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28 Comments
- HaltingPoint, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11"but to just write passionately and honestly because if you do that you are sure to succeed eventually."
Bzzzt. Wrong answer. You see, there are those of us who do write passionately and honestly yet due to the ridiculous growth of the web and the signal to noise ratio there are many of us who, despite the quality of our content, will never get our voices heard. Hence, we are forced to resort to linkbait in order to get the word out about our content.
Of course Diggers don't seem to care about that and will digg something down regardless of the quality of the content if it isn't on one of the big favorite sites that constantly make the front page, even though in actuality most of those are actually blogs themselves, they're just not on blogspot or such. Nobody said Digg was a perfect system, and this is just one of the reactions that the public is having to this new system. If Digg is setting the format for how people find out about things, people who write content that they want others to read are going to adapt and do whatever they can to get people to read their content. Thats just life. Thankfully if something sucks, you can choose to not Digg it, or if its spam then bury it. Unfortunately Diggers really have no real sense of what qualifies as spam or whatnot.
I'm sure this will get dugg down but ask anybody here with a blog who writes passionately and tries to get their stuff posted. - sonofalink, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4For a good example of Linkbait, just click the submitted link!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Oh the irony!
- ArchieAndrews, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Just fyi, diggers tend to digg down comments that spam urls in the sig regardless of the quality of the comment.
- HaltingPoint, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"There is something about the part where a blogger wants to "have their voice heard" that is like nails on a chalkboard to me. They are like this massive cluster of sucking leeches who write, for the most part, banal articles on trite subjects. They would be harmless but adsense makes it possible for members of this sucking cluster to earn money if they can figure out a way to get the dumdums to click. Millions of basement dwelling nerds who dream of being the next daily kos are drowning the internet in their excrement and the whole place is starting to smell. I say it is time to flush."
Let me ask you something.....how do you differentiate between a blog and any of the "accepted news sites" which follow the same structure as a blog, contain more ads, and are for all purposes blogs with large readerships. - Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"I guess it's the only way a blogger reaches stardom."
Not true, of course. It would be a great day if ignorant people stopped pissing on everything they don't "get" and try to contribute in a more fruitful way. - doktorrocket, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Linkbait is a derogative term for content with minimal intrinsic value that is written in the hopes of attracting traffic, by way of others linking to it. Start a controversy, rumor, or call out some more popular site in the hopes they'll link back to you in their rebuttal.
- Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Only if your date a link that's underaged.
- cwcentral, on 10/12/2007, -0/+22006: The Year of bloggers trying to start buzzwords and hype.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Link_bait&action=history
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_bait (it's not one word!!)
Just call it a process where information is obscured (not directly linking to the facts/source document) by those who want credit for finding it. I guess it's the only way a blogger reaches stardom. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3There is something about the part where a blogger wants to "have their voice heard" that is like nails on a chalkboard to me. They are like this massive cluster of sucking leeches who write, for the most part, banal articles on trite subjects. They would be harmless but adsense makes it possible for members of this sucking cluster to earn money if they can figure out a way to get the dumdums to click. Millions of basement dwelling nerds who dream of being the next daily kos are drowning the internet in their excrement and the whole place is starting to smell. I say it is time to flush.
- DarthBibble, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Another Digg story about Digg.
Wooo? - nthitz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This offers an explanation:
http://performancing.com/node/38 - ArchieAndrews, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It must be good stuff though. I mean, look at the submitter's profile. All he submits are front page stories. Amazing...
- Darmichar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2More blog spam from msaleem.
Another one that gets damn near all the spam he submits to the front page.
If I ignore a user, do their submissions still show up? - dreamer123, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1To: the one who posted this story here...
Message: Do you follow your own advice? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Fact checking, editors, a real reputation to lose, access to professional opinion when needed, training in journalism, historical significance.
Take your pick. - floodyberry, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"I could ‘out’ atleast 10 SEO and Web Developers getting paid thousands of dollars to feed Digg full of crap they don’t even believe in."
Wow, that's hot! I don't know if the article was supposed to be ironic or if all the "make money online!!!" bozos all happen to have blinders on when it comes to their own conduct. - m3mn0n, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2This is absolutely stupid. Buried without mercy.
- tom6a, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What is linkbait?
http://www.seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=1354
or http://www.seomoz.org/linkbait.php - elebrio, on 12/10/2007, -0/+1It turns out 2007 & 2008 will be big years for linkbait: http://indexedcontent.com
- TripinVA, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wow, I just panicked when I saw that title! My ISP was called "Linkabit" until they were bought out a few months back and I thought that was what the title said. That was scary.
- mikewitt, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Linkbait?
Sorry to seem naieve, but what does linkbait mean?
Is it positive? Negative? What? This is the first time I've heard of it. And the goddamn blog you link to doesn't tell me jack. - Cowboy1015, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0That is why... most frontpage articles here at digg are "weird" or "boring". Digg is just perfect for linkbait.
- Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3I do (writing passionately that is), at http://johnbokma.com/ and the first time I heard about digg was when I got dugg with my article on creating a VM for the VMWare Player with freeware ( http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2005/10/26/vmware-player-windows-xp.html ). Before that I had links from quite interesting sites just by writing about things I like, for example Micro Persuasions linked to my RSS with Firefox article
On the other hand, I agree with you. Getting noticed just doesn't happen out of the blue, I had already several thousand daily visitors. And to get there took me over a year. But the good thing about writing passionately is that you produce content at a steady rate. As long as you're not running after the one day hypes and/or do copy paste blogging, people will find your content back once you grow bigger.
My experience with Google is that once a page is in Google, and given some time, it's found for a broader set of related terms. So in the beginning your page might be found for just blue widgets. After some time you (well that's what I see) suddenly see hits for widget covers, how to use a blue widget, how to fix a widget, etc. And this number of related hits, which of course must be mentioned somewhere in the content, will grow.
I started to blog seriously in mid 2004. Back then I had probably less then 1000 daily visitors. Currently I have on average close to 14,000, with peaks in the 16,000, and I am happy with the extra money AdSense generates
Link bait has a major disadvantage: you have to keep playing the game, because as soon as you stop, your traffic drops fast. When I got mentioned on Digg the first time, I had the first day 25,000 visitors instead of the then normal 5,000. The next day it was 18,000 and a few days later it was close to "normal" again.
So my advice is, if you write with a passion, keep doing that. My blog is a lot about walking around in Mexico, looking for scorpions and tarantulas. People pick that up eventually, especially if one joins a message board on scorpions and tarantulas. Link baiting is a game in my opinion, that sounds easy but gets harder and harder to play. Copy pasting hot news, and getting the front page of digg might work a few times, but in the end you have lousy content.
If I do nothing for 4 weeks about my site, write no new content, my traffic doesn't drop. Rather the opposite, as explained above, it grows. Content is king. - bostonvoip, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Can you go to jail for linkbait?
- 7466, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2Thank you for posting and what a great article. After several bad jobs and trying to put up with those bad and just accept that as Life... I finaly find my dream job and I have never been happier
- BigKitty, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1Article buried as lame.
Content-free.
Alida M. Weber a/k/a/ BigKitty
http://www.tvweber.com - 7466, on 10/12/2007, -15/+1Linkbait: Linkbait is a word that gets passed round a lot in SEO - but it's not a massively used or understood term, and a Google search only yields a few specialist sites based on SEO. Linkbait is essentially a piece of content placed on a web page - whether it's an article, blog post, picture, or any other section of cyberspace - that is designed for the specific intention of gathering links from as many different sources as possible.
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