Last week in Whiteboard Friday: Why Your Viral Content Isn't Working, I covered the importance of creating content that goes beyond just reaching the top of social media portals into the realm of attracting coveted high value links as well. Today, as promised, I'll share the big separations between the two and some tactics to implement when launching viral content with the intention of link acquisition.
First off, a Venn Diagram (credit to Mystery Guest for the concept on this):
You can see in the purple section, at the intersection of viral success (from reaching the top of Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc) and link attraction, I've placed the desired result - a successful linkbait campaign. In the Fall of 2006, SEOmoz conducted some research analyzing the amount of links earned by content that went popular on the major social media portals (everything from Digg to Slashdot to TechCrunch). Unsurprisingly, we saw that a significant amount of the successful content on those sites attracted only a small number of legitimate links (a few dozen to a couple hundred), while a smaller group would attract thousands, or even tens of thousands.
Common Characteristics of Content that Earns Social Media Votes, But Doesn't Get Links:
- Shallow Humor
Funny can definitely get you to the top of Digg, but it often won't carry you much further, particularly if the laugh is only enough for a "ha" (think Edna Krabappel) and not enough to inspire sharing. - Simplistic Observations
Even with an insightful bit of writing, it can be hard to attract links if the content is surface-level and carries no depth. - Reinforcing Stereotypes or Beliefs
It's fun and easy to create content that reinforces what everyone else is saying. Another comic making fun of Microsoft might hit the Digg popular page, but it's unlikely to draw the links you might want unless it has some other standout qualities. - Low Value Lists & Amalgamation Posts
These are probably the most common kinds of posts I see on the social media sites, especially Sphinn (in the SEO field) and Del.icio.us/Popular (in the developer world). Grab a few friends, get a little boost, and everyone will vote up your CSS Rounded Corners technique. Whether you'll get long term value and links is another matter. - Niche-Pandering
If you're aware that a particular sect of followers has a powerful influence on a site's content (Wii fanboys at Digg or Ron Paulites at Reddit), you can take advantage of that by authoring materials geared towards those audiences. Unfortunately, even if you do get on the front page, you might not earn the links you're hoping for unless you've authored something truly new or brilliant on the subject. - Weak Signal to Noise Ratio
Plenty of the content on social news sites has great shock value and drives clicks, but once it's time to convert those views into links, you'll need substance over pure style and rhetoric. - Drive-By Images/Video
As with the weak signal-to-noise ratio, many pictures and videos that find their way into the popular content have little to no chance of attracting additional interest after that first view. - Market Saturation
If the social portal(s) you're targeting have users that already read 99% of the material you write, you might not be getting any additional value from having one more story make the front page. - Extremely Short-Form Content
While there's a decent amount of short-form content that makes it on the portals, much of it gets passed over when it comes time for links. Linkers need something they want to share or something that's incited passion or critical thinking - short-form content is often consumed fast, browsed away from quickly, and forgotten before they've clicked the next item. - Highly Negative/Inflammatory Content
This can go either way, as some negative material gets an inordinate amount of attention. However, be cautious about how you do it - if you're negative and pandering and shallow, there's a good chance your linkbait won't earn you much besides a high bandwidth cost. - Beating the Dead Horse
Some content has been seen one too many times. Repeating the same tired list or showing a collection of images, videos, links, or other material that's already made its way around the web might get you a few more page views, but the Linkerati are a smart bunch, and they've often been around the web more than the average reader. - Extremely Temporal News
News items can attract lots of links, but if the material's old within 12-24 hours, don't expect the links to come racing in. This is why coverage of emerging events can be dangerous, as the post that only tells part of the story as fast as possible could be passed over when the whole story comes out. - Inaccurate or Misleading Material
If a piece is obviously incorrect, readers and voters might not catch it, but most linkerati are smarter and will investigate before they post (and even if they do link to it, will frequently use nofollow to indicate their distaste). - Lost in the Echo Chamber
If a blog post or content piece is simply writing the same story that's been bandied about dozens of times or covering a subject that everyone in the niche thinks they've covered already (or covered better), linkers may be particularly stingy.
Recent Examples:
- Tech Solutions Your Small Biz Can't Use - Not only is it a low value list, it's also obviously inaccurate and misleading. As of today, Yahoo! only reports 6 links (3 are spam, the other 3 are nofollowed).
- SEOmoz's 2007 Site Stats - Considering how big our previous reporting on stats have been, you might expect that we'd once again earn lots of links with this release, but no. Yahoo! reports 17 links, of which more than half are spam (and several other are nofollowed). What happened? We're lost in the echo chamber and we're saturating the market - even though the post reached the top of Sphinn, SEOmoz has such an overlap with the linkerati who read Sphinn that it probably attracted very few new readers.
