Link Bait Backfire
I’m not going to link to it. There’s a childish “controversy” going on in the SEO/Blog community, which I suspect is yet more link baiting. Do your own digging, but I can assure you, it’s not worth your time.
The problem I find with these “look-at-me” link bait schemes is this - the credibility of the participants drops. It’s all getting a bit tired.
Are the writers writing about something that might interest me, or help me, or inform me? Or are they writing purely to attract links? I guess they might try and argue “both”. I’d say few people can do both well, and it shows.
It’s already backfiring on these guys. If they care that little about the people who read their stuff, they don’t deserve to have people reading their stuff.
December 14th, 2006 at 10:20 am
[...] I have been observing and thinking a lot about link baiting and how it can negatively influence a website. Today Peter Da Vanzo writes about a link bait backfire but doesn’t exactly say which site is suffering from it. I know exaclty who Peter is talking about but will not get involved because I would surely become a lightning rod. [...]
December 14th, 2006 at 11:17 am
Peter, you might be right about people losing credibility over the “look at me” stuff. So far it seems the reaction for me was mostly a positive, but I can see it being shunned by some. But I don’t do client work, my career is in the private sector, so my motivation is different than most others in the SEO / SEM world.
I can assure you this- the so called “controversy” is not bait, and I respect the people in the SEO / SEM community immensely. I’m just a goofball trying to have fun and make a name for myself. I’m hoping that this little fiasco dies out quickly and the least amount of damage is incurred to all parties involved or who observed.
December 14th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
[...] To the members of SEO / SEM community who don’t appreciate linkstunting, offline linkbaiting, buzz linking, buzz marketing stunts or whatever you want to call it: I apologize to you as well. I never intended to disrespect anyone and I certainly hope nobody takes any of my campaigns or stunts that way. [...]
December 14th, 2006 at 5:27 pm
I think people are taking the whole link bait concept too far and are forgetting the whole idea of supplying us readers the information we “like” & “want” to read.
Only in the past week I removed to very well known blogs from my RSS feed because their attempts at link baiting just seems to get worse by the day. I feel very let down by one of them as he was the one that taught me the basics of what I know today but recently his posts have taken a huge nose dive into horse dung.
Oh and Peter good work on this blog. Long time reader, first time poster.
December 14th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
Don’t mind me, Chris. Just my personal view of what is now a long established, widespread trend
You can forgive us old search hacks for getting a little jaded, at times. I subscribed to your blog.
Gavin - hey, thanks for commenting! And your kind words. I’ve added your blog to my daily reading list.
I agree with you. I think link baiting when combined with reader value is fine, but there appears to be a growing trend where writers appear to forget about the latter and place too much emphasis on the former.
Which leads to a credibility problem, IMHO.