Yesterday, in my post on the Secret to Ranking at the Search Engines, I promised to unveil what exactly the "Linkerati" want from a website's content. Today, I'll do my best to explain, but first, I need to explain the motivation of the Linkerati and explore their level of influence.
Seeing as the word "Linkerati" is completely new and invented by yours truly, I feel that I have the right to expand its definition. Hence forth, Linkerati does not only refer to the tech-savvy, Digg-using, social media addicts of the web. It encompasses virtually anyone whose goal is to find external content and link to it, or whose own content creation on the web naturally means that they will create and/or share links. Thus, the following all fit the definition:
- A legal researcher tasked with writing articles on Findlaw.com that reference articles or blog posts about conflicting legal opinions
- The editor for the Harvard Crimson newspaper who needs a photo of a car being egged by 5-year olds (don't ask why) and will give link credit to the photographer's site
- A new blogger for Cranium seeking websites to add to her blogroll (Hi! Mystery Guest)
- Forlorn interns at the Washington Post tasked with gathering information about popular bedding styles (they may not link to it directly, but they're bringing that data back to a reporter who might write about it, which could produce a lot of links)
- Creators of a new directory on pet supplies and accessories who are looking to list the most interesting and innovative companies in the space as a start
The list above makes a much broader point than what many interpreted my last post to be about - it's not that every site needs to attract the Diggers or the guys at Lifehacker or Boing Boing in order to be successful (though with the latter two, there's always a subject you can come up no matter what your industry). However, your content and your website must appeal to whoever in your sector DOES provide natural links - they could be researchers, professors, journalists, bloggers, forum commenters, passionate hobbyists, directory builders, research interns or middle management.
Now that we've got the Linkerati straight, we can explore just what it is that makes them link. Let's start with some examples in some very unsexy sectors:
Cleaning Supplies:
- A list of the worst stains possible with information on how to clean each of them, photos and a sexy chart displaying degree of difficulty (i.e. red wine is twice as bad as balsamic vinegar). Scientific explanations (ala Alton Brown) would go a long way, too. Boing Boing would probably love this one, as would tons of stay-at-home parents and OCD neat-freaks :)
Used Books:
- Demographic trends of book ownership - what income groups, geographies, racial, gender and age brackets are most likely to own particular books in the US (actually, I'd love to read this article right now; I bet it would go straight to the top of Reddit, too).
Nanny Services:
- A list of rare but effective techniques to help with potty training, learning to read, putting kids to sleep, getting them to enjoy vegetables, etc. (there are a lot of parenting blogs out there who'd eat this stuff up).
Paper & Packaging Products:
- How the packaging guys used their expertise to design devices that would protect an egg from a 100MPH impact - forget those science classes off the first story roof! You could pick up some serious link love from every high school physics teacher in the country with a website.
What do each of these pieces of content have in common? They're all unique, interesting and tell us something we don't know. They're also easy to digest and consume, easy to share around a dinner table or a water cooler and make for good first-date material - "hey, did you ever do the egg-drop thing in high school? No? I saw this crazy article about it today..."
It's very hard to create a strict list of rules for content meant to attract links and I'd hate to limit anyone's thinking by doing so. I can, however, give you an easy litmus test for determining value.
- Find someone in your industry who won't steal your idea (a colleague, a coworker, a boss or even a web-unsavvy competitor)
- Tell them that you read or saw the article somewhere and describe it, including the reasons it's so interesting
- If they ask you to email them the link (independent of you offering), you've got a winner on your hands
Armed with the knowledge of your Linkerati's motivation and ideas about how to create and test content, you're ready to start generating the material that will earn natural links and give you a huge advantage of your competitors. Tomorrow, I'll try to cover the ways to make earning those links an easier task and strategies to make your site, independent of content, more generally link-friendly.
And I totally agree with you, if you are creating content that's great and others happen to link to it. But creating content just for a specific group - content you might not have created otherwise - just seems so manipulative.
But I guess all of SEO is manipulation. Maybe it's just that so many other factors seem within most peoples' grasp - it's not that hard to create good page titles. But writing link-worthy stuff for people who probably aren't your target audience or potential customers? That's hard.
