Linkbaiting has to come from the heart

True linkbaiting success very rarely comes from an outsourced article. The most successful linkbaiting pieces are written:

• From within the company, using inside company information and expertise
• From concepts which have developed over quite a period of time. Even if the actual writing and creation doesn’t take long, the thought process behind it usually does.
• With rich media – additional videos, graphs and photos to help explain what has been written
• Very rarely as ‘controversy’ pieces. Picking on another blogger or company works well for some … but for most of us, it makes us look like whingers.

Don’t take yourself for granted

Every company does something that outsiders would find amazing. You just need to stop taking yourself for granted, and see it! If you just can’t, grab a few customers or family members, take them on a tour of your working day and ask them what fascinates them. This is how the ‘Will It Blend’ series on Youtube got started.

The spread of bad information in SEO is fast and notoriously inconvenient. Almost all of us have spent time or money at some stage on an SEO tactic that ended up having no relevance to our real rankings. Unfortunately, bad information continues to be published – here are the top 4 craziest myths about SEO and Google.

1. SEO is something you do once, and then never again
   Unfortunately untrue – if you want to stay on top of the rankings, you need to keep working to be there.
2. Google Analytics sends your company information to Google
   Big Brother isn’t watching you … because they just don’t have the manpower and can’t be bothered!
3. Pagerank is directly linked to search engine results
   Actually, Pagerank is an indication of your link popularity, which is only one element of your Google rankings.
4. Keyword density is soooo 2008
   Google would have you believe that if you write your copy naturally, the search engine will understand what it is about just fine. We know from experience in SEO that this is definitely not the case! There is no magic keyword density number, but ignoring density is a recipe for wasted SEO money.

Because Google keeps changing the rules!

If you invest solely in SEO and not in holistic web marketing, your company’s profitability is strongly tied to its relationship with another company – Google. A pretty high risk strategy! Google’s new ideas, like personal search, will keep making life hard is SEO is your only marketing avenue.

Because if you depend on search, you neglect visitor engagement
if you’re constantly thinking about getting new visitors and visibility through the search engines, it takes the focus off engaging your current customers and visitors through blogging, newsletters, etc. Warm marketing costs 7 times less than getting new customers.

Because popular sites get traffic without search engines
Do you think people Google for Facebook nowadays? No. The same is true of many popular sites … and you want to be one of them!

Some people will say you should never use web slang in your site copy.  Some people threaten to violently kill those that do, while some cheerfully chuck out ‘lol-bombs’ like there’s no tomorrow. So … what affect does web slang have on your SEO?

Do you REALLY need these expressions in your website?!

Potential for reader engagement

Web slang actually has the potential to make your readers fully engage with you as a writer. Reading copy with web slang is like reading a conversation with a friend for many people. If you have a very personal site (like a blog), this could be a huge advantage in your SEO, building rankings by boosting traffic and repeat visits.

Potential for reader disengagement

It’s hard to know when to stop … and even people that are happy to use ‘lol’, ‘imho’ or ‘rofl’ in net conversations can often be turned off by the deliberate misspellings and more obscure terms. Obviously you need to know your audience.

A middle ground

Facebook is a great example of a middle ground. They never use netspeak themselves, but provide plenty of opportunity for readers to talk however they like. Increase reader engagement on your website, and you could sidestep this whole SEO issue!

Who’s Roxy?

Roxy is the women’s clothing brand owned by the Quiksilver company. They make swimwear, clothing and accessories for surf, snow and skating situations, as well as general purpose wear. They are a fairly high end brand.

Roxy internet marketing implementation

Roxy has developed a ‘Style Squad’ – a group of around 900 girls nationwide between the ages of 13 and 23. Each of these girls was handpicked in stores across the country,, and each of them gets benefits for being a part of the Style Squad:

• Welcome pack with the latest clothing designs
• Free access to new items
• Discounts in store

The Panel Manager of the Style Squad posts questions on message boards when there is a business issue such as thoughts on a new design, how the girls respond to advertising, etc. It can be used for both qualitative and quantitative market research.

