Most people in the industry look at contests and incentives as branding and marketing tools. However if you are willing to get creative, you can turn a contest into a powerful link building tool that will, over time, help your organic rankings.

When most marketing and advertising teams look at a contest they are looking for mass exposure, so they choose a prize that is going to have wide appeal, like an an iPod or iPhone. However as an SEO you need to look at this as an opportunity to build the anchor text you want, especially the really hard to get commercial anchor text. Want to rank for “Las Vegas Hotels?” Tun a contest giving away a Las Vegas hotel room. Want to rank for “coach handbags?” Then give away a Coach handbag.

When going for links like this, the prize may actually cost more than a low level prize the marketing/advertising department had budgeted for. If that’s the case, it’s your job as an SEO to show how important and valuable getting those anchor text rich inbound links are worth. Unless you’re giving away an exotic sports car, the links you generate are almost always worth more than the prize due to the rankings they can produce and the significant amounts of traffic they generate.

The next step is to think about your landing page. I’m not talking about the design/layout of the page—I’m talking about the URL. Try to choose a URL that has the keyword in it and that you can use after the contest. For example this URL:

http://example.com/las-vegas-hotels/

has much more staying power than either of these:

http://example.com/las-vegas-hotel-contest/
http://example.com/contest/las-vegas-hotel/

Another mistake a lot of people make is that after the contest ends they leave the page up with a notice the contest is over, or 301 the content to another page. A better solution is to leave the existing URL in place and just improve the page with different content. If you are concerned about usability, you can relocate the contest information to a new URL with a link at the bottom or even display a message based on incoming referral URL’s or referral keywords. If you’ve already got a commercial page about the particular item, this doesn’t present a problem. I bet you’d really like to have a second indented listing for your keywords, so leave the original page up—just make sure the two pages really are different.

Don’t miss the opportunity to generate views for any videos you may have. Including informational videos on contest pages is an easy way to increase the views on those videos, especially if they are short, to the point and helpful. The number of times a video has been viewed plays a role in YouTube popularity rankings and in getting videos to show up in Google universal search results.

A caveat: Contests, sweepstakes, incentives and giveaways, legally speaking, are much more complicated than—in my opinion—they need to be. Laws vary considerably from state to state, so before starting down the contest path make sure you do your due diligence and consult with an attorney and make sure you aren’t creating a legal headache for yourself.

I always like to see what types of link building things people talk about and/or present. Based on some basic tips provided by Roger Montti in the “Blow Your Mind Link Building Techniques” session at SMX Advanced, this post will expand upon those to describe a specific link building plan that nearly any site can use.

Here is my expanded version of Roger’s tips on how to extract which .EDU sites link to a competitor of yours (or to an important company in your space). These commands work on either Yahoo or Microsoft Live Search, but not Google at this point:

• linkdomain:domain-to-check.com site:.edu “resource”

• linkdomain:domain-to-check.com site:.edu “directory”
• linkdomain:domain-to-check.com site:.edu “bookmarks”
• linkdomain:domain-to-check.com site:.edu “links”
• linkdomain:domain-to-check.com site:.edu “favorite”

Using this technique you can find a ton of link targets to pursue, all from known linkers. You can expand upon this as you see fit, too. For example, you can add the industry category name for products or services like yours to the list. You can also try this on .ORG sites. Once your brain gets going you can just keep going and going.

Once you have assembled this list of sites, the next step is to figure out which ones are the most important. Take the list of pages linking to your target from step one above, and run a tool on it to establish the PR of each of the target domains, and the linking pages as well.

Next, sort the list based on the PR of the domains. Take any item where the domain is a PR7 or better, and put them on your “high value targets” list.

Take the remaining sites, and sort them on the PR of the linking page. Take any item where the linking page has a PR5 or higher, and put them on your high value link targets list as well.

You are going to have to spend some time on the high value targets list. Of course, you can do this in priority order as well. You are going to want to hand craft your campaigns to these sites.

Do the research to find the email addresses you want to contact by hand, and make sure the person doing it really, really understands what you want to accomplish. Finding the best person to contact is critical here. Make sure you are NOT paying this person by the number of email addresses found, as this incentivizes them to be lazy about it and send you the first one they find.

Also, make sure that person identifies critical aspects about the linking page. What is the name of the person who is responsible for the page? What department are they in? Since these are high value links they are worth a lot of effort.

