Link Baiting

New Script Builds Links For SEOs As They Sleep

By now, many advanced SEOs will have heard about Tynt, a script that lets websites with good content build links automatically. A new competitor to Tynt has just been created, and it’s self-hosted. I’m getting ahead of myself though… For those who don’t know what Tynt is, let me quote from Tynt’s site.

“Our patent pending Tynt Insight technology tracks what’s being copied off your site and automatically adds a link back to your content with every paste.”

 

I didn’t create that link – Tynt did. Whenever you copy off Tynt’s site, and paste the resulting content elsewhere, that new content has a link added to it. So if your content is worth quoting, you get links.

I just got an email from Brett Barros, a student at MIT, who’s coded up a self-hosted competitor to Tynt. When he told me about his Link Building Pro, I wasn’t too impressed, since I knew about Tynt. But there are some pretty important differences. As Brett puts it:

“There are a few key differences from Tynt.

1. Most importantly for SEO, my script makes use of the meta keyword [tag] for the link text. [It pulls one of the page’s keywords from the meta keywords tag and uses it as anchor text.]

2. Second most importantly for SEO, it automatically adds focused links into the text from elsewhere on the page. Thus, the paragraph itself is embedded with *added* links.

3. It is 40% smaller in file size. You can also merge the javascript into other javascript files, reducing the total files the user needs to load (speed optimization will be important with the Google Caffeine update).

4. If Tynt’s servers go down, and you use Tynt,  your site will have problems. With my script, you host it yourself [so there’s no worries about other people’s server reliability].

5. You can specify areas of the page where the script won’t activate (like in code blocks).”

Also, while I can’t seem to find Tynt’s pricing on their site, Brett’s offering his tool as a free download. How can you quibble with free?

Creative Linkbait from a BunkBed website

Marketers take note:

Here is a nice little piece of linkbait from a company which sells bunkbeds. Now how the hell do you generate a ton of links into a site which sells bunk beds, it’s hardly the most exciting of industries now is it?

The way in which to do it is to think outside the box and come up with something particularly wacky which the likes of Digg and Reddit are gonna love, perhaps you could even make a Facebook application out of it to? I once spoke to a commercials director who said he wished the internet would take more note of methods used by TV advertising, who often have to come up with funky new ideas to catch a viewers eye. Well it seems the marketers of this site took note.

Well thats what the guys over at BunkBeds.net have done, and they have done it pretty well to say that. The little game that they came up with is ‘How long could you survive chained to a BunkBed with a Velociraptor?‘ The title pretty much sums up exactly what the game is about. You get asked a few questions such as ‘Do you wrestle’, ‘Would you kick the Raptor in the balls’ etc and when you have done you get a time which tells you how long you would survive. They could of changed Velociraptor with anything, but this works so well because its quite ‘out there’.

The idea is simple, the execution is simple, but the results speak for themselves. If we look at Yahoo site explorer then we can see that the page alone has generated 531 inlinks. Currently it is gaining momentum on Reddit and is being posted in forums and imageboards.

So next time your glass blowing, or desk manufacturing client asks how you can generate some links into the site, then think of something wacky like this and give it a shot. You could probably get a page like that up in about 3 hours tops.

I don’t think they have a Facebook application yet, but its something which could be converted pretty quickly and generate even more of a buzz, if anyone from BunkBeds.net reads this and wants the Facebook application creating, just give me a shout 🙂

Diesel thanks the Internet for new advert

By now you have probably seen the Diesel XXX advert (it’s a SFW porn film) which has been front pages on both Reddit and Digg, you’ll have probably even seen it arrive in your inbox. What you probably didn’t know is that Diesel pretty much ripped the idea from an internet thread on Something Awful. I can’t link to the actual thread because it has been archived and you need upgraded memebership to view it.

Now as i said, Diesel ripped the idea from the thread and made a pretty cool movie from it, but here is the cool part. Instead of just taking all the credit, Diesel actually contacted Something Awful and basically said ‘Hey thanks for the ideas’ on top of that they are paying for each forum member who contributed to have their account upgraded!

I think its pretty cool when a big company like that takes the time to thank the people for their ideas, and it also goes to show the power that internet communities still have. We have all seen meme’s such as LolCats and Fail come from the likes of 4Chan, so it’s worth remembering that a lot of internet marketers can generate good idea’s based off user content. There are a ton of goldmines out there, you just need to be creative to turn it into a way which will work for you or your clients… just remember to thank the people who gave you those ideas or you might go the way of Sarah Palin and get your email hacked 🙂

Very clever porn link building and social media explotation

The porn industry has always been pretty clever when it comes to creating links and marketing their sites. Obviously it is such a competitive vertical that they are always trying to get one up on each other (No pun intended). Unlike the rest of the SEO world that can game sites like digg.com and reddit.com it is very hard for the porn industry to infiltrate the masses so when they do it is in a very clever way.John Bukkake

Let me introduce to you Professor John Bukkake, what a strange name you ask. Well for anyone who knows what joys Bukkake is all about you will find it even stranger that he is a facial dermatologist at the University of Calcutta. Finding this a little hard to believe i decided to click through the links of the site to eventually find myself transported to an actual Bukkake movie download site.

You see, what those clever porn seo’s have done is to create a page which is so unbelievable that it is funny, the masses over at digg and reddit can’t beleive that something so funny would exist so they digg/vote it up without looking over any of the external links on the site. This generates a great buzz, and some seriously good links in to the John Bukkake page which then links out to the porn sites.

I wouldn’t be suprised if they 301 the domain to the porn site after a couple of days either.

So in closing this is a by the book method of gaming social network sites, you need to be extremely creative but it will pay off.

Edited to add:
I have seen this kind of idea before on a lawyer site. Basically they had the lawyer in question pull a stupid face for his profile picture on his site. After the crowds started linking at such a silly picture being shown on a very professional site they switched it back to his normal profile pic. They generated a ton of back links from authority sites such as digg’s front page.

Edit 2:
Looks like they are cloaking the J Bukkake page so that if your not a human then you 301 straight through to the actual err proper content.