WHAT DOES A LINK LOOK LIKE? WHAT CONSTITUTES A LINK?

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2 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 2 LINK POPULARITY Link Popularity is without doubt the most important factor when it comes to optimising your web site and particularly with Google. As mentioned previously the On Page Factors are important but Link Popularity is essential if you are going to achieve first page rankings for any reasonable keywords or phrases. Whilst at University the creators of Google (Brin & Page) decided to identify a way of better understanding how web sites interact and link together. Once they established a better way of understanding links and back links they wanted to create a way of valuing links in order to deliver better search results to users. In order to get your work (i.e. a thesis or paper) published at University you need to get peer reviews and in order to get your work published in the best Journals you need to get expert peer reviews. Brin and page decided to utilise this concept when it came to judging different links and so they attached different values to links that come into your web site. WHAT CONSTITUTES A LINK? If another web site links to your web site then Google see it as a vote (if the third party web site didn t like your web site then they wouldn t link to you!). If you sell cars and and a wedding dress company link to you then it is a vote of confidence but they are not related to what you do or sell and therefore it isn t peer review. If however another car company or car insurance company link to you it is also a vote of confidence but this time they are relevant and therefore it counts as peer review. Now if another car company links to you and Google already rate this web site highly then you now have a vote of confidence from a related, valued web site or expert peer review. Each type of link has a value attached to it and the site that has the most inbound links ranks highest in Google s ranking. WHAT DOES A LINK LOOK LIKE? It is important that you understand exactly what a link looks like and what constitutes a quality link. A perfect link should be a hyper text link, it should contain the phrase you wish to be optimised for (anchor text), it should be in the body of the content and it should come from a trusted, relevant and highly valued web site. Link Building is exceptionally important and yet so many web site owners, web design companies and SEO companies get this wrong. There are lots of companies offering thousands of links at very little money however purchasing them would be a mistake. Google suggest that if they find a company purchasing links they will penalise the company involved and drop them down their rankings. Whilst this may well be true most companies that appear on the first page of Google for any meaningful phrase will have employed some kind of link building strategy. The main reason you shouldn t purchase cheap links is because they simply don t work. The internet is full of basic web sites and directories all of which have been built purely to pass links onto other companies. These sites tend to be poor quality, are not trusted by Google and offer little or no value whatsoever. Often you can automate the process of submitting your web site to these directories and you get a simple business listing and the opportunity to add your web site address, which is effectively the link back to your site (back link). It would be useful at this stage to look at some live examples of good and poor quality links. The phrase Car Insurance is incredibly competitive and the vast majority of the web sites that appear in the top 20 pages of Google have all had good on page optimisation. The difference between the web sites that appear on the first page of Google and those that appear on page twenty is the quantity and quality of their inbound links. Two such sites are Swinton Insurance who appear on page one and Sheila s Wheels who appear on or around page 15 (correct at time of print).

3 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 3 WE WILL FIRST OF ALL ANALYSE THE LINKS COMING INTO SHEILA S WHEELS: As you can see Sheila s Wheels has a listing on the Londoners.net business directory (highlighted in red) however there is little quality content on this page (just numerous business listings), it isn t relevant to Car Insurance and the site has little value as far as Google is concerned.

4 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 4 IF WE NOW LOOK AT A SAMPLE OF THE LINKS COMING INTO SHEILA S WHEELS WEB SITE: As you can see we have highlighted the londoners.net listing and the anchor text says Sheila s Wheels. For this to be an effective link as far as Google is concerned it would need to come from a trusted, relevant web site (i.e. something to do with Cars or Insurance) and the link would have to say Car Insurance (anchor text) not Sheila s Wheels). As you can see the vast majority of the web sites that link to Sheila s Wheels have the anchor text Sheila s Wheels and so all this is doing is improving their rankings for Sheila s Wheels. If all these links where from relevant web sites and carried the anchor text Car Insurance then they would improve their rankings for Car Insurance.

5 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 5 IF WE NOW LOOK AT SWINTON INSURANCE WHO APPEAR ON THE FIRST PAGE OF GOOGLE: This is a page from Classic Cars web site, a relevant and valued web site as far as Google is concerned. We have highlighted in red the link that goes to Swinton Insurance s web site and as you can clearly see the link says Car Insurance which is one of their primary phrases and not the name of their business i.e. Swinton Insurance.

