Making Link Bait Work For You

In marketing, you have one central task: Get attention that drives results. Pretty simple really, at least in theory. Online, the lion’s share of this process is generating links to your website or blog, which helps to gain ranking in the search engines and to generate brand awareness.

Do not underestimate that second element. The more brand awareness you generate, the more people search for you, the more it affects sales and/or leads.

Link baiting has been described as a kind of art form because, like art, what resonates with a group of people isn’t always predictable and certainly not controllable; only the after-effect – like book or box office sales – is measurable. But also like any creative endeavor, there are both guidelines to creation and case studies of what has worked in the past.

Wikipedia defines link bait this way: Link bait is any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites. You might be right to equate it to viral or word-of-mouth marketing, which is attracting more and more of the overall advertising spend each year.

I hereby claim that content can be both white-hat and yet still be wonderful “bait” for links. Personally, I’d lean toward producing interesting data or having a creative idea rather than spouting really controversial ideas 100% of the time. If everything you ever say is controversial, it can be entertaining, but it’s harder to maintain credibility over the long haul.

Indeed, we should approach it positively. Controversy works, and is often called the Contrary/Attack/Evil "hook." It works like the villain in professional wrestling, or tension in great storytelling. People love a good fight, but if you’re seen as always the one picking the fight, they could sour on you rather quickly. 

Fear also works – writing or creating content with the intent of scaring people to death. People will sign up just to warn others, and you get not only the link-love, but a healthy dose of fear associated with your product or service, which may or may not be what you want.

Perhaps the most famous example that didn’t go negative – well, that could depend on your point of view – is Burger King’s Subservient Chicken. Most agree that whether or not it sold more chicken is moot. The special website was a smash success and Burger King generated a lot of attention for itself.

But my favorite (and more practical) example of a business using link bait to its advantage is the "Will It Blend" series of short videos from Blendtec, which can be viewed at YouTube, or at their homepage. The one where they drop an iPod into their blender has been viewed over 4.5 million times, favorited over 9,000 times, and has attracted over 7,700 comments.

These were two wildly successful examples, but we’ll leave you with the tried-and-true approaches developed by the link-bait experts out there, sans the negative ones. All of them are excellent ways to become part of the 3.5 billion daily conversations happening on the Web, at Digg, Reddit, YouTube, wherever.

The Resource Approach (Becoming the Expert In Your Field/Niche)

–    Create expert articles/lists/data sheets 
–    Create practical or fun tools
–    Write How-To articles
–    Create a comprehensive blog roll (give link love, get link love)
–    Compile informative news stories and articles

The News Approach

–    Get the scoop. Be first with industry news
–    Interview prominent people in your field
–    Investigate a hot topic
–    Do an exposé

The Humor/Novelty Approach

–    Post funny/interesting/amazing photos related to your industry
–    Create humorous/unique videos (Use Blendtec for inspiration)
–    Create lists; people love lists – Top 10 Ways to…; 10 Signs You’re…

But whatever you create as link bait, don’t just post and forget it. Send out emails to industry people, drop a link into Digg, post at YouTube. In short, take advantage of every medium at your disposal.

She said two key search-marketing strategies were link bait and viral marketing. Link bait works because people are looking for content and need things to blog about. Viral marketing has the content to build a buzz.

It’s important to create brand evangelists, which gives people a reason to talk about your product. When coming up with an idea you should ask your self four questions.

1. What sparks passion in my customers?
2. What has not been done before?
3. How will your idea benefit your users?
4. Will your audience risk their own reputation for it?

When trying to get your message out she said that ideas spread because they are important to the spreader not the originator. Good social media ideas work through relationships.

You can plant seeds for you idea by using blog engines to find topically approved blogs. She pointed to Technorati as being a good source that provides data on blog rankings to help you judge the quality of the blog.

Using humor to run a marketing campaign can be good because it has universal appeal, spreads quickly and leaves a positive association. The risk though is that it can be tough to sell humor to the executive crowd, it has the potential to offend and does not always fit your brand.

In closing she hit on three points to remember. Well planned campaigns can score big. Invest in your community and it’s all about creativity.

The Link-Building Battle: Directories Vs. Link Bait

The discussion began with a post from Lyndon Antcliff of CornwallSEO.com.  Titled “Beaten to a pulp Social Voting beats Directories for Link Building,” the article contains the sentence, “Directories are Dead.”

