Big Oak SEO Blog

Longterm Linkbait - Avoid Peaks & Valleys

I’ve been reading about the tactics and benefits of creating linkbait for a while now. I’ve come to the conclusion that linkbait is good, for the most part. Linkbait is good because you want to write something that other people feel is interesting enough to link to. Linkbait is also good because it supports the very backbone of the internet…linking. I think if you want to create something for the sole purpose of having people link to it, then go right ahead, nothing wrong with that. If it motivates you to write or build or create, then so much the better.

But here is where the line blurs, where the light moves to the dark, where angles fear to tread, so to speak. I don’t support the idea of creating poorly thought-out, duplicated information or junky linkbait. If you are going to create something for the sole purpose of increasing your link popularity then be sure it is worth linking to. This usually means it is something that you have put some time and thought into. It should be an investment of both. It isn’t natural to create a new linkbait page everyday. This is bordering on spam. One of my favorite blogs comes from the mind of Steve Pavlina and is chock full of great linkbait, but he writes what he does for the sake of creating interesting and creative ideas. The linkbait part is just a natural extension of his excellent writing.

Topical linkbaiting is falling out of favor recently, with users and search engines. Topical linkbaiting is the tactic of writing about something that is topical and hoping the buzz around it will have people linking to you. This is good marketing and shouldn’t be abandoned, but I wouldn’t rely on this for my search engine marketing strategy. Usually this type of linkbaiting looks like a series of peaks and valleys in your site’s analytics, which Google views as temporary popularity and not sustained popularity, thereby devaluing the links and the content. By all means, ride the current waves, but be sure you have a good stable of linkbait that provides a solid base of constant viewers and steady link building. Look to create helpful information that doesn’t have a shelf life - how-to articles and tips are good way to do this.

I suppose linkbaiting has been more on my mind as my SEO Company, Big Oak, creates a monster linkbait initiative. I hope it will be longstanding and provide increased readership and link popularity. I think you will find it follows my rules. It isn’t topical and I don’t believe it will only provide a one-time spike. It is a monthly comic, and probably too much thought and too much time has been put towards it, but I think you will agree that the quality of the product is there because of our care. So while you mull over your linkbait strategy, and you should have one, take a moment to read Ranked Hard, our SEO Comic. Oh, and if you want to link to it, who am I to stop you.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Posted in Link Building, SEO Mistakes, SEO Strategies | 6 Comments »

StumbleUpon Shark Surfaces

Living in Richmond, Virginia you don’t often see sharks swimming by, but this week I saw more than a few. These sharks were in the stats and analytics of our client’s sites. Let me explain. We do social bookmarking for our clients when it feels right and not just for the sake of doing it or because it is the new hot button in the Internet marketing community. For this reason, we haven’t pursued social bookmarking heavily. It does have its uses and can be done effectively if the time and effort are applied and the service or product can utilize that type of marketing. But I digress…

Unexpected Site Spikes
When it makes sense, we do submit our client’s strategic pages and pages that may be of interest to the social communities, but more often other people do the submissions for us because the site or page naturally draws the interest of the anonymous Internet user.

I can tell someone has submitted a site to Digg or StumbleUpon because I’ll see spike in the traffic that had nothing to do with our efforts and then drops back the next day or so to the previous natural traffic progression. As I was looking at the line graph for a client’s stats I realized for the first time that the StumbleUpon traffic caused a spike that looks exactly like a shark fin, more so in the first example but the resemblance is carried through on all three examples. I have included them from Google Analytic screen shots for your amusement.

“The StumbleUpon Shark rises to the surface,” I thought to myself. I looked at a few other clients’ stats and found other appearances of the StumbleUpon Shark, sometimes more than once in the same month.

Conclusions from Data?
Since I try to give something of value in every post I will mention that I noticed the traffic increases were somewhat proportional to the site’s overall traffic. You can see this in the screen shots which have traffice ranges from 20 - 2,700 visitors. One site was averaging 20 visitors per day but spiked with StumbleUpon traffic up to 60 visitors. Another site averaged 900 visitors a day spiked to 2,700 visitors, both increase around a 200% increase. So the StumbleUpon traffic may have something to do with the existing popularity of your site.

Examples of Shark Attacks?
If anyone else has data or experiences to share, please let us know. Be careful though, the StumbleUpon Shark could be invading your stats without warning. But unlike “Jaws”, that would be a good thing.

duh DUH…duh DUH…duh DUH

Popularity: 3% [?]

Posted in Out on a Limb, Social Media Optimization | 9 Comments »