aimClear Search Marketing Blog

“Linkbait” is becoming an integrated PR strategy and Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder of SEO- PR provided all with powerful real life examples of linkbait success stories this afternoon at SES Toronto, 2008.

Greg began by pointing out that skeptics of linkbait claim that while it is possible to to fool people once, doing it twice is difficult. Jarboe’s retort…Do something where you don’t attempt to fool people at all, rather use tactics that are tried tested and true.

1. High Quality Content: In order to fully utilize online PR to it’s highest degree you must optimize your PR piece. Ensure that your content is well researched and fully accurate to avoid any negative publicity and maintain your credibility.
2. Evolve tactics with new learnings: While you may have experienced success with a PR piece one year you should continue to evolve your tactics as you develop relationships within your niche, to help ensure continued success.
3. Reach out and Link out: Become a member of a community, dedicate time to that community and the people within it. This is the sage advice of Joseph Thornley, the CEO of Thornley Fallis & 76 Design. Who has dedicated himself to achieving results through serving his own niche community through powerful content. Pro-PR Thornley’s social media and public relations blog does just that. The only caveat, remember that you write for the people within your (hopefully) expansive list of social media communities. Add value and credibility through interaction and authorship.

Your outreach success depends on 3 key factors:

1. Is your content relevant to the bloggers you have contacted?
2. Is your content of high quality and does it add value within the community?
3. Are you a credible source for information?

Jim Hedger, SEO Consultant for Metamend Search Engine Marketing, reiterates that the best way to be heard among the masses is to create something of value for others everyday. You can discover these valuable things through Conversations, Community and Kindness. Love it!

On authoritative sources Hedger encourages linkbaiters to be a pal and be a source to bloggers. This of course comes with a few golden rules:

1. Never tell a journalist of blogger something that you don’t want everyone to know.
2. Keep it simple. Each story is complicated help interested writers to get it right.
3. Know your audience. Learn the interests and passions of your favorite writers. Understand if they will be interested in your information.
4. Always be honest. There is nothing worse for the credibility for all bloggers than to have a few bad apples who manufacture “news” and tell tales.
5. Start early. Establish yourself early on to help you become well known within your space.

[Editor's note: This session proffered squeaky clean link building concepts, which is good thing. However there are other perspectives :). For links to additional dialog regarding linkbait, please check out our coverage of SMX Advanced Seattle]

Lisa Tarticchio, is a member of Search Engine People, a Toronto SEO and SEM firm whose mission it is to provide quality solutions that meet your business’s goals.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 1:13 pm and is filed under SES Toronto, link baiting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.