Semi-random capitalization aside, Antcliff makes some good points.  Search Engine Guide’s Jennifer Laycock, who responds to the piece, writes, “The interesting thing about Lyndon’s argument is that he comes at it from a different way than most social media proponents do. . . .  Lyndon suggests that by submitting your link to many of the second and third tier social bookmarking sites, you gain the typical directory benefits of getting your site in front of search engine spiders.”

But Laycock goes on to recommend a more balanced approach; in doing so, she also contradicts Antcliff’s “Directories are Dead” proclamation, although Antcliff, to his credit, qualified that statement in the following sentences.

Still, Laycock asserts that “[d]irectories have real value.  You should explore your options and pick at least a handful to submit your web site to.”

She then – balance is everything, here – adds, “Social news sites have real value.  You should be aware of what they are and should submit qualified content to them.”

Last, and (correctly done) not least, “Link building…non-paid link building has amazing value and you should be building the relationships and content that help you score those links for your site.”

In this writer’s opinion, Laycock carries the day, if only for her superior grammar and punctuation.

Starting in May (and going on forever it sounds like) any armed forces personnel (and family) will get a discounted admission. (Whether or not you agree with the current conflict, our troops certainly deserve our respect and appreciation for putting their lives on the line.) As I read this it made me want to blog about it and tell other people how neat it was they would do such a thing.

As I continued to think about it, I wondered about how “doing good”, acts of service and charity by organizations that are truly genuine (not just tax deductible), could be the means of really good link bait. National Amusements did not seem to benefit greatly from it in terms of traffic, but hopefully the public considers their image when patronizing theaters. I tried to digg the article last week, but it didn’t have any legs. Perhaps its the wrong audience for such an article, or maybe the title wasn’t quite right, but I really think there could be some great link bait juice out of a “doing good” act.

I searched through the year’s top diggs and could only really find one that was “doing good”, a plea for help/attention for a man whose house was demolished by the city, but even then it was more of a “can you believe this, get this guy some attention” kind of “doing good”.

I glanced through Reddit and a few other social news sites but couldn’t find much in the few minutes I took there, but I thought I’d open it up to our readers, do you remember much “link bait” coming from a “doing good” act by businesses or individuals?

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Digg bait, which is not limited to Digg but all social news and bookmarking sites, focuses specifically on the interests of social communities and what they respond to. With Digg bait, the power is not in the usefulness and value of the content, but the title and description of the news item, sometimes bordering on the sensational. Think tabloid style writing, “Elvis gives birth to alien baby”.

Can link bait become Digg bait? Yes, I think it can but not without some creative attention to the title and description. However, more often than not, I don’t think most stories that hit the home page of social news sites like Digg, Reddit or del.icio.us would be so viral if they were promoted in the absence of social news communities.

In a way, it’s sort of like creating content and linking with the perspective that search engines don’t exist so as to focus on value for the user. Link bait focuses on content that becomes viral based on it’s usefulness and often becomes a long term resource and source of traffic. Digg bait is short term and emphasizes clever hype, knowing that many readers will not actually read the content. Somehow combining both will yield the best short and long term results for both users and as a marketing tactic.

So what do you think? Is there a difference between link bait and Digg bait?

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Maybe it hasn’t gotten quite that bad, but there’s an awful lot of cynicism surrounding the idea of link bait now and I have to ask why that is.

Take this thread at the Cre8site forums, which asks Is Link-bait Ruining The Web?, which actually raises a lot of valid points about how content is being sensationalized and built with a temporary goal in mind in this the era of link baiting. A slightly older thread that turned a cynical eye toward link bait is this one from Small Business Brief that wonders When Are SEO Firms Going To Start Offering Link Baiting Services?.

At it’s core I still think link bait is about creating quality content that people want to link to naturally. However turning good content into link bait requires a viral component in which you gather your network and bait them into linking to your content. If your network is strong enough you can get a quick influx of authoritative links that will bring a lot of eyes and hopefully a lot more links at your content. In theory if your content isn’t good then you won’t get links. Unfortunately that’s not always the case.

The Argument Against Link Bait

There have always been ways to get people to do what you want them to do. Isn’t that to a degree what marketing and optimizing your website is all about. You add calls to action to induce someone to click to your order form. You choose colors to evoke an emotional response. You write copy convincing your visitors it’s you they absolutely need to buy from. With link bait you might use top 10 lists or speak out against a popular person or thought to gain links or sensationalize your page titles for some quick links. The content might then become something less likely to be of value beyond the initial push to get links into the page. And it’s this lessening of quality that is leading to the roar against link bait in general.