6 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 6 IF WE NOW LOOK AT A SAMPLE OF THE BACK LINKS COMING INTO THE SWINTON INSURANCE WEB SITE: We have again highlighted in red the link from Classic Cars web site and the anchor text says Car Insurance. You can also clearly see that most of the links coming into Swinton Insurance s web site are from related web sites (Cars or Insurance) and the vast majority of them carry the anchor text Car Insurance which is why Swinton Insurance feature on the first page of Google and Sheila s Wheels appear much lower down the rankings. One final interesting quirk is that if you do a search on Google for Click Here Adobe appear at number one in their listings, this is because thousands of web sites carry the link Click Here to download Adobe.

7 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 7 IDENTIFYING YOUR OWN BACK LINKS IN ORDER TO START IMPROVING YOUR OWN LINKS YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO IDENTIFY YOUR BACK LINKS AND THE BACK LINKS OF YOUR COMPETITORS. Again there is always software you can purchase to do this job however there are other Free options, one of which is If you ignore the offers for cheap links (as explained earlier) and enter your web site address. As soon as you do this a pop up will appear

8 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 8 You need to ignore the pop up and shut it down using the blue close this thing link. You will then see the system start to calculate how many links are coming into your web site (this could take up to 3 minutes if you have a lot). Occasionally you will get an error message saying that you have reached your daily limit - if so ignore it and repeat the process again until you get your results (this could sometimes take 3-4 attempts if the site is busy). You will now be presented with the following screen: We have highlighted three areas worth noting, the first is the total number of back links (highlighted in red) which in this case is 65,276. The second is anchor text (highlighted in green) and as you can see many of them carry the primary phrase Car Insurance and all come from relevant web sites. The third is the Out Bound Links (OBL - highlighted in purple), this tells you the number of other links that are going out of the page that links to you. If classic cars web site links to Swinton Insurance and there is only one link coming out of the page then Swinton Insurance get all the value of that link, if however there are 20 links coming out of the classic car page to lots of other sites then Swinton will get a twentieth of the value. Therefore it is better to get a link from a quality, relevant, trusted web site that only links too you. This type of analysis is not only really useful for looking at your own web site it is essential for analysing the competition. If you look at who appears on the first page of Google for the keywords and phrases that you want and then analyse their back links you can identify web sites that are benefiting your competitors and approach them to give you a link as well. Other Back Link Tools include and Again you should ignore the multiple offers of very cheap links and concentrate on generating quality, relevant thematic links.

9 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 9 LINK BUILDING It is one thing to identify the back links to your web site and those of your competitors but you also need to know how and be able to create quality back links of your own. The next section will cover various ways of creating links that Google will value and improve your rankings within their listings. With some of the Link Building techniques you will not need any experience what so ever and creating links with the correct anchor text is fairly straight forward however others will require some basic html code.

10 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 1 0 CREATING A LINK WITH ANCHOR TEXT If you are required to create a back link using HTML code this simple method is all you need: <a href= > enteryourkeywordorphrasehere</a> So if we take previous examples i.e. Swinton Insurance who want to be at the top of the search engines for Car Insurance you would create a link as follows: <a href= >Car Insurance</a>

11 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 1 1 CREATING LINKS FROM ARTICLES One of the simplest and still best ways to create links is by writing articles. No one knows your business better than you and often you will be an expert in your chosen field (if not you will certainly employ experts). So you can start by writing articles about your business, products or services. The articles should be words and be relevant to the keyword or phrase you wish to improve your rankings for. If you are a used car dealer for example you could write articles about: Specific Cars - Make, Model, Performance etc Used Car Prices - How to find out the value of your car, best cars to retain value etc. Used Car Finance - How to get finance, best rates, information needed to get finance Car Servicing - Best way to look after specific cars, where to get the car serviced Most Popular Used Cars - This could be by demographics, area of the country etc Topical News - Write articles on the state of the industry or any current topics regarding to your industry Your article should have a title that matches your phrase, if the title would not be suitable then make a sub-header to match your phrase. Mention the phrase or keyword on two or three occasions during the article (no more than this otherwise it will look like you are keyword stuffing). One of the keywords in the body of the text needs to turned into a hypertext link (as described above or follow instructions on the site where you post the article). You do not have to be the best writer in the world in order to create a quality link however if you can write a really fantastic article then other people will bookmark it, make reference to it or indeed link to it, some may even post it on their web site or directory (it doesn t matter how many times your article is replicated the original author will always get the credit).