Hand craft your communications to these high value targets. You can use a template email as a starting place, but plan on customizing it based on the interesting data you have found out about the linking page. Be patient; these links can provide extremely high value to your site. Getting just a few can have a big impact.

Take the pages that were not on the high value targets list, and repeat the process above. However, since they are lower value links, you can have this be a bit more of a cookie cutter-type process, and you can use a lower cost person to do the research.

As with the high value targets, you will want to send an email to these lower value targets. You should also customize these because letters that do not have customization in them come across as SPAM. You have done the research, and you should make sure it shows. However, you can perform less customization than you do on the high value targets.

Make sure that all communications you send out come from a real person, with an email address from your real domain. Include real contact information for the person to respond to, provide a simple unsubscribe method, honor all unsubscription requests, and comply with any and all parts of the CAN SPAM Act. You do not want the trouble that can result from failing to follow those guidelines.

Crafting the email

As a final note, let’s talk about crafting the email itself. First and foremost, you must remember that your email is an intrusion upon the recipient. The first thing you need to have in mind is a simple respect for their time. The bottom line of this point is to be very concise in your communication. Make your pitch in 4 paragraphs (16 sentences) or less.

While you want it to show that you have been to their site and that your email is thoughtful, stay away from the obvious BS (such as pandering to their ego). Just get to the point: “I saw your site at www.theirdomain.com, and saw that you link to sites similar to ours (such as www.dangerous-competitor.com) and thought you might be interested in offering our site as a resource to your visitors.”

If you can cite some quality references to your site, such as a major media site that wrote about it, or a major university that links to it, do so. Building credibility in this way helps the reader understand if they can trust you, so help them out with this.

Provide them with the location on your site which is the most relevant page for them to link to. Yes, you can suggest some anchor text by providing a link. It can help them if you do this.

That’s about it. One big, big don’t: Don’t include anything along the lines of “This is not SPAM …” Even if you are complying with all requirements of the CAN SPAM Act, putting this statement in there is simply offensive. Just make sure you comply with the guidelines and don’t waste any of the recipient’s time with meaningless statements.

In addition, don’t let a team of people in India do the emailing work for you. While there are many exceptional resources available in India, they don’t know what you are really trying to do, or about your business, or the subtleties of a successful pitch strategy. It’s not that they are not smart – they simply don’t live in our culture.

Eric Enge is the president of Stone Temple Consulting, an SEO consultancy outside of Boston. Eric is also co-founder of Moving Traffic Inc., the publisher of Custom Search Guide.

Doing A Fake Story For Linkbait? Disclose — Or Face The Wrath Of Google from last week is still a hot topic of discussion in the industry. In fact, Google’s Matt Cutts posted a more detailed explanation of why a fake story without disclosure is something, in some cases, Google cares about.

Matt says, “if a site says that they completely made up a story to get links, Google doesn’t have to trust the links to that site as much.” But is that about intent of the author? Does the intent have to be about influencing your search results for Google to trust you less or is it something larger?

I think Matt’s post explains that it isn’t Google’s job to police the internet. But at the same time Matt does offer generic advice. He said, “don’t burn your credibility by using fake stories. It’s a short-term tactic and makes people trust you less in the future.”

I am struggling trying to write the next few sentences. On one hand, fake stories have their place, when disclosed properly. There are many humor sites out there that obtain great traffic and rankings in Google. But to create fake stories to influence your Google rankings and not disclose that those stories are fake, can be an issue in terms of a site’s credibility.

We all know that Google has various metrics to determine a site or page’s credibility or quality. Part of that has to do with links, on page content, user actions on the page and more. Should truth be one of those factors? I am not sure. If users trust a site less and less over time, users may link to that site less and less over time.

Does Google need to downgrade the value of a site’s links based on it posting fake stories without disclosure? That is the question that is being debated in the industry. Some believe Google has the right to do so, when it is done to influence the Google search results – while some feel otherwise.

Aaron Wall’s Google to Police ‘The Truth’ talks about the topic as well.

Link baiting entered a new area last week when Lyndon Antcliff had success with a fake story being picked up by some mainstream media sites as well as social news sites. Controversy erupted over the tactic, and now it likely will go into a second cycle after Google’s Matt Cutts has suggested that Google might penalize pages that don’t disclose stories are fake.

