn’t know before, but something you don’t think most people would expect from selling online, what would it be?

I also asked several questions about their age and gender. What I found when re-reading the survey responses was that there was a sizable group of people who had needs and questions that I could answer quickly and easily. They had similar needs to what I had when starting out. Not only that, I was so familiar with their issues and had dealt with them so many times, that the process of teaching it was second nature to me.

To give you an idea, their concerns had to do with getting a website cheaply and without too much hassle, getting visitors to the website, getting to the top of the search engines, figuring out how to make some passive income through ebooks and audio downloads, and most importantly - having someone who could take the stress out, and guide them through the process step-by-step.

Designing the Product and Creating the Sale Page

The key point: I knew what this group of people wanted, and I knew I could help them.

I already had some quick ways to create websites and blogs, quick SEO tips and low-cost ways of creating products and selling them. I also realized that since I had some extra time on my hands, I could not only set-up the websites, but also coach via phone and webinar to teach my new clients (I knew I was going to get them) how to do everything.

The sales letter landing page was my 3rd or 4th sales that I had set-up. I didn’t particularly like the other ones, and one made me feel so false that I never bothered to put it up.

But when I wrote the new landing page, I was R-E-A-D-Y. I had already had time to read and review the survey responses and also have some online interactions with the people throught the forum and email exchanges. So I felt like I really got where they were coming from and I knew that I could help them.

It was also after I realized that many of my websites were getting over 3500 page views per month and that my various websites were finally producing and that I knew what I was talking about.

So when I sat down and wrote the sales letter page, it only took a couple of sessions to get it up and formatted. And I BELIEVED. By the time I was done writing it, I felt great about it, knew that I could deliver. And - excuse my arrogance - I felt that the people that did not want to buy or didn’t like what I was doing, just didn’t have a clue, so it didn’t bother me.

And I knew that I could always figure out how to improve the website and to sell to others at some point in the future.

The website made me nearly $3000 in the first ten days after I put it up.

Not a fortune to be sure. But the website only took me 3 days to create, and the three grand was enough to pay my bills for another couple of months, giving me time to work on other projects.

So, my point? Keep your soul and your ethics and make money online. Eventually you will have the right message that feels good to you and that you know will be of service to the world. It won’t be false or B.S. or marketing-hype. At least not to you. And the people that think it’s all hype? They can go somewhere else. Because you will know that you are influencing with integrity.

You will be YOU. And the people that “get” you and “get” what you are doing will be appreciative. They will buy from you and all will be well.

cheers for now - Ryan