12 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 1 2 Once you have written your article you need to submit it to the internet using one of the many article submission sites like Articlesbase ( or Ezinearticles ( You will first of all need to register by clicking the link highlighted in red. Once registered (it s free) login. At the registration point you will be given the opportunity to create a profile, you can do a basic job to start with and then revisit later however it is always useful if given the chance to add your web site address into your profile.

13 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 1 3 Once logged in you will be presented with this menu screen and you need to select the Publish Article link highlighted in Red.

14 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 1 4 The publish article page is fairly obvious and pretty much self explanatory however once you have added the Article Body content you should think about creating your link. All you need to do with this site is highlight the word or phrase and the two link buttons come into play (highlighted in Red) - select the unbroken link and it will ask you to enter your web site address once done you will have created a hyper text link to your main web site with the correct anchor text as explained in previous sections. One quirk of this type of article submission site is that they want you to create your own link or links towards the bottom of the content however don t worry if you get it wrong the site will correct you. It is essential that the content you write is your own work and not copied from anywhere else on the internet as Google has a content match tool and if they identify you have copied the content from another site or existing article they will dismiss yours and give benefit to the original author. If you copy content from offline i.e something in your offline brochure, PR Material or older marketing material it will be fine as long as it hasn t already been published online. The reason Google value this type of article is that Articles Base and Ezinearticle use human editors to ensure that no rubbish is published and only quality content is produced. It is also worth remembering that not only is this a great way of creating quality links but if the article is good you will also generate targeted visitors to your web site who in turn will become sales opportunities.

15 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 1 5 Ezine Article - Again you will first need to register and set up a profile..

16 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 1 6 Once logged in you will be presented with the following screen. Once you add the main body of content again highlight the primary phrase and the two create a link buttons highlighted in red will come into play. Click the unbroken one and add your web site address. Also add your primary phrase and two or three more related phrases to the keyword section separated by a coma. Again ensure the title matches the phrase you wish to optimise your site for and include it again in the teaser copy. We have also highlighted in red the Turn WYSIWYG off button (What You See Is What You Get). If you turn this off you will need to use HTML code to create links, if you leave it as it is you will be able to create links as you did with article base. When creating links it is very important that you remember Google treats each of your pages individually so do not make the mistake of pointing all the links you create to your home page. Point links to internal pages that are relevant to the anchor text you have created. This means that if you are a car dealer and you sell various different makes of car and you have an internal page that sells Ford Car s write articles about Ford Cars and point any links you create to that page. If you also have a page that sells BMW Cars then write articles on BMW Cars and point any links you create to that page, whilst you might write articles about used cars in general and point any links you create to your home page..

17 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 1 7 CREATING LINKS FROM BLOGS There are three main ways of creating links form blogs, one is to create your own blog with your own content. The second is to find third party blogs relevant to what you do, post comments and create links from your posts, although many blog owners have what is called no follow code on their comments so that any links created do not count as far as Google is concerned. Many blogs do not carry no follow code so it is important to utilise these blogs. The third method is ask the blog owner for a text link on their site or pay for a text link on their site. CREATING YOUR OWN BLOG We are going to look at two methods of creating your own blog one being Blogger (owned by Google) and Wordpress possibly the most used blogging platform.

18 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 1 8 Once you set up your blog you will be given the option to select templates and then go to your dashboard. Most of what you do within Wordpress is pretty intuitive with many templates, widgets and plug ins. The dashboard gives an overview of activity (highlighted in red) showing your posts, pages and tags (or keywords). You can also see in this section you have the opportunity to change themes at any time. You can create new pages (highlighted in blue) and posts within those pages (highlighted in green) and from there you can create links within the content in each page or post (highlighted in black).

19 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 1 9 Once you create a post you will be presented with the following page: Once you add the content for a particular post you can create a link (highlighted in green) which contains a primary phrase or anchor text (highlighted in red). It is again important to remember that you can point different posts or pages at different pages or sections within your main site. The more work you put into the blog the more Google will value it and the more value it will pass on to your main web site as well as generating traffic in its own right.