How you can follow Roxy’s internet marketing example

• Create your own community of brand ambassadors, asking people to become part of the community in your physical stores, and offering significant benefits for doing so.
• Make sure there are ongoing benefits for remaining part of the community
• Create an online forum – social media like a Facebook page, Myspace account, or Twitter account that your members should add.
• Whenever you are wondering what your customers think about a change in your business – a new idea, a new promotion, a competition, a new page on the website … ask them! When people feel valued, they are happy to give their opinion.
• Use the information to improve your brand in the eyes of your customers.

The keys to success for Roxy’s web marketing strategy are offering significant benefits to the members, and them implementing enough new strategies and changes to make the effort worthwhile! Don;t forget that this sort of marketing has a direct effect on your SEO, by encouraging backlinks and pushing your traffic (and therefore your Google rank), skyward.

Text Speak in Domain Names

Using the number 2 instead of the word ‘to’, the number 4 instead of the word ‘for’, etc is a great way to create a snappy-looking domain. In reality, though, they’re a pain in the backside. Every time you spell your domain out for somebody, you’ll have to say ‘number-4′, or ‘letter-U’. It’s very clunky.

An additional problem is that to experienced web users, these domains look a little sleazy … and often akin to virus-laden or spam-creating sites. Not very professional.

The hyphen – hot or not?

Last week we teased you with a few funny domain name examples that could easily have been saved with hyphens … Pen Island could have rescued their site www.penisland.net with nothing but a little dash, and so could www.expertsexchange.com. Hyphens are sometimes strongly recommended!

However, when you have a full business name in your URL, hyphens just add to the length. Also, they aren’t part of many computer users’ ‘defaults’ – if someone can’t remember your website, they are unlikely to try with hyphens between the words. Only use in cases of hilarious misunderstanding.

Should I use a business acronym?

Many businesses are known both by their staff and clients as an acronym of their proper name – for example, NAB for the National Australia Bank. Should you use the acronym as your domain name, though?

It all depends on how commonly you use your full name, or your acronym. Full names may have a little advantage in terms of SEO (giving the search engines keywords to feed off), but if your customers are more likely to search for ‘www.nab.com.au’ than ‘www.nationalaustraliabank.com.au’, you should make things easier for the humans whenever possible.

Buying an existing domain

Sometimes you’ll have the opportunity to buy an existing domain name that fits your business. They cost A LOT compared to getting a new domain, but sometimes have quite a bit of money invested in them, in terms of SEO. Have a web marketing expert check on the domain’s Google performance – if it has a good SEO basis, it might be worth the extra expense.

Selecting your domain extension

The most recognizable extension is the dot com, although most users will also try your country code extension if they can’t find your site immediately. It is always worth registering a dot com, and a dot com dot AU, or CA, or TH, or whatever the case may be… even if you intend to use .org or .net as your primary website. Otherwise, people who don’t remember your address properly might land at a competitor’s website at the .com, instead of yours.

If you will be serving international visitors on your site, a simple .com extension makes the most sense – having a country code could scare away some visitors who believe that you don’t deliver or serve global customers. If you purchase both, you can direct interntional visitors to your .com, and local visitors to your .com.au site. You can be a global business, but still inspire local confidence.

Using your business name

Using nothing other than your business name as your URL is simple, and will help people that are trying to find you for the first time. However, it is not always the best SEO strategy. If your business name contains no indication of what you actually do, you are missing out on the most valuable element in the Google algorithm.

Using your keywords as your URL

While using your keywords as your URL is ideal for SEO, it carries its own set of problems. Users often expect businesses to be named after their URLs (or the other way round!), and may mistrust a site where this doesn’t ‘add up’.

