If My Mom Read This How Would She React
Most linkbait tends to focus on controversy, flavor of the moment hot items, or various forms of regurgitated content. Short term sites can get a spike from such activities, but real longterm brands are not built exclusively off them. Many people ask me how to create something remarkable and linkworthy. You can research just about any market and come up with a few ideas in 10 minutes. See what ideas spread in the past, and see what news stories were popular in parallel markets. Look at
- what people are talking about in the market right now
- the top search results
- popular related searches
- terms in the same field that are often covered by the mainstream media (or others who point authoritative links at competing sites)
- bookmarked results on social media sites
You can take it one step further and create something you would be proud to show your mom. Certainly cliche to say that, but if you are creating that kind of content then you are on the right path. And if your mom hates your market or is no longer around, see who the leaders are in your market and impress them. From their perspective, is what you are doing unique and original enough to be comment worthy. Be honest.
There is also one other way to tell if what you are doing is going to be highly linkable or a passing fad. Imagine you were the person in the market who is seen as the leading authority for the keyword or idea you are going after. Is your idea good enough that the person you want to replace would be willing to link at it or try to copy it (depending on the type of person they are)?
If they are likely to recreate your idea what tangible assets can you leverage to make it hard to duplicate? Is there a way you can brand the idea as your own to where others market your brand by even mentioning the topic? Is there a domain name that adds credibility to your offering? Is there a way you can ask for community involvement to get other topical gurus to help spread your idea?
It doesn't matter if you try and fail. You at least learn from it. Eventually something will stick, and you only need to be right once.
Comments
Aaron, thanks for the validation, that starting my blog took guts and when I don't fail, I have success. We have followed many of your ideas. I have a great computer student, who is the son of my partner. He has single-handed, launched us on the web. I barely can blog, however, I will not give up. I'm a 60 year old grandmother, who is starting her third career, while I work full time selling commercial real estate. Blogging is a whole new world. By the way, on a lighter note, what would gramma say...Aaron, I'm proud. Regards, Dorothy
[QUOTE]Imagine you were the person in the market who is seen as the leading authority for the keyword or idea you are going after. Is your idea good enough that the person you want to replace would be willing to link at it [/QUOTE]
I definitely like that piece of advice.
Hi Aaron, I had a question about the link: & links: command.
Why when I type "link:www.blablabla.com" and "link: www.blablabla.com" (note the space after the colon in the second one) do I get drastically different results?
The second version yields far more links shown, also "links:" is something totally different that I'm not sure about.
I'd be happy to know what the space-thing is all about though. Thanks!
-Drew
Are you talking about Google or Yahoo? You should stay away from Google when doing inbound link checks.
Use yahoo for that.
And use the linkdomain: command it'll show you the links pointing to the whole domain, not just the homepage. In other words it includes deep links.
I just tried using link: and links: in yahoo and no idea what links: is supposed to be, but it gave me 14, link: 31 and linkdomain: 80.
"If My Mom Read This How Would She React"
She would probably think how dam smart that kid was and keep watching, reading and learning.
:->
how does one improve page rank ... is it good enough to get a link from a page with a high page rank?
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