20 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 2 0 First go to Google and click the link that says more (highlighted in green), then click the link that says even more (highlighted in red). you will then be presented with the following page:

21 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 2 1 The functionality of Blogger is very similar to Wordpress as you can see with an area to enter your title (highlighted in red) and a section for the main body of your text. In the title area you have a section that says Link and Add enclosure Link this allows you to make the Title of your post a link to your main web site. From here you will need to register and again create a basic profile (remember to use this to create a link to your main site). Once you have registered you will be able to select a theme as with wordpress and you will then be directed to your dashboard: In the body of your text again mention the primary phrase two or three times, as before highlight one of these and create a link by clicking on the link button (highlighted in green). Once you have written your post or article publish it to your blog by pressing the orange Publish Post button (highlighted in blue). In the dashboard area you can edit and update your profile (highlighted in red) and create new posts or edit existing posts (highlighted in green): Whichever blog you create you have the opportunity to enable or disable comments. It would be my suggestion to always enable comments as it creates user generated content, and gives you valuable feedback on products, services and your company. You can always delete any comments that you don t like and are derogatory in any way.

22 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 2 2 CREATING LINKS FROM SQUIDOO This is similar to creating and submitting articles on Articles Base however Squidoo ( com) also has their own unique following and give you the opportunity to generate additional income and easily jazz up any content you produce. Once you log in you will directed to your dashboard: As always you need to register first and set up your profile again creating a link back to your main web site. From here you can start to create articles or posts or as Squidoo call them Lenses - simply click on the orange Create a Lens (highlighted in red).

23 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 2 3 A sample article would look as follows: As you move further down the article you have more opportunities to create interesting designs: At the start of the article you can create a title using one of your primary keywords or phrases (highlighted in red) you can add images (highlighted in blue) and start to create thematic text links (creating anchor text) back to your main site (highlighted in purple). You can create sub title using another primary keyword or phrase from the same group (keyword map discussed in earlier Ebooks) which I have highlighted in black. You can also add more images (highlighted in green) and create more thematic text links to different pages of your main web site (highlighted in red).

24 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 2 4 Finally as you move to the bottom of the article or lens: You can even add relevant books, videos or audio books from Amazon and earn an income from any sold items. Whilst the income is largely unimportant it does make the article look so much more professional and relevant to the phrases you are trying to promote (highlighted in Red). Writing content is often a daunting prospect for many small business owners but it needn t be. Look for topical information about your industry in the mainstream or trade press and simply write your view on the subject. Ask your staff to write reviews on certain products or services, ask your clients to do the same. Have a look at all the offline material you have produced and see if you can utilise any of this. Read other articles and blogs relevant to your industry and draw inspiration from these. Think about the history of your industry, product or service and write about this, also look at the future and make some predictions of where you believe your industry is going and can go. Finally if you are really struggling you can pay for content simply search online for content writers and negotiate the best price possible per page.

25 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 2 5 Social bookmarking is relatively new in the world of online marketing. It works exactly the same as the bookmarks on your own computer, when you visit a web site and like it you save it to your bookmarks or favourites for future reference. Social Bookmarking works in the same way in that you see a web site, blog or video that you like and you save it to your bookmark only this time your bookmarks are public and so people with similar likes and dislikes will see your saved bookmarks as recommendations. Similarly you can view their saved bookmarks as their interests should be similar to yours. Again this is a good way of generating links but also a terrific way of generating targeted hot prospects. CREATING LINKS FROM SOCIAL BOOKMARKS We will focus again on two main Social Bookmark platforms Digg ( and Delicious ( we will also provide a list of others. As always you will need to set up an account before you can start Once you have registered you need to login (highlighted in red).

26 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 2 6 Once you have logged in you will be able to see your most recent bookmarks or digs (highlighted in green) and you will be able to post a new bookmark or dig (highlighted in red). Once you submit a url (web page), video link or blog post (highlighted in green) the site automatically pull in any images (highlighted in red), Titles and Descriptions from the page you have submitted (highlighted in black) and then you can Digg it or bookmark it (highlighted in Purple). Once posted (or Dugg) other people with similar interests can view it and also Digg it, the more Diggs the higher up the listings your post goes. Delicious works in much the same way as Digg first you create an account and profile, you will receive an activation and then you can sign in (highlighted in Red).