Link bait also suffers from an unfortunate name that calls to mind bait and switch’ and has you looking at your visitors as fish to be hooked on a line. The name, extremely honest in a sense, does bring with it some negative connotations. It’s unfortunate since I think the tactic itself is perfectly fine and even something that will in time improve quality on the web.

I agree it’s leading to it’s fair share of garbage at the moment, but that’s no different than what happens with just about everything that involves money in some way. And links are the currency of the web. Someone creates something of quality that proves to be useful to a large group of people and profits in some way. Others seeing this, attempt to copy the success and little by little erode the quality of what was once a very good idea. That’s the current situation with link bait. Many SEOs and bloggers are doing anything they can in an effort to get dugg and in the process ignoring the quality that originally made link bait so successful.

Link Bait’s Evolutionary Path

Like most things the cream will eventually rise to the top. As more and more webmasters create temporary garbage in order to bring in links other webmasters will get tired of linking to it. It will stop standing out and in effect cease to be link worthy. Those that are still willing to put in the work to create something of quality and deserving of being linked to will need to work harder to create better and more useful tools and write more creative and original articles in order to stand out in all the noise. The market for link bait is a self correcting market that will in time work to improve the overall quality of the web.

There’s the evolution.

Create good content. Good content get many links. Good. See good content get good links. Hmm? Me need create something get link for me. My content not so good, but still get links. Crap content now get links. Creative need to get better to get links. Good content gets better. Now gets links again. Crap content needs to be less crappy to get links now. Need to work harder to get more links. Good content needs to get even better than before if want links. Hmm? Crap content needs to be even less crappy than before to get links again.

Now that I’ve offended Geico cavemen everywhere I hope you get the point. We’re at a stage now where instead of being creative and producing quality some SEOs are applying the tactics within link baiting to hype what would otherwise be unlinkworthy. But this will do two things. It will lead to a lot of link bait noise that will stop pulling in the links it once was, because of how loud the noise will get. It will also lead the truly creative to come up with better ideas to become a signal again in all that noise. As the signal stands out the noise will gravitate toward it and once again try to emulate it. It will improve itself out of necessity and become even just a little bit more like the signal drawing the traffic. And just like before it will begin to drown out the signal leading to an even stronger signal developing in order to be heard. The cream rises and then draws everything to itself only to rise again and again.

Bait Me All You Want As Long As You Give Me Something I Want To Link To

One of the arguments I’ve seen often against link bait is that because your content is created in order to gain links that it’s dishonest. Because you’re motivated by selfish concerns first it somehow makes the the content less valuable and something to be held in contempt. I always find this argument somewhat ridiculous. If someone can write an article or blog post that is informative and entertaining and teaches me something in the process, then what do I care why that article was written. I’ve read many good books that I’m sure came into existence so someone could make a buck.

If I find a tool online that helps me identify the competion and helps me understand better what I need to do to compete with them it doesn’t matter to me if the person who created that tool was motivated more by the hope that I would link to the page than to help me do my job. From my perspective someone created something I found helpful and I’m happy. The person who developed the tool should dervive some benefit from it. About the only way I might even be slightly annoyed is for not having thought of it first.

The term link baiting is new, but it’s been going on for awhile. When Aaron Wall first started releasing search engine optimization tools I don’t believe it was called link bait, but that’s exactly what those tools were and are. They just baited me and will many more times. The tools are good. They’re useful and make my job easier and Aaron even gives them all away. I have no idea what he was thinking when he decided to add them to his site, but I’m sure in part he was hoping people would link to them and increase the links pointing at the site. Maybe I’m wrong and the term predates the tools, but again I really don’t care. Those tools make my life easier and I’ll be happy to continue to link to them. They helped me and I’m happy to point you to them, because I think they’ll help you as well.

