Link Bait Lessons from SEOmoz
A couple of weeks ago, Derek wrote a fantastic post here about meaningful content. He’s right. Mediocre content just doesn’t cut it anymore. You’ll definitely need meaningful content to succeed. However, it’s not the whole picture. You’ll also need a way to promote it – get it linked to, ‘liked’, tweeted, +1’d and however else you’d like it shared. There’s an awful lot of great content online that never gets found. The truth is, if no one sees your content, to all intents and purposes it doesn’t really exist. So how do you mitigate against that?
Collaborate to create more meaningful content.
It allows you to create stronger content than you could alone… Two heads are better than one. Ten heads are better than two. By having people collaborate with you to create content, you create something that is more balanced, represents more than one point of view, and has more data and depth.
You get assistance with the content creation… You’re no longer alone. The sole weight of creating the content isn’t just on your shoulders. Remember – you’re collaborating, not delegating, so you’ll still need to take the lion’s share of the work.
You get more data… Depending on what you’re collaborating on, exactly what this ‘data’ looks like might vary – it might be hard stats, it might be survey data, it might be opinion – but whatever it is, there will definitely be more of it. Now in and of itself ‘more data’ isn’t necessarily ‘more valuable’ – but in certain situations it just might be.
You’ll build stronger relationships… I’ve long been a proponent of building relationships, not links. Websites don’t link to websites, people link to people. The act of collaboration (if you do it right) will allow you to build and cement a real relationship.
Your collaborators are engaged with the content, so they’ll help you to promote it… You’re not alone for the promotion of your content either. Your collaborators will share your content and help you to promote it.
Why Collaboration is so Powerful
What motivates people link to (and share) content? It’s about the hook.
The SEOmoz Ranking Factors are a great example of collaborative content. People are genuinely flattered to be asked to contribute. Many display badges on their blogs and sites highlighting their participation. They also help to promote it.
And these people are SEOs! They are wise to these sorts of tactics, surely? So, why do they do it?
They are proud to be a part of it. It’s about ego. There is any number of self-proclaimed ‘experts’, ‘gurus’, and ‘thought-leaders’ out there.
I am suspicious of them. Doubtlessly you are too.
Generally speaking, people (or at least the kind of people you want to associate with, as opposed to the people you want to avoid like the plague) don’t want proclaim themselves as ‘experts’ in their field. Instead they’d rather let their work speak for itself. Collaborative projects allow them to demonstrate their expertise rather than make empty claims.
The end game in contributing to the Ranking Factors acts is social proof of these SEO’s expert statuses. Plus of course it’s great content. It’s valuable precisely because it’s collaborative. It doesn’t represent the thoughts of just one expert; it contains contributions from many well-respected experts.
The SEOmoz Ranking Factors is the progeny of the ego hook and the resource hook. And this is no one night stand. The ego hook and the resource hook are in a committed relationship. It’s a linkbait tactic I really like, and it can be relatively easy to implement elsewhere too.
Ideas for Collaborations
Ranking Factors = Business Trends Collaborative content in the SEOmoz Ranking Factors vein works particularly well for businesses that sell to other businesses (B2B).
For example, if you’re in B2B, asking your customers to collaborate on a business trends document might work quite well. It pays to go broad with this sort of thing – e.g. just because you offer IT support to small businesses doesn’t mean you have to create a questionnaire on small business IT support requirements. Frankly that sounds pretty boring to me.
Obviously you might want to include a section on IT, but I’d also suggest asking about marketing, finance, procurement, recruitment – every aspect of running a small business. A combination of easily graph-able ‘check a box’ questions plus requests for free-form written answers should provide some great data to play with.
Create Guides… Or better yet – Run Events
Got contacts with non-competing businesses? Collaborate with them to create a series of guides. Or run an event.
Competitions / Awards
Really not sure about collaborating on content? Not quite ready to run an event? How about a competition or awards? Worried you don’t have the chops to judge it? Collaborate with others who do. Encourage those who are judging to promote the competition AND encourage those who enter / are nominated to promote to their audiences.
How do you persuade people to collaborate? You might be surprised just how willing people are to collaborate – particularly if what they are collaborating on looks as though it’s going to be fantastic. If I was looking for collaborators, I’d probably start out with my strongest personal contacts. Once I had a handful of them on board, I then might widen the net somewhat. When reaching out:
- Be clear and concise about what you’d like people to collaborate on
- Explain why you feel they are so well placed to collaborate (a little flattery is fine, but don’t go overboard – be sincere)
- Explain what’s in it for them
- Give an indication of how much time whatever it is you’d like them to do is likely to take
- Highlight who else is already on board
Worst Case Scenario So you’ve worked really hard. You persuaded people to collaborate with you. You have some awesome, meaningful content for your site. However, only a few of your collaborators link and promote.
But the fat lady’s not singing yet. You still have some amazing content, right? Well then you haven’t lost. Promote it:
- Create press releases
- Create data visualisation / embeddable content
- Call / tweet / email those you think will be interested in it and let them know about what you’ve created
- Use it to guest post on other sites
Plus, you’ve still got those relationships – hopefully there will be other ways you can collaborate again in the future.
The internet’s choking with mediocrity and I’d really rather you didn’t add to it. Do something awesome instead. :)
Excellent post. The old days of publishing average content are over. Internet users are seeking meaningful information that will assist or educate them. It’s important that your blog or website offers content sharing capabilities to spread the wealth of knowledge on the web.
Great information!