The story was named 13 Year Old Steals Dad’s Credit Card to Buy Hookers, but it wasn’t true. Nevertheless, several news agencies picked up the story, plus it made it to the front page of Digg and many other social media sites and garnered over 1,500 inbound links in under a week.

Nick Wilsdon highlights how Matt stepped into the discussion, with his comment over at our Sphinn forums:

My quick take is that Google’s webmaster guidelines allow for cases such as this: “Google may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here (e.g. tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known websites). It’s not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn’t included on this page, Google approves of it.”

There’s not much more deceptive or misleading than a fake story without any disclosure that the story is hoax.

As you can imagine, that sparked a pretty heated debate in the comments area of the Sphinn post.

Should Google take action against sites that post false stories? What about April Fools jokes that are not labeled properly? What about stories that are not accurate due to poor reporting? Should Google really dip their fingers in this space?

On the other hand, sites that continuously go this route in order to build links – is that something Google should address? Is that a form of linkspam? I think we all would agree that building out great content, tool, etc as linkbait is acceptable. Should Google go after those that build out fake content for links?

Disclosure is a key point made by Matt. Now, if the article says the sources are not validated or the article is speculation – would that be sufficient? Would Google soon require us to slap on a nosource (aka nofollow) tag in the META tags so a GoogleBot can decipher the article’s validity?

Like all these discussions, there are gray areas. It will be interesting to see which avenue Google goes.

The title of this article doesn’t mean I’m changing my position on social media as link driver. Yes, it’s possible, but for the overwhelming majority of web sites, a widespread and costly social linking strategy is a waste of time and money. Go ahead, call me a heretic, but inside you know I’m right.

If the site is this one for adult diapers then really, what’s the social media end game? Sure, you could write a blog post or article like “Ten Uses For Adult Diapers you Never Thought Of” or “Five Sexiest Senior Citizens Naked,” and sure, it might just make it to the Digg homepage, where not a single clicker/reader will be a person in need of that specific product. In fact, for the diaper site, the social media strategy should probably be bare bones simple, such as providing for passive sociality by giving users the ability to share or bookmark the content. If you are determined to go more aggressively social with it, at least focus your efforts here and here rather than at all these here.

I read blogs from a bunch of Social Media experts, which I am not–yet, and the experts say the power of Digg isn’t always in making it to the home page, where you get thousands of mostly useless clicks. The power is in the “second wave” links that a Digg mention can cause. In simpler terms, of the thousands of people who see the post on the Digg homepage, a few might actually have their own blogs that are related to what they spotted at Digg, and when they see it at Digg, they might very well link to it themselves on their own blog or site. Well, duh. Isn’t that what we’ve all been doing since the Titanic sank, linking to stuff we find useful or interesting? Do we really need a central place to find the good stuff? Sometimes yes; mostly, so far, no.

Think of it as social fertilizer. If you spread enough of it, by gosh, someone somewhere will surely be interested, right? Wasn’t that the logic that turned my email inbox into a cesspool? At least with social media nobody gets hurt, since the nature of most social media sites is to shove the good upwards and the bad downwards. A couple years ago I compared SM spam to cigarette butts and the Village Wine parable.

For what it’s worth, I do engage in social media marketing and link building for many clients, but not for all of them. It’s about discretion. Adult diapers? No. Indiana Jones IV, absolutely, all day long. Oddly, there’s a potential tie-in between those two, since Harrison Ford is getting old enough to fit the adult diaper demographic, but that’s a topic for another day. Discretion. That’s what should be at the core of the social media plans we create and execute for clients. Discretion with what should be socialized, discretion with how you go about it, and discretion with what you do with the traffic and links you end up getting as a result. I agree with the fertilizer concept of link building, and I do use it today, just like we used it back in the day for pure traffic plays from venues like Yahoo Picks (gone now, but New and Notable Sites remains), or USA Today Hot Sites. The value of those was–like Digg today–in the amazing traffic spike they caused, with the trickle down secondary link increase being a natural, welcome, residual effect. Sort of like social media fertilizer, eh?

Let’s all of us remember what fertilizer is often made from.

