SEO and Linkbait, Good or Bad?
February 17th, 2008 by Ciaran
The Irish blogosphere has been buzzing with the talk of SEO and linkbaiting lately…
Eoghan has been saying that SEO is a load of crap while at the same time a lot of people are calling his posts nothing but linkbait, which is a popular SEO technique. Eoghan’s post has also inspired a thread on the Irish webmaster forum, where some of the Irish Heavyweights in SEO have their say.
Then today Damien and Donncha pull up Glengarriff Lodge for more linkbaiting. Glengarriff Lodge want you to write a post about them with the term “Luxury Self Catering” linking back to them as part of a competition they are running.
So what does all this mean, well for one, SEO is a hotly debated topic right now and with Google making more and more changes to their algorithm and their penalties for breaking the rules, this is likely to continue. As to whether Eoghan is right about SEO or linkbaiting is a good technique, only one group really have the answer.
I would take a middle of the road approach, I don’t mean sit on the fence, more don’t do it to the extreme. Eoghan would have been better off if he had said basic-on-page SEO is crap, and it is now, it should be done by your developer at build time. These are things like unique titles, meta descriptions and headers for your pages and proper use of header tags and semantic coding. But if your website was built five or ten years ago when no one would have known of these things and Google was still a small player in search or if you are operating in a ultra-competitive niche, then you might need an SEO professional. Also, had Glengarriff Lodge gone about their competition a little cleverer and not forced their anchor text on to people then they might have gotten away with it too.
As with many things in life, what it all comes down to is that it is okay in moderation. If you get too many links too fast, Google will penalise you. If you use the same anchor text over and over again, Google will penalise you. If you stuff your pages with keywords, Google will penalise you. What you need is to strike a natural balance and Google will reward you and never forget “good content is king”.
February 17th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Broad sweeping generalisations about anything can come back and bite you.
Keyword stuffing etc., is bad, but proper SEO doesn’t use that kind of technique.
February 17th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Exactly Michele, it’s entertaining at least though, we’ll see how it pans out.
On a side note someone just pointed out to me that this should count as an entry for the Glengarriff Lodge competition but, I checked and they have refused my trackback. Perhaps I’ll leave a comment.
February 18th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
edit that trackback was published this morning my bad
February 20th, 2008 at 9:52 am
If they were serious about SEO they could’ve start with on-page optimisation first and upgrade the Worpress to the latest version.
Linkbait works alright, but as Michele said “it could come back and bite you” and I have a feeling that in this case it just might happen.
Will that be classified as “Paid Links”? I like to beleive so…
February 21st, 2008 at 12:19 am
Comments like his doesn’t help those who don’t know the industry. At least educate people why its BS instead of making it look like link bait to everyone else.
February 21st, 2008 at 12:23 am
Your dead right Gavin he has now promised a follow up post but I think this the second or third follow up post he has promised and no sign of them yet. The company names one was another example.
February 21st, 2008 at 12:27 am
Louie as Richard said elsewhere it would impossible for Google to pick out those links as “paid” links. I went with nofollow on my link to them just to be fair.
February 27th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
And now he has given us a reason why he thinks SEO is BS, attacking Richard Hearne along the way.
February 27th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
[...] knickers in a twist. The post was labelled everything from “sensationalist crap” to “linkbait”, but I was still left searching for a solid counter-argument. Even Richard Hearne, one of [...]
September 18th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Comments like this doesn’t help those who don’t know the industry.basic-on-page SEO is not a crap.
SEO is a good work to do on site. This help the sites.
November 1st, 2008 at 10:34 pm
I think link baiting is still very popular today and I really think that it’s still a good thing to do. Like stated in the article though, just don’t overdue it. And that basically goes for anything you do online. Paid posts, regular posts, contests, and anything and everything else.
Link baiting to a certain extent is still a great idea in my opinion and it is very much alive.
November 21st, 2008 at 11:30 am
I personally feel link baiting is the best of driving traffic and creating natural link building.
March 3rd, 2009 at 12:13 am
Well there are some changes going on with Googles algo right now, and SEO will probably not be anymore what it was….in other words: Conventional SEO will get HARD, and dont even think it wil benefit you to leave 1000 backlinks all with the same anchor text —-> BAD
March 20th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
i agree with your middle of the road approach. seo is important, including on-site optimization, creating compelling content (call it linkbaiting if you will) and generating traffic by building links… anyone who says otherwise is just trying to be a contrarian (to probably help drive traffic to their site!)
April 16th, 2009 at 6:34 am
building backlinks comprises mostly 80% of SEO. So I suggest to take a look at this strategy also.