|
| Recent Articles |
SES 2006: Social Search Overview
Search Engine Watch executive editor Chris Sherman hosted the session on social search, which covered the impact of human knowledge and activity...
Rand Fishkin’s Tips For More Traffic
Every site owner wants one thing: more visitors. After that, their requests might vary from "more with my family" to "more ice cream in the freezer," but they can all agree...
AOL's PR Is Broken
Just when it seems things can't get worse
for AOL, it appears they have a mole leaking
information to Consumerist.com....
Creating a Link Campaign
There are many different reasons out there fore creating a link campaign; after all, it can benefit you in so many different internet marketing strategies.
Linking Strategies: To Buy or Not to Buy
Buying text links for your website is a highly controversial subject online. Like it or not, approve of the practice or disapprove, it does exist and there are many website owners who are doing it.
Does Web 2.0 Support Net Neutrality?
Sitting at the Vloggercon show again, and I came to hear on the panel on Net Neutrality - an area that really does interest me, mainly because of the deafening silence in the Web 2.0 community. Huge silence.
|
|
|
|
| Recent WebProNews Articles |
SES 2006 Kicks Off Today
The Search Engine Strategies 2006 conference in San Jose begins today, and we plan to bring some inside coverage of the sessions to our readers throughout the week as a variety of noteworthy speakers deliver...
Advertising Auction System Unwelcomed
For a while, it looked as if eBay was going to bring commercials to your television. A number of companies were willing to try out "an auction-based system for..."
Delicious Polishes Its Network Badge
The new network badge from Delicious arrived as the social bookmarking company continues to integrate its services with new owner Yahoo. Delicious has maintained its minimalist design and its popularity...
Google/AP Deal To Spawn New Product
For many publishers and news providers, being included in the Google News index is a good thing. It's a traffic driver. For the Associated Press, it's another matter because AP content is syndicated in publications wordlwide...
IAB, Google, Yahoo Defining Clicks
The Interactive Advertising Bureau and Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask.com, and others have established a working group to define a standard for clicks, in an effort to identify valid and invalid ones on search advertising.
|
|
|
|
08.14.06
SES: Link Baiting - Experienced Marketers Only
 By Mike Banks Valentine
Link building sessions at Search Engine Strategies shows are always popular and draw some of the most substantial crowds from the ranks of webmasters and corporate SEO's attending conferences.
But only one extreme form of link building, called "linkbaiting" can reel in the big fish and attract industry-wide attention or land whale sized national media for massive linking on the scale site owners fantasize about. The Linkbaiting session at SES 2006 in San Jose offered bucket loads of link bait to hopeful link anglers.
Rand Fishkin (appropriate name for LinkBaiting) of SEOmoz.org was first of a panel of experienced link bait fishermen to present on the topic at the Search Engine Strategies 2006 show. Fishkin recently landed a shark with excellent bait offered at his site he named the "Page Strength Tool," which helps webmasters determine the overall quality score, and can determine ranking factors for their web site beyond simple "PageRank." The tool magically reviews dozens of factors contributing to high ranking of sites and reports to webmasters where they're strong and what needs work.
http://www.seomoz.org/tools/page-strength.php
Fishkin started by outlining the elements that lead to success. Step one to link baiting is in researching a sector link "worthiness" by doing some discovery of "big" players in your field. Check del.icio.us tags and technorati tags on your topic. Can your web site content be tweaked to appeal to pundits in this field?
He suggested "online viral public relations" as another name for linkbaiting, since the "baiting" term seems to carry negative connotations. He recommends selecting a content focus to meld branding and viral elements and to do keyword research to find popular phrases in your area. Digg.com as well as del.icio.us offer "most popular" areas showing what is currently hot. Fishkin also recommends StumbleUpon.com as an undervalued resource to research areas of online buzz and interest. Look for elements that encourage linking.
Fishkin was followed by Cameron Olthuis of Advantage Consulting Services with a presentation titled, "Tracking your buzz - Because your reputation depends on it"
Olthuis emphasized how critical it is to monitor perceptions of buzz. Track your buzz using blog search engines and conversation tracking at popular message boards to follow public conversation about your site. Track the right terms to monitor how people perceive your buzz, Subscribe to RSS feeds using company name, company URL, competitors or industry related sites. He recommends that you figure out how best to leverage your buzz once it starts by watching what people say. If you have no knowledge of what is being said, the buzz you do gain could end up being nothing more than chumming for fish - You may attract them, but you'll never catch them with out hooking them after they show up.
Join any conversations you do find by commenting on blogs, respond to emails and by posting in forums, answering questions, because it keeps your buzz going and can lead to many more links. If buzz is negative, be sure to turn it into good any way you can. Take focus off of negative buzz if it happens by creating a different controversy. ClaimID is a personal reputation management company he recommended using to track online buzz.
http://www.claimID.com
The Mentos & Diet Coke fountain video was discussed by Olthuis as an example of taking control of any buzz that starts spontaneously. For those unfamiliar with it, the video involves putting the candy into Diet Coke to create a fountain of soda. (Fizz in this case, rather than buzz). Mentos took advantage or the buzz created by the video phenom and funneled the traffic to a newly created contest to "Create your own Mentos Fountain." The most popular video, linked to by the home page of the Mentos web site, has been viewed over 6 million times. The Mentos site is at:
http://us.mentos.com
The video can be viewed at: http://www.eepybird.com/
Embrace your buzz, regardless of good, bad or ugly. Measure it with backlinks, brand image, trends, new customers by using Yahoo Site Explorer, blog search engines Google Trends, Opinmind and Google Analytics. Boggs wrapped up with the quip "Learn rinse, repeat."
Click here to resume reading this article.
About the Author:
Mike Banks Valentine operates SEOptimism, Offering SEO training of in-house content managers as well as contract SEO for advertising agencies, web development companies and marketing firms.
|