- List of Social Networking Sites in Education - Although this list of great value (I even put it in the premium tips section here at SEOmoz), the content is very long-form, very niche and, for most readers, is going to have low value. Thus, Yahoo! shows it's only got 29 links (many of which are low quality or nofollowed).
- Photo of Digg Accuracy - It's funny, but it's niche-pandering and very forgettable content, so even though it was on top of several social portals and even on the most Dugg list for the past 30 days, Yahoo! only shows 65 links (and not many of those are followed).
Common Characteristics of Content that Earns Links, But Doesn't Always Make It on Social Portals:
- Duplicate Content
When posting material that's already been released elsewhere, you can have some success earning links from the population who hasn't previously seen it, but it can be tough to get onto the major social portals where savvy bury-ers will shout "dupe" from the top of their keyboards. - In-Depth Research
A terrific source of links, complex research is also tough to consume quickly, and therefore isn't well suited to the "don't Digg it if you can't understand it in 4 seconds" crowds. - Interviews
They're good sources of information and insight, but they rarely appear on the social portals these days. Summaries or "important" quotes can help an interview stand out to the social crowds, but those votes can be tough to come by. - Complex News Analysis
As with in-depth research, a complex look at the news will, tragically, often earn fewer links than a shorter, punchier piece of coverage. Anyone who watches the major news outlets in the US can see this phenomenon in action on a daily basis. Tragic? Yes. Avoidable? Not really. - Segments of a Larger Content Piece
When content gets broken into multiple pages and pieces, linkers may find the relevant portion and reference it, but social voters don't have the attention span to focus and will frequently abandon prior to finding the value. - Community-Focused Material
If you're pandering or even speaking to an audience that doesn't consistently participate at the portal you're targeting, you'll have a very tough time earning the necessary votes.
Recent Examples:
- Comparing Search Popularity Services - this post from Danny brilliantly covered the differences in the major services showing search market share percentages, and while it didn't make the social news sites (probably due to being so in-depth and targeted), it earned 450+ links.
- How to Order Wine Without Looking Like an Asshole - I suspect this actually did get some good social traffic through StumbleUpon, but it perfectly exemplifies an in-depth, niche-focused (but broadly interesting) post. The subject matter isn't social crowd-focused enough, but the list format is near perfect and it's earned those 5,000+ links. Maybe I should submit it to Digg... (UPDATE: Oops! It did make Digg a couple years back, although it wasn't very popular there)
- Why to Not Not Start a Startup - Paul Graham has very community-focused and in-depth material, and although some of his essays do make it onto sites like Techmeme (and of course, they all go to Hacker News), this one earned its 2200 links without the benefit of a major social media push.
- Interview with Sep Jemvar on Personalization - A perfect example of how even though the material's great, the interview format somehow prohibits social media success. Thankfully, it still managed to earn several hundred links.
Armed with this knowledge, you should be able to dodge a good number of pitfalls in your viral marketing campaigns, and I suspect that will give you a big leg up in your quest for simultaneous social media and link-earning success.
As a next installment, I'll cover why the search engines will have a vested interest in continuing to reward viral marketing campaigns (as there's been some debate around this subject in the recent past).
These are great insights into why content that does well on social sites sometimes doesn't result in links. It is really useful, the things Rand puts out in this article, I learned most of it the hard way.
But I would remind every one that the main reason there are difficulties getting links in most social attempts is because social sites are not designed in any way whatsoever to create links.
Some of the most clever and successful things I have seen happening lately is people who are not using social to create links, but are rather using social sites to create traffic to sites whose revenue models revolve around such traffic, not search engine placement.
A mild but important tweak in how you look at things may improve your bottom line.
While gaining links via social methods makes sense in alot of ways, I tend to think that it is far more clever, achievable, and profitable (particularly for those just entering SEO) to be thinking...
"How can I monetize traffic I receive from social sites?"
instead of thinking...
"How can I make articles that will maybe get popular on social sites, so I can maybe get links, so I can maybe get search engine placement, so I can maybe make revenue from search engine traffic."
There are reasons for many large SEO firms to be entrenched in the search engine model of gaining traffic, but if you are not a huge SEO firm, I would start thinking in the newer simpler direct traffic models (models where you don't really need to rely upon search engines).
Thinking about other factors than links often will result in better search engine placement anyway.
"How can I monetize traffic I receive from social sites?"
I think that this was a statement worth highlighting - in context to the rest of your comment.
You are absolutely right insofar as suggesting social media sites generate traffic - in fact a recently sphunn story illustrates it well. The new challenge is to monetise these casual browsers - especially the stumble crowd - who arent looking to buy anything, but just looking to get entertained.
highlighted :)
That's a great post at your blog, well worth the read - Thanks!
