I’ve been wanting to have a open conversation for the last couple of weeks and have finally found some time to sit down and think of a seed I could plant into your minds to see what great ideas we can all come up with.
As some of you know, the biggest trend in Search Engine Optimization is the building of backlinks to your website with specific anchor texts. We have seen a blogger like John Chow basically manipulate the system to rank No. 1 for the term “Make Money Online” with all his great (and evil) link bait schemes - Review Me, Wii Giveaway & Zune Giveaway (which is currently becoming virtual slut of the internet with Ms. Danielle’s Zune Giveaway on her blog site). Even I’ve done my fair share of link baiting schemes with a couple of link trains, which have helped me crack the first page of Google for my own friggin’ name (but not number one just yet) and rank for some decent keywords in other search engines!
We’ve all seen these link bait systems replicated in one way or other and to be honest, it’s starting to get old. I’m still getting emails that ask me to participate in new link trains - Alexa Link Train, Do Follow Link Trains, Agloco Link Trains, etc! I know all of John’s link bait campaigns have been replicated to death.
So basically, I wanted to open up this post to all my readers - new and old - to see what kind of new ideas you can think of that can help you generate links to your site. Purchasing links doesn’t count since that’s way too easy. Ideas are like Avalanches - sometimes they need a little snowflake in the right place to get them going!
Since I don’t have the Do Follow links enabled in my comments section, I will promise to link you in a post if you write something worthy of reading. No “uh huhs, I agree, that’s such a great point” fluff comments will count, so nice try ;)!
To start off . . . here’s my idea: Run a Link Telethon where you will donate 1 day of our time to your local homeless shelter for every 20 links you receive.
So, what do you think about that idea? Do you have another idea you would like to bounce off us? This isn’t called a Brainstorm for nothing!
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I think you have to be careful when trading links for charity… I got really annoyed when I saw someone offering $1 to “charity” for every keyworded backlink he got… IMO you should give the charity at least the market rate for the links…
In this case one days work is a fair price to pay for 20 links IMO.
According to Google, backlinks count as votes, so how about some way of getting people to vote for something with backlinks? I remember OneMillionSubscribers.com asking people to donate money for charity if John shaved his head. He still hasn’t shaved his hair off so I guess the plan failed, but bloggers could propose to do something if they get enough votes/backlinks. If it’s really silly like pose naked for a photo in a crowded place, it could go viral!
You can get a lot of value out of making people feel important. ZenHabits did this with their list of 50 productivity blogs. They linked to a bunch of people and in turn a bunch of people linked back. Most people were thrilled that they had made the list and wanted to show off their status to their readers.
You could have a milk drinking contest. For every link you get, you’ll drink an 8oz glass of milk in front of a camera. After a few links, you’ll be throwing up all over yourself.
Or you can do stupid human tricks, like they do on Jack@ss. Suppose to break something or jump onto something for every link.
Or you could tattoo something for every link you get. This one, I wouldn’t do.
I’ll do it… but I’m taking it down a notch. For every link, I’ll do a shot glass of milk in front of a camera. Get about a hundred and I’m throwing up over myself.
I’m sure lots of people would love to see it.
I’ve thought about donating a big prize to big sites like John Chow or DoshDosh on the condition that they tell their participants to link me as well! Something like what 1234pens did with the Wii competition?