Quadzilla at SEO Black Hat is probably someone who might be seen as creating sensationalized posts in an effort to bait links. Of course given the black hat theme of the site and blog should it be any different? Some might say his recent post on the 250 Best Movies Made in the Last 30 Years is exactly why they think link bait is a bad idea. But did you read the follow up to that post, 3 Link Bait Lessons From a Master Baiter? The follow up post is one of the more informative posts about how to create link bait that I’ve seen. Yes it does offer advice that might at first glance seem to be about artificially turning an ordinary post into link bait, but look again. It’s filled with good and sound advice on marketing and copy writing. Lesson 1 tells you to focus on the reader and not the author. Every book I’ve ever read about copywriting has offered the same advice. It’s good advice. Will people still be reading that post six months from now? I can’t say. But assuming he’s still writing they’ll be reading Quadzilla. He’s one of the better writers online and one of the few who is both entertaining and informative at the same time. Maybe some of the posts will be temporary, but they are still informative and entertaining and I will link to them, because I think others will find them informative and entertaining too.

Perhaps the king of link baiting is Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz. I don’t think he even needs to try to create something worth linking to. Rand writes some of the most informative posts I’ve ever seen. He somehow finds a way to sum up everything I wanted to know in a single post and it seems after I’ve read one I really understand what a subject is all about. Have a look through the site and start counting the number of pages you want to link to. And again it makes no difference to me if Rand created that content to help me or get me to link to it. It does both so it’s a win-win for both of us.

Will every idea that someone develops as link bait be valuable? No. Neither will every idea that is developed solely to help mankind. And no matter where you look people will be trying to game anything they think can work in their favor. How long after you had your first email account did you get your first spam. Did you stop using email because of it? Not every link bait is going to be quality content. Some never has any intention of being quality and some simply just won’t make it. But that doesn’t mean link bait in itself is a bad thing. And as I said above I believe its evolutionary progress will lead to more quality online and not less. It will lead more SEOs and webmasters to raise the bar, which ultimately has the effect of dragging the rest of us up with it to try to reach that bar. The best of today tends to be the ordinary of tomorrow. And when today’s best becomes ordinary a new best is created tomorrow.

Not long ago many SEOs began to rally around the idea of content is king.’ Others gathered around the idea that it was all about links. While in truth both sides have always agreed that both were important. Well link bait merges both ideas. It may be misused and abused by some, but the idea is to create content that is of such a high degree of quality that it will attract links naturally. The best link bait will bring links into a site long after the buzz about it is gone. It will bring links because it is worth link to. And if given a chance to follow its natural evolution link bait will ultimately improve the overall quality of the web.

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Steven Bradley is a web designer and search engine optimization
specialist. Known to many in the webmaster/seo community by the username
vangogh, he is the author of TheVanBlog, which focuses on how to build
and optimize websites and market them online.

Erik Vossman of BlogtownPress contacted me today to inform me of a contest they were running to promote the launch of the BlogtownPress blogging network.

Erik pointed me to the Link to a Coconut’ contest. Here’s the deal: Erik has picked 3 random posts from the blogs in the BlogtownPress network. To enter, you may post links to any posts within the network, up to a maximum of 3 links per post of your own. When the contest finishes, Eric will pick a random trackback from each of the three BlogtownPress network posts to win.

The prizes for the contest are what make the contest unique – each winner recieves a coconut straight from Hawaii, where the BlogtownPress headquarters are located. The coconut will be shipped to the winners free of charge. Additionally, the winners will each recieve a link on Erik’s Blog.

This is a piece of unique linkbait – each entry in the contest will net 3 links to the network. This will build up a large number of links to the new blogs in relatively short order. Of course, the only way to make something like this really succeed is if the prizes are unique, and somewhat valuable. The link is not the motivation here – it’s all about the coconut. Who wouldn’t want their own custom coconut shipped to them from Hawaii?

Well, I guess I will play along on this one – I want that coconut. So, my three picks are:

1. Announcing Blogtown Press from Erik Vossman’s personal blog

2. 3 Kinds of Successful Bloggers from Blogging on Empty

3. An Inconvenient Truth from Fueling the World

So there you go – check out the contest yourself!

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Did you like this article? Keep up with Brian’s expert search optimization tips and tricks at http://www.caydel.com

Meet link bait

Link bait was termed as content, aimed to get the most number of links from visitors. As it is specifically aimed for gaining links, it is compared to a bait. Hence, link bait.

Generally, certain link baits are more effective then others. Link bait examples may be:

• useful tools to complement your product/services
• amusing videos, related to your topic
• certain types of content, aimed to generate lots of linkage
• controversial blog posts/articles
• flames on some famous bloggers/industry experts

Of course, some useful and informative content may be link baity, but the whole difference between the link bait and quality content is that link bait is created to get links, while quality content is created to provide value to the people.