Lastly, sticking with my example diaper site from the beginning of this column, rather than burning hours and client dollars on a social media strategy that is likely pointless, why not instead identify and seek links from the best venues you see here, where nearly every link your adult diaper site is able to earn will not only help your reputation and trust, but perhaps also your search rank.

You might even get a little interested traffic.

Eric Ward has been in the link building and content publicity game since 1994, providing services ranking from linking strategy and private customized link building training. The Link Week column appears on Tuesdays at Search Engine Land.

Many people jump into social media marketing because they feel they “should be doing it.” Many times companies don’t take the time to identify their goals and why they want to engage in a campaign. Identifying and measuring social media metrics can be easy and inexpensive. Here are some simple things to keep in mind and free ways to track them. This list is based on a viral marketing / linkbait campaign where you are tracking one URL.

Traffic. Is your goal to get more traffic? Are you looking for more brand recognition? Do you have CPM based advertising on your website? Measuring traffic generated by a viral campaign is one of the simplest benchmarks. Simply measure the traffic generated to the specific URL through your web analytics package. Check out Tamar’s great breakdown of 6 Free (or nearly free) analytics packages here.

Links. Are you looking to naturally build links to help with your search engine optimization efforts? Linkbaiting can be extremely effective for this, but you should track where the links are coming from and whether or not they are helping you. I recommend checking links at the 1 and 7 day marks using either Technorati or Google Blog Search, then at the 30 day mark using Yahoo! Site Explorer or Google Webmaster Tools (use this FireFox plugin from Joost de Valk for extra info). Simply put the full URL (yourdomain.com/viral-piece.htm for example) into any of those engines and see who is linking back to you.

Buzz. Are people talking about you or your company due to the social media work you are doing? You need to know who’s saying what, and most normal search engines won’t track this. You can use free services such as Serph to help track what’s being said in places like forums and social networks. You can use Serph to search for things like your company name, the title of your linkbait piece or tool, etc.

Bookmarks. Bookmarks will tell you how many people felt your content was important enough to want to revisit at a later time or share with their own network. There are tons of online bookmarking sites out there, but I like to use del.icio.us to gauge the overall interest level. Simply go to the del.icio.us URL page and input your full URL (as explained above) – it will then tell you how many people have bookmarked your site and the different tags they used (which is important to see if people are tagging it with what you had intended).

Conversions. At the end of the day everything should come down to this. Many people want to discount direct sales via social media marketing, but that should never be the case. I firmly believe that you should craft your viral pieces in a way that will help to generate conversions and track them closely for such. Sometimes this might have to come after you have launched and have promoted your piece via the major social networks, but other times it might be the whole goal. Define what conversions you want to have happen and then track each. Do you want more people to sign up for your newsletter? Subscribe to your RSS feed? BUY YOUR PRODUCTS? You can do this simply and for free using Google Analytics.

With these different metrics, its important to put a realistic expectation for each in place before you launch your campaign. Think about what you want to accomplish and define your goals as specifically as you can get. Tracking your results and measuring them against your goals is the most effective way to tell if your efforts were successful and had a positive return on your investment (whether that investment be through time or money).

Chris Winfield is the President and Co-Founder of 10e20, an Internet marketing company that specializes in social media & search marketing services and is based in New York & Florida. The Let’s Get Social column appears Tuesdays at Search Engine Land.

Getting your linkbait post, widget, or other content featured on the front page of Digg is one thing—a good thing, as this can drive a spike in traffic. Getting a whole bunch of links to that content, however, is entirely another matter. After all, the purpose of linkbait should be to attract links, not just short-term traffic. However, it seems that a lot of people measure success solely based on whether or not content becomes popular and the total number of Diggs it ends up with.

Contrary to popular belief, not every article that goes popular on social news sites gets good link volume. I’ve had campaigns that don’t even make the homepage for some reason or another, yet they gain a huge amount of links. I’ve also had campaigns that are hugely popular on Digg but didn’t collect many links at all.

This is why social media marketing and linkbait is hard to game and get good results. People can spam their crappy content to the homepage of Digg all they want, but that doesn’t mean it will generate links and work in the long run. Authority sites don’t link to stories just because they hit Digg’s home page. They link to them when they are solid resources and/or provide a real value to their readers. These hooky spam articles don’t. Therefore, they don’t collect good links. Sure, they get that golden link from Digg, but over time that’s not a very valuable link.