I'm going to disagree with you here Patrick. There are certainly ways to monetize social media traffic, and more power to those who can and do, but for the vast majority of businesses, big and small, refocusing your model just so you can get some revenue out of a new marketing channel is lunacy - sheer craziness.
The object of the game (at least with 90%+ of the campaigns we've worked on or quoted) is to do the exact opposite - leverage this new marketing channel to build value for your existing business model. Most of the time, that's going to be indirect - through links, branding, mindshare, etc. That's what my concept of linkbait marketing is based on. I won't argue that there are others out there, but if you can't benefit in the secondary ways I've described from a linkbait campaign, you should probably just avoid them - NOT try to switch your business model to fit your social campaigns.
Avoiding semantics surrounding the phrase 'link bait', for a moment; Traffic is the eventual aim of all search PR.
According to https://www.seomoz.org/blog/seomozs-stats-for-2007, only around a fifth of your traffic from top referring domains is from search engines.
With your extensive existing user base, you are likely to be getting more direct referrals and bookmarks than an average site, but if social sites are driving awareness to an extent where you are receiving such large direct traffic figures, then surely this is not refocusing a model, it is merely looking at another avenue to realising conversion goals.
Search is the single most important aspect of on-line brand positioning, but is it the end, or merely the means of driving converting traffic to your site?
Rand -
I do not suggest that anyone change their revenue model, just to think outside the "Holy Grail" of search engines and explore other models.
Just like you said in your comment...
"leverage this new marketing channel to build value for your existing business model. Most of the time, that's going to be indirect - through links, branding, mindshare, etc."
I totally agree with that, but very few people write about those other indirect positives, because such articles wouldn't be good linkbait.In the article's title was "separating the wheat from the chaff".
If as much time was spent thinking about the "chaff" as is was the "wheat"...
And therein lies the problem... We are calling traffic "chaff" (worthless) and calling links "wheat" (the best of the bestest).
None of my traffic is chaff, Rand, it is all wheat, yummy, beautiful wheat.
What I take a stand on is and what I heartily recommend for those new to the world of SEO or those lacking money and friends and resources is that it may be possible to achieve success quicker if you think about the benefits of traffic, rather than the benefits of search engine placement. Understanding that they are two different things was perhaps my single biggest "aha" moment and lead to many of my successes.
Here is a point to ponder for any person in our field....
Nobody ever found "super poke" via a search engine.
Many millions of people use it and have installed it, but none of them found out about it in a search engine.
If you think about that model of attaining traffic you may be surprised where your thoughts take you.
I am not saying to make the next gadget, it doesn't even need to be a gadget or an app.
I am just saying that putting thought time into the realm of direct interaction, and how to attain it, is time well spent.
I am also saying that the majority of the SEOmoz community is made up of people seeking opportunity and success.
It is not made up of people who have necessarily already attained it.
Your core community is not "the 90%+ of the campaigns we've worked on or quoted" that you mentioned in your comment.
Your core community is people on their way to success. They do not have the 50,000 to 500,000 spend that is required for your services.
Many of them do not even have a 100 dollar budget. Many of them (like me last year) do not even have one dollar for a budget.
You are not working for the big folks anymore Rand, you are working for us little folk :)
I am willing to bet that any article you wrote with that in mind will do better than any "perfectly optimized" and "link baity be-titled" article would.
I am not envious of the challenge you face everyday which I think is to be universally useful to the "little folk" and also the "medium folk and also the "big guns" as well in our field.
You succeed wonderfully in doing so and do it about 20 times better than I could ever dream of doing. Almost every time I have "disagreed" with you, it has always been a simple thing of perception.
I have the luxury (that you do not) of sticking to one perspective. I always judge everything I read by one standard...
Is it useful to someone who does not have any money?
I guess I am saying that a great subject of an article would be "how to reap benefits from articles that hit the front page, but do not attain the desired amount of links"
Your article was wonderful and useful, I really enjoyed it and I am glad you wrote and as I said, I had to learn all that the hard way so it is great for you to put it out there.
Sounds like we might not be disagreeing at all, Pat. I think we're just talking about two very different subjects :)
Also - when I said "separating the wheat from the chaff," I wasn't talking about valueless "traffic," I was talking about the viral content stabs that don't succeed.
Feedthebot,
I think the ideal scenario is to utilize the "linkbait" for multiple purposes and not just make it a "one or the other" approach. Your statement about monetizing social media traffic may well be the more important question to ask, but it really depends on your long range goals. Maybe this comes down to the difference of SEO vs. SEM.
Does raw traffic from social media convert well? From everything I've read, it really depends on the site in question (Digg vs. Stumble as a commonly cited example). Does the traffic "stick" and again the answers seem to vary considerably.
If I'm in a competitive niche though, where my best long term revenue originates from organic searches, if may not make sense to optimize for social media conversions in favor of gaining links. Ideally, you want to achieve some balance between the two so you can leverage revenue opportunities from the short-term traffic burst from the social media sites while still building the longer term classic SEO link-building campaign. In this manner both of your bases are covered.