Why link bait and content are different?

As said before, link bait is different from content in that it is created solely for the purpose of getting links. Sometimes, the usefulness of the link bait may be disregarded to match certain interests and ignite emotions of certain easy-linking demographics.

Another aspect of link bait is the social aspect of it. Some judge the success of link bait by getting dugg at Digg.com and getting to the homepage. An article on the Digg homepage can get thousands of visitors per day and it is a juicy bite that some marketers lust for.

I’d also note that one of the differences is that link bait content gets a large number of quick links from the start and then the incoming links stream dries out, while quality content continues to get links from more reputable sources for the length of its digital life.

However, the main difference is how the person can use and benefit from the link bait. Though a free tool is useful, some of the link bait types (such as videos) may not be used to learn something new on how to make one’s life better.

Some may argue whether link bait is good for the Web. The idea is that link bait lowers the quality of content on the Web, pollutes the SERPs and makes it harder to find useful information. However, it may be assumed that 80% of everything is junk and that link bait is another form of low quality content.

Quality content

Quality content, in turn, is created to provide value to the people:

• to learn something new and useful on the topic
• to know how to choose and use the product
• to learn how the product is compared to others
• to find other useful resources of information
• to know other industry experts in the industry, etc

Mostly, quality content is designed for people to benefit from it. It is not designed just to get links, it is created to be something of use. Mostly, quality content is timeless, as it is truly focused on the universal aspects of the topic.

However, certain quality content may be temporary – comments on news, some new edge in the industry, etc.

In short, it is the intent that counts: doing it for the people or for links.

The benefits of providing truly quality content is that it will help you build a stronger brand and trust, increase conversions and also deliver long-term benefits of reputation, traffic and links. While quality content gets links as well, it is a good bonus for delivering value, not the goal of creating it.

Conclusion

While you may find a certain balance between providing value and aiming to get links with your content, it should be beneficial to focus on true quality. This will allow you to make the best effort for reputation, trust and credibility as well as traffic and incoming natural links.

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Related Posts

Social bookmarking isn’t everything or why you don’t need Digg
What exactly to write about: content ideas example

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Yuri Filimonov is a freelance website optimization and usability consultant, who writes about improving websites to gain more visitors,
customers and profit at his blog, http://www.ImproveTheWeb.com.

That means the craft is limited to creativity and flare and is not perhaps quantifiable, or even teachable. But there are those with talent for it, the savior-faire-je-ne-sais quoi lotharios (sorry for the Frenchand the Italian, for that matter), who just seem to know what they’re doing.

SEOBook’s Aaron Wall has made a reputation for himself in the world of link building and says he “could create a link bait tomorrow and virtually guarantee it gets listed on Digg’s homepage.”

Of course he’s not talking quantity of links here so much. Wall is talking quality of links, which is excellent as far as Google goes, as the Digg Effect crashes your servers and the traffic pours in from just one place – or a small smattering of places like Reddit, Digg, Netscape, Newsvine, Del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia, Furl, Techmeme or Blognicient.

Wall admits these sites are rather nerd-specific (though he should check out OkCupid’s nerd, geek, or dork test to be sure of that), but they are high-traffic sites that need content every day. “You can’t please everyone,” writes Wall, “but if you get a half dozen organic links a day it doesn’t take long to start building up some serious authority.”

He rightly points out in the beginning of his blog post that a sales pitch is useless. Link bait content needs to compelling on its own, without the cheesy OxyClean guy yelling at people.

“My theory is that every industry (and every brand worth creating or selling) has related stories that people would be interested in sharing. If people do not talk about you then you probably do not have much of a brand.”

Okay, so we still haven’t said how to do it. That’s because it’s hard, unless you’re a creative type. Remember my overly-dramatic lady-killer intro? But Wall does give examples. My personal favorite is “What is in a McDonalds French Fry that you wouldn’t find in a real potato?”

Hmmm. Now that is something we’d absolutely have to find out and share with other Netizens concerned with the McDonaldization of our digestive system.

Professional Internet writer Brian Clark seems fond of lists – 101 Ways to, 25 Tips for, 8 Reasons Why – et cetera. There’s nothing the Internet loves more than nice, straightforward, quick to read lists.