Lorisa - the truth is that marketing IS manipulation. But, this is very subtle manipulation. You're creating something cool, targeting it towards the cool kids and hoping for the best. Would it be a better world if none of us created anything with the goal of being seen or getting noticed? The "purity" of creation, which artists sometimes attribute to themselves, isn't enough of a driving force in my opinion to make the world push forward fast enough. The great achievements all have some level of hope for fame or hope for money, and marketing is simply a modern take on a very natural human emotion - desire (or envy).
Some might argue that when you focus on the "purity" of creating something (with no sidelong glances as to who is noticing what you're doing), people will still find you if what you're doing is great and unique and wonderful.
But I can see how that wouldn't get you very far on in the internet. Mostly because there are 70,000 people in any given field doing sub-par work but shouting it from the rooftops. Quality wouldn't naturally rise to the top in that situation.
Will search engines ever "correct" for the Digg effect? In other words, someday will the idea of creating content for the linkers-among-us fall by the wayside in SEO? Or is it even a problem to begin with?
I can't see why it would be a problem and though I have a lot of faith in the engines' ability to evolve, I've never seen the mainstream press, over the last 300 years, evolve to start recognizing less famous events that are still worth covering - not a perfect example, but a relevant one.
I think the key difference is creating good content that is relevant to the creator as well as the recipient, and directing at those people.
It shouldn't be some crazy article on Viagra, ringtones, or Britney Spears, or Britney Spear's new ringtone after popping Viagra, unless your site truly deals with any of the three.
The good thing here is that it is a bit self-checking, in that the linkerati aren't going to link at anything they don't want to link at.... the only exception may be adding a nofollow and still talking about something that totally outraged them... not mentioning any names, such as the individual in question for Rebecca's last entry ;)
In that way, if you are polarizing enough, you may still gain links (for traffic if not SEs), but even those will probably have some connection to topic.
The focus on the linkerati is more targeting the movers and shakers. The question may be to what extent each industry or topic actually has movers and shakers, and how do you reach them to begin with if you aren't already part of the club.
I agree that we may see both in regards to link bait. I think it is like a lot of things in SEO, it isn't inherently good or bad, what makes it good or bad is how it is used.
Hi Lorisa-
I'd say that EVERY target audience has a subset which could be considered "Linkarati".
If you have a product that is for home builders, you can:
A) Find home builders who blog. There's got to be some of them, and they probably would LOVE to talk to you and link to you.
B) Build your site in a visually pleasing way in the most new-fangled way (CSS and table-free). Submit it to CSS galleries and you don't lose dillute your audience at all.
C) Adopt any bleeding edge tech initiatives (openID and microformats are two options) that don't interfere much with your user experience. Very linkworthy.
D) There's ALWAYS the humor angle for any audience. Funny stuff gets links.
There are MANY audiences that have a very small linkerati. The good news about them is that there isn't as much SEO competition (i.e. your competition faces the same challenges).
Thanks for the reply, Tony. If you narrow the definition of "linkerati" to just a subset of your own target audience, then by that definition I have targeted my own business' linkerati pretty well.
In spite of all the "suggestions" I've ever read for content that appeals to the larger linkerati crowd, I've never seen any that would a) work for my business; and b) not compromise the content of my own website.
Let's say that a website comes up with some Digg-style, totally quality linkworthy content. They should get props for that; it's worth something and I'm not saying it isn't. But if they rise in the search rankings for other terms because of all the links they get, and their site doesn't deliver as well on those terms as other sites with no linkworthy content, then search engines aren't returning the very best results they could by relying so heavily on links to rank sites.
That's what I've been trying to say, but it didn't crystallize until just now.
I've just had a look at your site (via your SEOmoz profile) and I think that you're right. In your articles section you've got interesting content on subjects such as how children learn to read, how you balance liberty & discipline in the classroom and how to safeguard children's safety when using the internet.
All of this is really interesting stuff, especially for parents or anyone thinking of having children. Now to get them to your linkerati, all you have to do is find blogs, forums etc.. that relate to kids, education, etc.. As Rand often says, Reddit is a great place to promote content on a wide range of topics to a wide range of users.
I think the confusion comes when a lot of us (I put my hand up here) make comments which give the impression that the only linkerati who matter are the nerds of digg - they're not, and you're well on your way to getting your own linkerati love (if you're not already getting it that is).