The point I’m trying to get across is that producing exceptional content is still the one and only way to go. And it really has to be exceptional, so be honest with yourself. It is also has to be presented in the proper way (but that’s a whole other article in itself). This can be very hard to do for a lot of sites. There are times where you really have to use that ace up your sleeve. But regardless, if you really want the long-term benefits of linkbait, excellent content is a must.

Social news sites are really nothing but a platform where you can expose content to very large audiences. It’s your hope that a small fraction of this audience will see your article as a valuable resource and link to it. If your article is spammy, people won’t link to it no matter how many times you put a “made by a Mac” button on the sidebar. Getting on the Digg homepage doesn’t impress me, but getting a thousand links to your incredible resource article does.

Cameron Olthuis is the Founder and CEO of Factive Media. The Let’s Get Social column appears Tuesdays at Search Engine Land.

Building links in a competitive niche is one of the most difficult marketing tasks I’m asked to do. Not only do I have to work in link-saturated industries, but more times than not I have to find a way to out-rank a “complaint site” and/or Wikipedia. If you’ve ever tried to do this you know how difficult it can be and how it’s necessary to think outside the box in order to net the links you need.

Successful link building in competitive markets takes both traditional as well as Web 2.0 linking tactics to make an impact. How do you avoid being buried in the search results or move above the complaint/Wikipedia site? One way is to work on developing reputation link bait.

What is reputation link bait?

Reputation link bait is the combination of two marketing strategies: pitching the media with an interesting story, and developing link bait. Traditionally, media pitches involve floating story ideas to journalists in conjunction with an upcoming event, while link bait is written to attract links from a wider audience by using controversial content. Reputation link bait uses each tactic, but with a twist—instead of promoting events and controversy, it focuses on promoting a company’s overall image through positive buzz. In a nutshell, reputation link bait is a tactic used to promote a company using newsworthy and trendy angles to build a positive corporate reputation.

As a linking tactic, reputation link bait makes sense. Done well, it offers the potential to generate a lot of quality links in a Google friendly manner while establishing your company as an industry leader.

Developing a reputation link bait angle

Spinning a positive corporate image isn’t something new, but unlike traditional marketing, reputation link bait doesn’t wait for opportunities to come around. Instead, reputation link bait is a process of creating high profile “angles” to pitch. Let’s look at two angles you can use to attract links using reputation link bait:

Capitalizing on current trends. There’s a lot of support and publicity behind the “buy local, go green” movement. Take advantage of this hot trend by turning some of your products green and developing a full publicity and link bait campaign to promote the changes.

Modify a number of your best selling products to use recycled materials and then blog about the positive results of your new green products. Write a two-part series on the process highlighting the outcomes and use environmentally focused social news sites like Hugg and TreeHugger as well as the general news sites like Digg, Reddit, and Propeller.

Build testimonial links. A single positive testimonial is good, but 50 is reputation making. Using the testimonials you have in place plus the new ones coming in as a result of going green, look for a line of commonality in each. Once you have it, develop an article series around the product or service everyone is raving about.

Promote the piece on social news sites such as Digg, Reddit, Propeller, TTiqq, and Fetch, as well as StumbleUpon.

Encourage comments and return the favor by commenting out. Doing so helps attract more comments from people with similar experiences and the attention of the media who monitor the social news sites. And don’t forget to contact the people who gave the testimonials. There’s a high probability they have web sites and blogs and will link to where they’re mentioned in your article series.

Take the testimonial angle a step further by getting celebrity and non-competing experts to endorse your brand. Offer a year’s supply of your product in exchange for a testimonial link from their websites, blogs, and newsletters. Once the links are in place, launch a full scale media blitz announcing the endorsement.

If you keep promoting the positive aspects of your business through reputation link bait, two things will happen: First, you’ll see which tactics consistently work and can invest resources into these venues, as doing so means more inbound links; and second, you’ll create positive link marketing momentum with the media and within the new industries you’re tapping into. You’ll find building links for competitive terms becomes easier when you have new sources to draw links from and more positive content in the search results than your competitors.

The second session at SMX Social Media is all about links. Kim is once again live blogging for Search Engine Roundtable, and Eric’s back for Search Engine Journal, and Marty is here from aimClear, so I’ve got to step up my game. This panel includes Rebecca Kelley of SEOmoz, Brent Csutoras of BrentCsutoras.com, and Cameron Olthuis of Factive Media.

