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and got lots of negative comments. today, on matt cutts blog, matt has a lengthy post about it, and he seems to openly condone the technique.
i am not posting here to seek redemption, but rather to repost my questions to hopefully garner some more helpful replies...
has anyone had any positive experiences with such a technique? if so, are there any repercussions for receiving a large number of incoming links from not-so-related sites?
Writing content that is a "linkbait" should be the normal action of any writer... I think that "linkbaiting" is just a fancy name for just writing good content as people have been doing since pen and paper found their happy marriage.
My reply in the former thread:
I don't think inbound links from non-themed sites will harm you. Worst case the links will be deprecated so that they don't pass on as much juice, imo.Creating controversy for links is an old strategy for getting people to link to you. Linkbaiting is an interesting term for it.
The term linkbaiting is a new word for an old strategy that has been discussed here for years. Nothing new there. I might add that it's a strategy that's worked well for me, too.
What Matt says doesn't change what many here have already discussed regarding good content stimulating inbound links, just reinforces that.
Additionally, Matt doesn't go into the value of the links in terms of ranking for anything, but he does note that it helps build your notoriety/mindshare. And if what Mike Grehan has been on about lately counts for anything, then notoriety and mindshare is a good thing in a different way.
This can be very wrong, and I don't believe any engine is currently capable of the determination.
>if so, are there any repercussions for receiving a large number of incoming links from not-so-related sites?
No, the less related the sites, often the better. One-way links work great, related or not. I have some evidence to show related is better, but I don't want to publish that as it is marginal!
All links are good, from many IP's even better, not recipricol and you are a winnner, from numerous high profile sites and you will quit posting here for fear of competition!
"Link baiting" implies that you only exist for the reason of getting links.
no... the type of linkbaiting that i have been considering would just be a page or set of pages, certainly not an entire site.
the page might even use a different template, perhaps one without ads etc. because such a page might be more "linkable". of course, there would be links from that page to other parts of the site.
this isnt about writing good content - all content should be good. its about writing something particularly funny, or controversial, or compelling for a broader audience precisely because doing so could attract more links.
I did exactly that this past week. Most of my content is geared towards a specific audience, but I squeezed in a few articles that were a bit out of the ordinary! With that, I believe an entirely new audience is checking out this content and eventually, other parts of my site.