Can I just suggest that you have a look at a blog called copyblogger.com (I've no affiliation with it - just find it very useful). It has great tips, very similar in tone to the ones on SEOmoz, but it concentrates on how to write articles and headlines that will attract links.
Hope that you (SEOmoz) guys don't mind me pointing lorisa in that direction - I just find it a really useful resource, especially in tandem with the stuff that you guys post.
And is it just me, or is this a ridulously long reply I've just written?!
Thanks so much for the advice. It's funny, right after reading Rand's post yesterday I went and wrote a "Top Ten" style post for my blog - which ended up being longer and much more informative than the way I originally conceived of it.
Many of my customers have told me how much they appreciate the info that I share - but they're not "linkerati". (Although they promote my site through word-of-mouth, for which I am definitely grateful). I'll keep looking for ways to get my stuff out there...
Well said Lorisa
You just need to identify linkerati group and give them what they want.
Solution for their problem.
And if you pack that information in nice article with pictures, you got an article which would people love and link to.
Okay, that does help me understand the "linkerati" better. But I still have this feeling that "link baiting the linkerati" is just the 2007 version of keyword stuffing. Am I wrong?
Lorisa - I feel like that would be a very mistaken ideology to follow. The concept of creating content that appeals to people who are most likely to share it is a basic of marketing and has been since its creation. We're just talking about influencing the influencers here, and I think that many folks who have practiced SEO from the beginning have used this tactic to great success throughout the last 10 years.
"We're just talking about influencing the influencers here, and I think that many folks who have practiced SEO from the beginning have used this tactic to great success throughout the last 10 years."
Ok Rand so there is basically different levels of influencers (The Linkerati) and topics they are interested in. So in my case I wouldn't try to promote one of my SEO beginners articles to Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land (he wouldn’t buy it, he, he, he…), but I can try to find a niche audience at group moderators in forums or blog influencers of different industries interested to spread the word to their readers about the basics of SEO, right?
Just like life, it is one big food chain. We all just have to figure out what part of the food chain we are in.
SEOmoz has reached a far enough position where much of the discourse on the blog is directed to others within the industry, though certainly there are those who have found their way here who are simply trying to promote their own/company websites.
SEOmoz doesn't need to foucs and cater as much to the SEO101 because they also aren't targeting that level of client either. Being seen as an "educator" to the industry actually, I'm sure, does more to drive and reassure the types of clients that SEOmoz is targeting.
For many of us, we may be targeting more of the SEO101 type clients, so we further build our skill and knowledge sets here, and then spread the word, repositioned for our potential clients. The difference is that we may have to seek out, through forums and networking, our audience, at least until we can reach the level where that audience comes to us and our sites, which may also move us up the chain further.
I think the food chain identity mentions makes a good analogy. Danny Sullivan is toward the top of the seo chain so you're right that he's probably not coming to look at your seo 101 article, but those closer to you on the chain might.
But you're right that forum and group moderators and other seo bloggers very well might.
So maybe you target influencers who are a level or two above you on the chain, get them to read and link to your article and in doing so you bring yourself a little further up the chain where you can repeat the process.
Good follow up, although in my mind at least, I still perceive the linkerati as a bit more of the "elite" and the movers and shakers of the link world, but maybe it just comes down to finding the linkerati subset of your topic. Certainly over time, these subsets within each field and topic will evolve if they haven't already.
I think there is still a bit of the chicken and the egg... dropped, jetisoned at 100mph, or otherwise, but looking forward to tomorrow's post as it sounds like it may present some of the answers.
The answer lies with Charlotte.
I think the name linkerati makes it sound like it is about the elite, but I think it is more about those within your topic or industry that will link to you.
We can all agree some topics might make it harder to find the local linkerati, but I think they exist in every industry. If you look at SEO where there are a lot of linkerati there are also a lot of sites competing for their attention and more links necessary to compete. I'm not sure that more linkerati in your industry means it's any easier to compete.
I think we were talking about it on one of the other posts yesterday how being in an industry where there are less of the elite linkers means you probably end up needing less links to compete.
So even getting the small handful of topical linkerati to link to you might be enough.
Looking at the SEOmoz blog homepage, something just occurred to me.