Mike
Mike,
I think that the best way to think about it is that the whole concept of "linkbait" is the creation of content that people will respond to.
Most call it "linkbait" beause the action that most want users to take is to make a link to it.
I call it peoplebait.
The actions I want people responding to my "bait" (quality, interesting, useful content) is often links, but sometimes it is often other things as well.
If your business model depends on search engine traffic, then links must remain one of (but not the entiety) of your strategy.
Link are not the magic bullet to search engine rank. It is a big factor, but it is getting smaller and there are so many people reading the same things and taking the paths that much of the value that links bring is also getting less.
In addition to the many great articles that can be found here on SEOmoz about link building, I recommend you also read Eric Ward (known as " Link Moses" who has faced these changing challenges for years and just wrote this incredible article for SearchEngineLand.
Here is one example of a technique that I have found that often succeeds in both sections:
- embed a video from another source (e.g. youtube) in your blog (and reference them!)
- write a full text transcript of it.
This way you get people linking to you from other sources of the video as a place to find a transcript, and you also get the full "diggability" of the origional video.
I made a video on this for work:
https://viraladnetwork.net/publishers/videos/seo-search-engine-optimisation-videos
I think this is very useful info Rand - and definately the type of thing you need to show the top level brass when they sit up and say "I read that viral content will get us links, especially if you start using social media for your campaigns. Why dont we do some?"
What would be really interesting is some information on Linkbaiting Niche industries - maybe examples on. I think in response to Ciarans question about the relevncy of linkbait to a doctors site - or something along those lines?
Regarding the wine post I expect 260 Diggs almost 2 years ago was very popular it's just that Digg was smaller back then.
Ironically looking at the diagram I tend to think that the most successful campaign is the one that is "Content people will link to"+"Content social media voters will endorse"+"utter crap" (because that's the intersection of all three circle).
So I was thinking, did you do that on purpose or was it better not to cross all three circles?
I had to laugh at that Ann but actually if you look at the graphic carefully, you will find that only a tiny potion of the three circles overlap. However, I too am curious if Rand did that intentionally and the cynic in my tends to believe that overlap should be larger.
Mike
I agree utterly.
Most successful link bait is, by its very nature, 'crap'. Genuinely useful resources are not link bait, they are what you are offering in the first place.
I was just trying to show that some complete and utter crap does have a shot at success, but certainly wasn't suggesting that you should focus your efforts there!
Yes, on the second thought, that definitely makes sense. All the three really can become a real boom... And it is really not a wise idea to focus your marketing efforts on it, as I guess such kind of success is most often of unexpected and unpredictable nature...
In most successful campaigns, a common feature is - "Dont make me (or audience) think".
If there is something that most people can relate themselves with, it has higher chances of survival. e.g. Indian Taj mahal becoming #1 in an online poll for 7 wonders, once the email started going around in indian friend circles.
As per my comment on the whiteboard Friday video you referenced, we've started talking about the stuff in the blue circle in your venn diagram as "link-worthy content". The stuff in the red circle is "viral content". That means that linkbait is only the stuff that people will both link to and that can "market itself" virally (given the right seeding etc etc).
Link-worthy content can be hugely rewarding, but you do need to get it in front of people somehow - fine if you have a platform for launching it from, but much harder to make it work for smaller or less well-known websites.
I could use my imagination or do some research (and will), but I figured I'd ask for the sake of stimulating conversation:
Perhaps you could list some good examples of something that not only reached the social media sites, but also gained a large amount of links?
Once again, great article!
I second that. The theoretical stuff is cool but some real world examples would be nice to see.
Hey! I spent a lot of effort digging up real life examples that fit the criteria and descriptions of the phenomena I described. They're listed directly underneath the attributes.
I realize that I haven't covered linkbait that met both success metrics, but I think that's fodder for a different post.
I think we have seen loads of the successful kind. The ones that 'failed' in a way you identified were really valuable (I found, anyway).
I think being told what not to do is way more valuable than seeing what does work :)
Best social post I've read in a long time on here. I'll stumble, sphinn, digg, and delicious it :)
I definitely believe it is better to spend the majority of your time developing high quality campaigns. I also believe there is a certain threshold where your time starts becoming less and less valuable in proportion to the overall value of the campaign.
For example, I sometimes find myself 5 hours into a campaign with the meat of the subject already covered. At that point there may be 5 additional hours of time I could use to continue research and optimization. I could also choose not to spend the time and wrap things up.
If you believe the potential value of the content will at least double by spending the time then it should be a no-brainer. What is your advice if you feel the remaining hours are only ¼ to ½ as valuable? Would make the best damn content possible or wrap things up and start a new campaign?