Solving the dilemma – three strategies

Obviously, there is a dilemma to deal with when deciding whether to go with your business name or keywords for your URL. Here are a few possible solutions:

• Use your business name PLUS your keywords, if it doesn’t make the URL too long
• Use your keywords and your businesses initials only
• Change your business name to include your keywords, if you’ll be primarily web-based

Next week we’ll look at some of the less pressing, but still common problems in domain name selection!

Cut out the ‘be’s

Okay, you won’t be able to remove all of the ‘be’s from your writing – but odds are, many of them are superfluous. Look at the sentence: “I will be putting these up on the website next week”. You can change that quickly and easily to “I will put these … etc”, and retain the same meaning.

Given the fact that conciseness is of paramount importance on the web, this and the next tip are more useful than you might think!

Cut out ‘is’s

Clunky heading, I know . Keep reading anyway. Often you can cut out ‘is’ from sentences quite easily, and chop out surrounding words along with this little seed of verbosity. You can either:

• Shorten your full ‘is’s to contractions – ‘what is’ to ‘what’s’. Roughly the same characters, but easier for people to grasp.
• Look for instances of ‘there is’, and rearrange the sentence to cut them out completely.
• Look for other ‘is’s, and think about whether you can use other words to shorten the sentence. It’s usually possible.

When it comes to facts, don’t generalise

Here is a handy cheat-sheet of words to help you identify whether you are generalising. If you say:

• Often
• Many
• Approximately
• Can (as opposed to will)
• Virtually

You are telling your audience there’s an exception to whatever you have just written. It’s like a legal loophole for getting out of having your product do what you implied it would. These aren’t forbidden words generally, but you shouldn’t use them when you are talking about facts.

Learn to love full stops

Any sentence that goes on for longer than 15-20 words is usually too long. Full stops are the best way to break up sentences, but not always possible. Use semicolons where you can, or simply cut out a part of the sentence that isn’t really necessary.

Aaron Wall of SEObook would do things like…

• Setting up an alternative source of income while he put himself through a self-paced study course, spending around $20 to $200 on books
• Buy a cheap domain
• Get cheap hosting
• Start a Wordpress blog that included no ads whatsoever, and he was truly passionate about and involved in
• Get a cheap logo
• Use free keyword research and analytics tools

Once the site started making money, Aaron says he would reinvest in the growth of the site first.

Andy Hagans, author of Tropical SEO would do things like…

• Buying good quality content
• Buying good quality links

He has said he would spend his entire budget on this, no matter whether he had $100, $250 or $500. The ‘good links’ he indicated were joeant.com or botw.org for lower budgets, and the Yahoo Directory for slightly higher budgets. All leftover money would go to hiring writers for linkbait.

By the way, thanks go to SEOish for the SEO expert opinions in this post!

Caught by linkbait

Linkbait for its own sake is worthless

Your linkbait content must support your overall internet marketing strategy, or it is almost worthless. The point of creating linkbait content is to get relevant links, pushing your site higher in Google’s estimation, and therefore presenting you earlier in the results when someone searches for your keywords. However:

• If your linkbait content is not relevant to your core business, you will get few ‘qualified leads’ clicking through
• If you encourage sites that aren’t relevant to yours to link to you, the worth of the links in Google’s algorithm is lowered.

So, you can’t just publish a controversial rant about Barack Obama as a linkbait strategy, if your company sells medical diagnostic equipment. You must think within the box!

Fake Linkbait could get you de-listed in Google

The best example is a story published at money.co.uk, titled ‘13 Year Old Steals Dad’s Credit Card to Buy Hookers’. This FAKE story got plenty of links … but it wasn’t made obvious on the page that it was fake. Matt cutts of Google indicated that the company would view that as dishonestly trying to create links (no matter what the writer’s intention), and could be added to the list of things that will get you banned from Google.

Linkbait’s ROI is unpredictable

This is the case with all activities in internet marketing – you must test and refine your techniques over time to be confident of getting a good return on investment. So just be cautious of investing a lot of money in linkbait content, without an *excellent* understanding of what makes the market tick.