1. Make a list
2. Blog it
3. Submit to Digg and Del.icio.us
4. Wake up and smell the server burn
5. Check to see your ranking improve

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What Site Characteristics Improve Linkability?

Doug Caverly diligently relays his notes from the Link Bait and Viral Search Success session at SES 2006 in San Jose.

Good link bait is not really something that can be taught, but that doesn’t keep online marketers from trying to stuff the concepts into neat little boxes for analysis.

SearchEngineWatch’s Danny Sullivan brings in heavy hitters Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz.org, Jennifer Laycock of Search Engine Guide, and Cameron Olthuis of Advantage Consulting Services to help spread the gospel of viral marketing.

Fishkin begins the presentation with a baker’s dozen of link bait steps (the entirety of which will be provided at the bottom of this article). As discussed before, Fishkin emphasizes the power of social networks, like Digg.com, Del.icio.us, and Slashdot, to overload your servers if just the right content tickles (or enrages) their respective fancies. Fishkin’s overall message is akin to the Boy Scout motto: be prepared. Research, target, shoot, and wait.

Part of that social targeting may (and probably should) include setting up a blog. That doesn’t mean just throwing it out there into the nebulous that is Blogspot, however. Fishkin advises to host the blog on your site instead.

When brainstorming about how to set up a viral campaign, he told the crowd to look at examples of “brilliant” ideas. Last year’s round-and-round of the notorious GPS-enabled panties, which fooled even the Associated Press, comes to mind, as does the campaign’s competitor CryingWhileEating.com.

Cameron Olthuis follows with a bit of reputation and buzz monitoring advice, as viral doesn’t necessarily mean completely uncontrolled. Keep an eye on your brand through the blog search engines. Employ conversation tracking and message boards to track buzz about your campaign. He recommends Yahoo! Site Explorer, Google Trends, and Opinmind.

Whether what people are saying is good or bad, says Olthuis, “it’s important to join the conversation.”

Olthuis mentions the recent Mentos/Diet Coke ghettofied volcano demonstrations that made it from the Web to the Today Show and David Letterman. While Mentos, perhaps a bit hipper company, understood that the viral component of the event was a boon for the brand, Coca-Cola didn’t like it one bit.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s good, bad, ugly, whatever,” said Olthuis. “You’ve got to embrace [the buzz].

Laycock joins the conversation, warning that just “any [link bait or viral marketing] idea isn’t going to do. It really has to be something worth talking about.” It’s also important to remember that it isn’t always about sales. It’s about brand awareness.

Whether or not Burger King’s “Subservient Chicken,” a webcam broadcast of a guy in a chicken suit and lingerie that responds to audience commands, sold more chicken is irrelevant, says Laycock. The site received hundreds of millions of visits.

A viral campaign can backfire. Depending on the nature of your business, the lack of brand control can come back to haunt you. General Motors knows from experience that giving free range to visitors to create online video ads for SUVs was a bad idea. Anti-SUV activists had a field day creating environmental promos.

The success of a viral campaign, says Laycock, is always in the hands of the consumer. Because of that, giving away products and services can be a good way to get started.

“Humor is probably the easiest way to get something to spread,” she said.

Fishkin interjects to poop the party. “Humor can backfire,” he said, “and so can controversy. I would stick to content if you’re worried about safety.”

So if you’ve made it this far, you may ask, “is there a right way to virally market?” Well, no. And yes. Well, there’s definitely a wrong way anyway. Just to cover our bases, here’s Fishkin’s Guide to Link Baiting:

Step 1: Researching a Sector’s Link-Worthiness

Step 2: Discovery of Big’ Players in Your Field — do a search at Technorati with your keywords.

Step 3: Targeting YDDS (Yahoo!, Digg, Del.icio.us/Popular, Slashdot

Step 4: Targeting Offline Media

Step 5: Selecting a Content Focus

Step 6: Melding Branding & Viral Elements

Step 7: Targeting Keywords/Search Traffic

Step 8: Look at Examples of Brilliants Ideas’

Step 9: The Value of a Web 2.0′ Look & Feel – “The look and feel oftentimes is critical.”

Step 10: Elements that Encourage Linking

Step 11: Pre-Launch Public Relations

Step 12: Managing Launch Traffic – “Be careful not to be suckered into a debate you don’t really need to be part of.”

Step 13: Continuing to Get Value from Linkbait -”Update it with timely information.”

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