What is linkbait in SEO Guide 2016

Introduction

Hey there,

My name’s Faizan Ahmad, and over the course of a two week internship at Distilled I’ve been producing this – the SEO Guide to Creating Viral Linkbait and Infographics. If you’re like me, you’ve been inspired by all these spectacular SEO success stories you read about who have produced linkbait that have scored 28,000+ links (nice one Chris Bennett!) and the like.

But the trouble is, no matter how hard I tried, I’ve never really got it to work. I’d fail to think about outreach until the last moment, or create something that folks just didn’t want to link to. Really elementary mistakes. I figured just reading about it wasn’t enough…

Distilled was the natural place to go to really master the making of linkbait. It’s an everyday job for the inhouse design team, data analyst, PR consultant and suite of SEO talent in the UK and USA. Better still, after a great two week internship last summer and having subsequently come to their London ProSEO conferences I was well placed to pitch the idea of a linkbait guide to Will and Duncan.

What I’ve made is kind of a practical guide to creating effective linkbait written to myself for you to enjoy and use too. The biggest thing I learnt is the process to this – that’s why it’s best to start at the beginning, but you can skip around from the table of contents if that helps. Yes, it is hard work, but if you follow every step in this guide, you’re bound to be able to impress clients, your boss and win SEO budget by delivering effective results.

What is Linkbait Anyway?

Linkbait is viral content with the specific aim to attract links from the “linkerati” – this is a term coined to describe people on the web who might be able to give links. Links drive their own traffic, but they’re also a critical component to search engine ranking algorithms. The idea is the more high-quality links to your website, the more likely you’ll experience higher rankings. Linkbait is an effective way to attract links to your website, with the collateral benefit of viral marketing.

If you’re new to SEO or want a refresher, it’s best to check out SEOmoz’s Beginners Guide to Search Engine Optimization– then you’ll be able to make better use of this guide.

• If you’re like me and have been bootstrapping SEO on your own, you’ll love this because it’s a practical, step-by-step guide that will set up your websites to attract visitors for the long run. You’re also bound to get all sorts of ideas to help market your business in the future.
• If you’re an agency, you’ll relish the process we’re revealing for you to use from handling clients and designers, to the checklists we’re making available to download.
• If you’re an inhouse SEO, thanks to the inhouse backgrounds of some Distilled SEOs, we’ve got those kinds of issues covered too.

In a nutshell…

The basic recipe of effective linkbait looks something like this diagram below. Over the course of this guide, I’ll walk you through how to perfect each of these elements so you too can create highly-effective linkbait. Shall we?

The purpose of the brainstorm is to generate dozens of linkbait ideas, good and bad. Brainstorming is easier than the grunt work needed to make the linkbait, but without the perfect idea, all the work later on will be wasted. Linkbait must be incredibly compelling content to a specific audience that the linkerati can’t help but share.

Eight Tips for the Perfect Linkbait Brainstorm

1. Give Advanced Notice to Your Team

Give your team advanced notice of a brainstorm; it gives them space to start thinking up ideas ahead of the meeting, so people have already had a chance to think about ideas themselves. It’ll save time bringing people up to speed in the meeting too. One or two days ahead of a brainstorm meeting gives enough time for showers, dog walks, commutes, news stories and night sleeping on it to let ideas.

2. Small Teams are Better for Brainstorming

Invite a small team to your brainstorm. Larger teams may have the potential for more ideas, but most people sat in large meetings won’t be doing anything. It’s unproductive. Better still, three or four people can get into their stride with a brainstorm session with ideas rolling out, with each person able to contribute more, rather than having to wait for half a dozen other people to finish sharing their ideas.

That said, don’t just invite people who are directly involved in the linkbait campaign, or even just SEOs. The “outsiders” perspective can be really useful, for instance graphic designers are a good shout. If you can, try to invite one of your client’s customers (or potential customers). An email or in-person invite should entail the time and date of the brainstorm, the client, the objective and any major limitations – enough for anyone to be able to turn up with ideas ready.

PRO Tip: Invite people individually; people respond more when you appear to only be speaking to them. There’s also a sense of pride from being “the chosen one” to which you can tap into.

3. Use a Separate Space

Get away from the desk. Find another space where you’re away from your computer, regular work and distractions. A meeting room, coffee shop or even going to a local park or somewhere different will really help with coming up with creative ideas.

4. Time Limitations Encourage Urgency

Brainstorm meetings have a tendency to overrun, so state the length of the meeting at the beginning and set a timer for around 30 minutes. It’ll encourage people to express their ideas succinctly, and maintain momentum. You don’t have endless time anyway. When the timer goes off, the brainstorm ends. Period.

5. Encourage other people’s ideas. Never criticize.

If you think an idea isn’t that great, how can you build on it or spin off it to make it something better? That positive vibe will only encourage people to throw more ideas on the table. Don’t be “that guy” who criticizes everyone else’s and your own ideas.

6. Quantity, Not Quality

A brainstorm is an idea generation process; everything else is a distraction that makes idea-generation less efficient. Build up more and more ideas, rather than trying to carefully come up with the few “perfect ideas”. However tempting it is to say “ah, we don’t have time for that” or something equally damning stops the brainstorm in its tracks. Don’t worry, the quality assessment comes later. Now is just the time for getting ideas out on the table.