A recent post by Rand Fishkin from SEOMoz about incentivising links got me thinking about the crucial elements involved in the creation of successful “linkbait”. Now, I don’t claim to be any expert on the subject of linkbait creation and success, its something relatively new to me and which I can see the value in and would therefore like to improve at.
Aside from the points Rand mentioned in his post, the other key elements of successful linkbait that I can identify are the same as the keys to the success of almost all types of marketing:
- Positioning
- Timing
- Placement
- Demographic
- Content
I’ve tried to list these elements in terms of importance so here is my reasoning why I think they rank in that order.
Positioning – Simple one really, if your posting your content where nobody can see it then, no matter how good your content is, it’s never going to be successful in aquiring links and traffic. This could either involve posting content on a well ranked and read location (SEOMoz for example 
), or posting your content on a well supported forum/social networking group profile etc and obviously to sites like Stumbleupon, Reddit and Digg. Naturally, the more places your content appears, the more people are likely to see it and therefore visit/link to it. Positioning goes hand in hand with the next element, timing.
Timing -Timing can be crucially important to the success of linkbait for a number of reasons. Firstly, if you post your thrilling linkbait about how “Facebook is a superb way to keep in touch with friends!” tomorrow, chances are people won’t even give it a sniff, particularly on sites like Digg and Reddit where he (or she) who is ”first to market” is King (or Queen!). Similarly, if your linkbait hits Digg during the daily lull points all such sites receive (working, non-break hours), when Diggers aren’t active, and is then confined to the dark depths of page 2+ of “Upcoming” before people get a chance to see for themselves how great your content is….well, you guessed it, epic fail again!
Timing errors can lead to more than the failure of great content...
Placement -Closely related to the points raised in “Position” and “Timing”. Placement in this context refers to where on Digg, Reddit, forums etc you place your link worthy content. On SEOMoz for example, “Daily SEO Blog” posts gets far more views, and posts here typically receive more comments and likely, more links than those posted on “YOUmoz“. Similarly, Digg entries on the Digg main pages are more likely to drive traffic and acquire links than those stuck in “Upcoming”, this relates back to the importance of timing. The other consideration with sites such as Digg and Reddit is which category your linkbait falls under, and which of the categories it might fit with is likely to generate the most success.
Demographic -This is an important consideration as well targeted linkbait, made readily available and easily accessible to your demographic will be more successful than inappropriately targeted content. Content poking fun at Pay Per Click advertisers in the “PPC Pro Forum” is going to be about as popular as Gary Glitter in….well, anywhere!
Content - Some might think it odd that I’ve placed content last, however, a quick look at the homepage for Digg suggests that almost any content, no matter how poor or trivial it might seem, can become popular. An example of this comes from one of my colleagues, Alex, who’s blog post about Spongebob Squarepants has proved more popular with the academics at the Edinburgh Pre-Incubator Scheme than any of his more relevant and informative postings.
I would be interested to hear what other people’s opinions on the order of importance of these, or other factors you believe crucial are.
To read Rand’s full post at SEOMoz, click here.