27 Once logged in you will be able to view all your recent bookmarks or posts (highlighted in red) and save a new bookmark (highlighted in green). L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 2 7

28 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 2 8 When you submit a link, url or video you are given the opportunity to alter the Title and Keywords or tags (Highlighted in Green). Your new post is now listed (highlighted in red) and as you can see the title becomes the link to your main site and the text in the title will form your anchor text for the back link. With all Social Bookmarking if you have various members of your staff, friends or family all with an account and they all post bookmarks for the same page or all visit one of your posts and Like it or Digg it you will be starting to build multiple links to the page, post or video you wish to promote and therefore improve its rankings on the search engines.

29 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 2 9 CREATING LINKS FROM DIRECTORY SUBMISSIONS Directory submissions are possibly the easiest way of generating links but also easy to get wrong. With all the link building described so far there is some work involved in generating the link. You have to set up an account and profile, that account has to be verified via to your own address and then you have to write some meaningful content and embed the hyper text link including the anchor text. With directory submissions there has been numerous pieces of software built that automatically submits your web site / page to multiple directories (sometimes thousands) instantly. This is how some companies charge as little as with the promise of creating thousands of links. The problem with these automated options is that they do not work, your site isn t always accepted, you don t have the option to create anchor text, the quality of the directories are poor and if Google find you using automated submission software in this way they would certainly frown on it. With this in mind you should only submit your site to quality directories and or some paid directories and so we will focus on two initially, DMOZ ( and Yahoo Directory (dir.yahoo.com).

30 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 3 0 DMOZ DIRECTORY The DMOZ Directory used to be one of the most important directories to list your web site on especially where Google was concerned as it uses human editors (highlighted in red) to judge your web site, commentary and keywords. Today it has slightly less impact but should always be on your list of must have s when it comes to link building. One of the key things to ensure your web site is listed in the correct categories as well sub categories which is often easier said than done as some of the categories are american. Once submitted it can take three months or more before your site is actually accepted and if you are deemed not suitable DMOZ does not inform you so you simply have to keep checking.

31 Once you have drilled down to your specific category i.e. in this case Computers then Software then Networking then Retailers (highlighted in red) you need to suggest a URL (web site address) highlighted in Blue. L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 3 1

32 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 3 2 You are then given the opportunity to enter your page Title and Description as with any other On Page Optimisation described in previous Ebooks. Once you enter the verification code your web site will be submitted for review.

33 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 3 3 YAHOO DIRECTORY Again as with the DMOZ Directory Yahoo use human editors and as you can see you can pay to have an editor review your web site within 7 days (highlighted in red). There is a free option but it can take months before your web site gets listed ( As stated earlier there are many directories that will allow you to list your web site from geographical directories that focus on specific towns or counties to business directories specific to your industry or all industries. The key to success with directories is to look for ones that allow you to create thematic hyper text links (therefore creating anchor text), try and list your web site in relevant directories or sections within a master directory that are relevant to your industry. If you can automatically submit your web site to a directory then it is likely it will not be much use, if you have to register and verify your identity via or captcha type software then it will more than likely give you some value. If the directory itself has good listings on Google and a decent page rank then again it will provide good value for you.

34 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 3 4 CREATING LINKS FROM BUZZ MONITORING Buzz monitoring is not only an excellent way to create links but it can give really targeted sales opportunities. There are a number of sites that now rely on user generated content with some users asking questions and other users or experts answering those questions. Two of the main sites are Wiki Answers ( and Yahoo Answers ( You can search the sites for unanswered questions that are relevant to your industry, services or products and then answer them. As always you will need to register and set up a profile and again you can create links back to your web site within your profile. By answering these questions you immediately position yourself as an expert within that particular field and the person who asked the question could potentiallybecome a lead or ultimately a sale.