Rebecca is up first. She’s jumping right into linkbaiting. The big benefit is to get lots of links to help you rank well in search results. No mention of traffic. Hmm… Apparently it’s all about the PageRank.

She says it’s a domino effect. You get a ton of links, which makes your page seem relevant, particularly if you’ve got the right anchor text. Also, links to one page can strengthen the rank of your site overall. You get global link juice for your overall site, not just that one specific page.

Then there’s traffic stickiness. Apparently it’s about traffic after all. There’s residual traffic even after the big viral push. You get a huge spike which then goes away, but the overall traffic rises to levels above what it was before.

Who should you target with link bait campaigns? Aha. The linkerati. These aren’t your regular users, but are more likely to link to you. First you need to know why people link. They like sharing things with their friends and they like knowing things on the cutting edge.

Do your homework on where to submit your content. Research your niche by going onto the various social networking sites and see how well your topic does on them. Target the ones that seem to like your niche. And look at other link baiting campaigns on these sites and see what might not have worked and how you can learn from the mistakes of others and make your campaign better.

You can take a look at Internet trends. What’s popular this week? Lots of sites list what’s currently popular. Tie your link bait into what everyone’s interested in. Can you put a new spin on it?

Don’t ignore your community. Find blogs and forums about your industry and make connections. Do a Google Blogsearch, for instance, and then engage bloggers you find. Make people feel involved and they’re more likely to link. Keep in mind that those in your industry are more likely to convert and will be stickier.

Brainstorm!

Link bait can be as simple or complex as you want. It doesn’t have to be huge and complicated. It can be as simple as a picture with a caption.

Be aware of the potential negatives of link baiting. If you’re being controversial, then you might do some mud slinging since it may get you links, but it also may harm your brand.

Look before you leap. Contact people in your industry before you launch to get feedback and to get them involved so they want to write about you once it does launch. If people feel like they contributed (even if they didn’t), they’re pretty vain and are likely to talk about it. Not you. You’re not vain. Just all those other bloggers.

Make sure your server can handle the load in case your campaign is super successful. Also, take advantage of the additional traffic by saving up some super interesting content to post soon after the link bait campaign.

Remember that link bait campaigns don’t always work. It’s like gambling. Keep trying! I bet Vegas loves Rebecca. You also need other strategies in addition to link bait. Don’t rely on it as your own search marketing method.

Try to keep your link bait relevant as not to annoy your key audience and as not to appear spammy.

Next up is Brent. He told me earlier today that he was ready to give up all his tips, so I can’t wait. He said that what we all want is links, branding, and reach.

First up is top 10 lists. He says that they’re still really effective. He also says that he mostly focuses on Digg because it can drive the traffic. Sure, unless they like to bury you. But enough about me. Back to lists. Mix up the number. You don’t always have to go with 10. And do negative lists too.

Next, how to guides. They have to actually be helpful. You can’t just call it a “how to” and expect it to work. Don’t just have paragraphs of text like this live blogging post. Break it up with pictures, video, bullets, and headings.

Take advantage of current events. Act fast on this and make sure you’re accurate. Don’t just copy the news story — add some value.

Do something offbeat or extreme. It’s hard to get clients and companies to approve this though, as there can be dangers with this. You don’t want to hurt your brand just to get a few links. And you don’t want to violate terms of service of the social networking sites with your content. Keep in mind that even if you don’t submit your own content, someone else might.

Image campaigns tend to work well. Embed the image into a post and put some content around it, then submit the post URL (rather than the image URL). People are less likely to steal it that way.

Do some research before you start. Set up alerts about your topics. Search the social networking sites and see what has been effective in your niche.

Craft your title and description carefully. The title should be clear and focused. The description should back up that title and tell the whole story. That way, even if someone doesn’t visit your site, they may vote up your story on a social networking site. Even using initial caps in a title makes a big difference in grabbing people’s attention.

Once you submit an article, get your network to vote and comment. Respond to comments and keep people interested. Get your friends to vote up good comments and vote down bad ones.

And now for the lighting round of social media tips!