I think that this is one of the best articles that you've ever done Rand - certainly for the company/sector that I (currently) work at/in. We've already suggested that it be made essential reading for our 300-odd journalists.
But..... the post about how crap Twitter is has more comments.
My point? Sometimes, people just want to bitch & moan (including me) and I guess that if you could find a relevant way of doing that for your sector, you could really grab hold of the linkerati!
I just thought of another term instead of linkerati - the link masters. I think it's a bit more accurate, kind of goes with web masters and emphasizes their control over the links. I have nothing against the term linkerati - I happen to think it has a nice literary side to it. I'm just offering this alternative for what it is worth.
All the best,
Moshe
I keep coming back to this post which I really like, because there's something which doesn't quite click for me. (Perhaps I'm slow.) If the goal is to create "link bait" which generates links from sites on a related theme, regardless of whether the desired readership would either see or follow those links, perhaps that's a realistic compromise with a site like FindLaw, but that seems to miss the larger goal.
<>In viewing FindLaw, found that the articles most prominently placed on that site are written as somewhat generic "evergreen" content, and have apparently not been updated for years. They did update links, years ago, when they merged the "West Legal Directory" (wld.com and later lawoffice.com) into FindLaw, but in the articles I read the anchor text hasn't even been changed. The links tend to be self-referential - you either find links to other FindLaw content or to their directory (which is a distinction without a difference... I should have said "you find links to other FindLaw content.)
<>I did find articles intended for legal professionals, created by third parties (law professors, etc., probably under contract) and contains links to other sites, but I doubt that many of those articles appeal to consumers. I saw no sign of FindLaw directly employing anybody who would qualify as "linkerati". They have forums, but they don't seem to permit user-generated links in their forums. They seem very much focused on driving people to their own content or, failing that, to AdSense ads.
<>I would have agreed with the assessment of FindLaw as a source of linkerati back in the days when I frequented the site - prior to 2001 when the founders and their staff really did actively seek out good, fresh legal content to link. Since that time, the huge Yahoo!-style directory of legal links that had previously been assembled has disappeared, and the site seems to be largely resting on its laurels (and a huge ad budget). To have today's FindLaw held up as the paradigm source of legal linkerati? It makes me wonder if the legal profession has largely missed the boat on the Internet.
<>
It's all a really good set of ideas and something I've been trying to teach the journos here but to no avail.
I also try and get them to write more gossip to no avail.
And they never invite me to the really good parties - something about me using the event to find linkbait...
*sniffles*
It's hard to get some SEO love sometimes...
decabbit - completely off topic but just saw your profile and the fact that you work at Centaur - which site? I used to work at mad.co.uk!
I'm at Wells St!
WOW! What did you do at mad.co.uk?
I was part of the marketing team - renewals and customer service specifically - sort of stumbled into SEO after leaving there in 2004...
I think most people get in to SEO accidentally. I don't know of many people doing it for more than a year who went in to it deliberately.
Good article Rand. Very nice follow up to the Linkerati article.
Funny how such a simple solution can hide from so many ...
I think so many marketers expect there to be some sort of holy grail out there that the successful folk hide from them, when the secret really is common sense (how about *asking* the people involved?) added to hard work (doing the legwork and writing the article).
*waits attentively for the next pearl of wisdom from Rand*
(and I ain't pokin' fun, neither)
"when the secret really is common sense"
Hehehe. Never a truer word spoken!
Great stuff Rand - I am now going to (quite openly) base the rest of my career on this, shamelessly passing it off as my own advice!
;)
Are you sure Rand? "...the word "Linkerati" is completely new and invented by yours truly...".
I think that honor may belong to Shelley Powers who used the term in connection with ranking and links in a blog post dated September 29, 2005. There may be an even earlier contextual reference?
On another note I think you are wise to expand the definition of Linkerati to include anyone actively seeking to link.
Rand I hate to say it, but I've heard the word before too. I can't remember where, but it wasn't knew to me when you mentioed it yesterday.
I wrote about it last year, and used it for the first time (I can remember) in a presentation at SES NYC in March of 2006. There is, however, a website - linkerati.com - that's been around for a while, but with a different concept, I believe.
the later part of the post is very usefull... tomorrow i will use the technique for sure...