35 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 3 5 WIKI ANSWERS As you can see you can browse for new questions and unanswered questions (highlighted in red)

36 As you can see some of the questions are clearly from American users which isn t an issue for creating valuable links (back links) but if you only sell in one particular country then it might not translate to a sale. With this in mind you can look for questions relevant to your industry and geographic location (highlighted in red), if you sell worldwide this clearly isn t an issue. L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 3 6

37 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 3 7 YAHOO ANSWERS Yahoo answers works exactly the same way as Wiki Answers with the ability to browse for unanswered questions or new questions (highlighted in red). You will again need to register and set up a profile with links to your site within the profile. With article creation you need create relevant content and it has to be over 500 words, with this type of link building the answers can simply be 5-6 lines long. The more work you put into answering the questions however the more chance you have of generating sales or leads.

38 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 3 8 CREATING LINKS FROM LINK BAITING Link Bait or Link Baiting really started to become popular around and has remained one of the best and most cost effective ways of creating a sustainable link campaign. This method has become very popular with bloggers and affiliate marketeers who are often at the forefront of online marketing. Link Baiting isn t for everyone and many big blue chips tend to steer away from it as depending on which method you use it can be quite controversial. To build an effective Link Baiting campaign you need to be creative and or current with either general news or specific news within your industry. Link Baiting is very much like fishing where you create and publish a page of content or gadget and set it free on the internet. The idea being that others find the content interesting or fresh and pick up on it. Bloggers, news sites, directories and online marketeers have a hugeappetite for content, they need huge amounts to keep their sites interesting and updated. One of the best ways for them to create content is to read something interesting or even controversial and comment on it adding their on opinions and ideas.

39 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 3 9 As with fishing if you are going to instigate a Link Bait campaign you need hooks and these hooks typically come in one of 5 formats: NEWS HOOKS This is where you report on Industry Specific News - you shouldn t simply replicate someone else s story your content should be unique. It could be the inside scoop on something or you might even prove a story to be wrong or some fault with a product or service or even the cheapest or best way to buy something. You could possibly collate various view points on a particular subject and make sense of it for the reader. CONTRARY HOOKS This is one of the controversial methods detailed earlier and isn t for the faint hearted. This method involves contradicting what someone else says and should preferably be someone well known within your industry. This kind of hook whips up a lot of opinion either agreeing or disagreeing with your view and lots of people then link to the article and pass comment. ATTACK HOOKS This type of hook takes Contrary Hooks a stage further by launching personal attacks on an individual or company within your industry. If I were to write an article that stated Google s algorithm no longer works and they simply put the companies that are likely to earn them the most money at the top of their search results then this would cause a lot of buzz, opinion and heated debate. It would also result in a lot of people linking to the article. With Attack and Contrary Hooks you need to decide if you want this kind of heat on your web site and if you are a commercial outfit the answer is probably no. RESOURCE HOOKS This type of article is informative, product, service or industry specific and tends to collate lots of interesting facts, resource sites, gadgets, tools etc. and makes sense of it all for the reader. In the same way this part of the book is discussing Link Baiting I could also add links to many different articles supporting Link Bait, companies who specialise in Link bait, case studies and gadgets for measuring the effectiveness. HUMOUR HOOKS This is one of the hooks that requires a good deal of creativity but could be jokes that are industry specific, funny stories relating to your industry, funny take on some latest news, funny pictures or videos or even a funny game created with a viral campaign in mind. You create a list of the strangest things customers have asked for, or the weirdest customer complaints or even the funniest objections to purchase. You might have a product and photograph it in the strangest places or the oddest use for one of your products? Other types of Link Bait can include gadgets, widgets or software applications. Examples of this could include a finance calculator that you create and give away to any web site owner that wants it on the basis that it provides a link back to your web site. Other methods could include images, graphics or charts relating to your industry that again you allow other web site owners to use as long as they provide a link back to you the original author or designer.

40 L I N K P O P U L A R I T Y - PA G E 3 9 TEN IDEAS FOR LINK BAITING CAMPAIGN: 1 Five things you must know before hiring an SEO Company 2 15 ways small business owners can save money in a recession 3 Twenty products you could not do without 4 10 tips guaranteed to double the traffic to your web site 5 How to get 50% of your next meal out One final point on creating links is to approach friends with web sites, clients, governing bodies within your own industry and if you do any offline advertising you should identify if the publication has an online version and ask for a link from this. 6 Vote now for the most influential product of the twentieths century 7 How to get a free upgrade to first class every time 8 How to sell your own house online 9 Top ten family cars compared 10 George W Bush Mensa score These are simply designed to provoke thought and can be tweaked to suit your own industry.