• Research communities to find out which ones are relevant. Don’t submit to unrelated sites.
• Use images.
• Minimize ads, or perhaps don’t show ads to those coming from Digg.
• Offer a summary to help those who want to link to you.
• Make sure you don’t have spelling errors, jargon mistakes, or other errors that the haters can fixate on.
• Don’t submit duplicate information. Well, not recent duplicate information. Older stuff might work.
• Look at what worked and what didn’t before. Check to see what’s been buried before.
• Can your server really handle the Digg effect? Test everything, cache things, make sure things don’t load really slowly.
• Be link worthy. Your content should have actual value.
• Submit at the right time. Friday night isn’t the best time. Apparently everyone hangs out on social networking sites when they’re supposed to be working. Stick with weekdays.

Digg users don’t like poker, self-promotion, or announcements. So, how did Bodog use Digg? They turned the self promotion into a mocking of Bodog and put all the description in the Digg submission so that Diggers wouldn’t even click through to the actual page. And they got lots of Diggs.

Be social. Treat it like a social event — talk to people and be involved.

Now Cameron is up. He’s got case studies. He reminds us that link bait includes information, controversy, humor, news, and tools (like calculators and quizzes). Link bait is way faster and cheaper than traditional link building. And if you’ve done some shady linking, link bait can provide link camouflage. (Yes, I just made up that term. You heard it here first. Pass it on.) The media pays attention to viral marketing, so you could potentially parlay your link bait into media exposure.

Now the case studies. The first example is a drug rehab center. He searched social news sites to see what related content has been popular before. He found that pro-drug articles were popular but would harm the brand, so he avoided those, even though they would bring links. He wrote an article on identifying drugs and what their effects are. He suggests keeping the post simple — use lists and pictures. Pay attention to which topic you submit to. Obviously more people will see things listed in popular topics.

It helps to submit via a power account, as power submitters have lots of friends and people pay attention to what they submit. Cameron reiterates what Rebecca and Brent mentioned — that you should use good titles and descriptions and submit to relevant sites.

His second example is a game – Search Engine Smackdown! I totally remember this game. You answer SEO questions and can beat up Larry and Sergey. He said they made Danny Sullivan the referee, hoping that by making him a character in the game, he might link to it. He is moderating the panel and claims that ploy was entirely ineffective, but Cameron shows us Danny’s link. Ha. Busted.

His next example is to a life insurance site. How do you get Diggers interested in that? How about 19 Things You Didn’t Know About Death? Morbid, but effective.

And what’s link baity about laptop batteries? Well, 20 tips for getting more juice from your laptop battery might be. I would sure like that article right about now, as I’m tethered to a wall so I can stay plugged into power and get this post going. See the lengths I go to for you?

Questions!

What about video content? Are there legal issues? Particularly with using hidden cameras to get funny stuff. They are calling these “discrete” cameras. Sounds more professional that way. The panelists suggesting asking a lawyer. You might need a signed waiver.

What about a blog post vs. a page on the site? Diggers are anti-commercial, so blog content is easier to get dugg up than a company site page.

If you’re getting the Digg-effect, can you just pull your CSS file and serve up text only to keep the server up? Well, mostly the problem is the number of connections that the server can handle, although you can serve up a cached page to reduce slowness problems.

How do you test your server? Ask the server admin who handles these things. Or use something like Apache Benchmark. The panelists aren’t sure the best ways to test. Ask someone who knows about servers and let them know. I see a potential top 10 link bait article. Danny says Search Engine Land’s host, Tiger Tech, does a great job at keeping them up when they get Dugg.

What about contests? Those are hard to promote through Digg. Better would be to engage with the forums and bloggers for your niche.

What about reusing content? Resubmit good stuff that didn’t do well originally, but don’t resubmit stuff that’s been submitted previously by top Diggers, because they have networks of people who might not like it much.

And with closing words that you shouldn’t let your server crash, we’re all off to build better link bait.

Lyndon Antcliff posted The Enormous Linkbait List that contains well over 65 links to articles on the topic of linkbaiting. The articles are grouped by blogs such as: Problogger, SEO Book, SEOmoz, Matt Cutts, Search Engine Journal, Link Building Blog, Tropical SEO, Performancing, Stuntdubl, Copyblogger, Modern Life is Rubbish, Jim Westergren, Pronet Advertising, Graywolf, Cartoon Barry, Search Engine Roundtable and of course, Search Engine Land.