As you note, we need to “focus entirely on providing value to your client’s users and making that value easy to link to.” and “the industry [needs to] put its shady image to one side and starts becoming the respected, valued member of the social media scene it deserves to be”.

I would suggest that we might start by using a term other than “linkbaiting” as a description of our activity . Its intrinsic implication is that of exploitation and it hardly describes the act of creating amazing content. It can do nothing but create the perception of shady characters.

I wasn’t going to say anything, but now that the cat’s out of the bag…. I’ll add an important reminder:

Web widgets can be made in Flash, in iFrames, as image links, as dynamically called data, etc etc. So when you or your developres are putting out web widgets with SEO linkbait swirlies in your eyes, remember that no matter how you create your web widget, the widget needs to link back to your site and the link needs to live on the external site’s page (not hidden in Flash, AJAX, remote XML files, etc).

On top of that, optimize the text, link to deep pages, even change up the links when people get the download code to provide links to multiple places in your site.

Happy widgetbaiting. :)

BTW – I meant to say that most widgets AREN’T built to be SE friendly.