Hands up, I made a mistake in publishing mental linkbait here, I think I got swept away on the success of it. The only way to ever avoid mistakes is to never do anything, balls to that.
Did I make a mistake with writing the original article, abso-friggin-lutely not, I would not have changed one thing, ok maybe one thing, I would have changed the name of the main protagonist to one of my long time mates, lol.
I realise success brings the haters out of the woodwork, most of them don’t seem to do much themselves so I guess they feel they can get a bit of heat from slagging my success. I think Jeremy Shoemaker has a lot of wise word to say about this.
Will I be stopping evil linkbait, absolutely not. This whole talk of ethics in marketing is utter bullshit as far as I am concerned. My focus is results, that’s what I do. Don’t agree with the way I do business? Fine, no problem, don’t hire me. I have no interest in the ethical debate with regards to marketing.
Does that mean that every piece work I do for a client is going to be a certain nature? No, every client is different, it totally depends on how far the client wants to turn the dial. Some clients would not want, 15 Adult Pygmies mistakenly beaten by headmaster, on their site, even though it could bring links.
You pick the best tool for the job and if a resource based linkbaitdoes the trick, that is what you go for, obviously the more competitive the sector the more aggressive you have to be.
Which leads me to another point, paying $3,000 for a piece of linkbait is not cost effective for everyone, you have to be able to monetise at a high level and not everyone is playing in these leagues.
Should linkbait be the only thing you do? Absolutely not. I would say your overall linkbuilding profile should be about 10% linkbait and 90% other linkbuilding techniques. You have to have correct anchor text to have a chance with certain keywords and linkbait is too big a beast for such finesse.
I noticed Linkmoses called linkbait the Paris Hilton of linkbuilding, or something like that. And I would totally agree, but what you have to remember is that this vapid heiress made $2,000,0000 last year. Not so dumb, she is working with what she has and she does it very well. The fact that people are talking about her means that as a marketing machine she is well oiled. Yes, you probably don’t want her over for tea and cake. I doubt she cares. I may expand on this analogy in another post as I rather like it.
Linkbait can cover a lot of sins. If you are working in a competitive industry and you want a bunch of natural organic links from many different IP numbers, linkbait can be most excellent for this. Which is why a lot of blackhats use the technique and possibly why it’s getting a bad rep.
I have learned early on that I am not in the seo business or even the linkbait business. I am in the publishing business and adapted my tactics accordingly, sure they grind up against the hippy-dippy, free love, whitehat, ethical obsessed ranty mob, but i don’t do this to make friends.
I ask you. What will get you results, some piece of content that drills into the brain of reader and hypnotizes them into giving up a link? Or some poorly written, boring, but completely truthful and sensible account of the subject matter.
I sell my writing for marketing purposes, you only have to look at the successful marketers to see that they push the limits of their craft.
I have plans to push even further.