Build Links with Tynt Publisher Tools
Here at SEER, we are fortunate to have some awesome clients who continually produce great content that is worthy of sharing. In a SEO dream world, every time someone copies a portion of this content, they’d attribute the source with a followed link back to our client’s site. However, this often isn’t the case. That’s where Tynt Publisher Tools come into play–to help capture some of these lost linking opportunities.
What is Tynt?
Tynt’s website states that for every user who clicks on a “share this” button, there are 90 users sharing through copy and paste. Tynt is a free tool that aims to leverage this fact by automatically inserting a link back to the site whenever a user copies and pastes an image or text.
How does it work?
You can install Tynt by adding a snippet of javascript to your site’s source code. If you’re working with a WordPress site, there are also two plugins available. Once the code is in place, Tynt’s attribution link will appear whenever someone pastes your content into an email or adds it to a website. It is then up to the user to decide if they would like to keep this link in place, or easily strip it out by deleting it.
Results
Three months ago, we added Tynt to a client’s blog. Now whenever someone pastes their content, an added link reads “More from [Client Name]: URL.” In the past 30 days alone (Dec. 24 – Jan. 22), Tynt monitored 778,154 total page views, 41,196 image copies, and 391,039 word copies, which lead to a whopping 4,614 new links.
There are some important things to note about this data. First, only 1.07% of image and text copies generated a link, meaning that 99% of users either pulled this link out before republishing online or shared the content through email.
Second, the majority of these links are nofollowed. In this case, three of the top sites where this content was shared were Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter, and while it is great to have visibility on these platforms, the links pass little to no SEO value.
Lastly, very few of these links are high quality. Tynt separates the links into three categories: Gold for sites the search engines will find, Silver for sites behind logins or of low quality, and Bronze for sites that won’t impact SEO, but may refer traffic. Of the 4,614 links Tynt contributed, only 25 qualified as valuable Gold links. While this is small fraction of the links Tynt reports, I don’t know a single SEO who wouldn’t gladly take 25 easy links.
Additional Benefits
Tynt has its own analytics suite that provides some interesting metrics. For example, you can see which images and features generated the most shares, broken down by the top 28 images and top 20 posts. You can also discover which regions generated the most copy and pastes. This information can then be used to plan and create new content that caters to user preferences and these geographic areas.
In conclusion, Tynt is a low maintenance tool that quietly works to drive SEO value to your site. It requires little effort once it is set up. If you have a client with engaging content, we recommend testing Tynt for a month to see if it can benefit as an easy supplement to your current linkbuilding efforts.
If anyone has any experiences with Tynt or questions about the tool, feel free to leave a comment below or reach me on Twitter at @alliebrown89.
Huge thanks to our resident Analytics junkie @RachaelGerson for introducing me to this tool!
Posted: 01.23.12
Guillermo Ortiz:
What an awesome tool. Will definitely look into using this for some of our clients since it tracks the stats for you. Thanks for sharing!
Allie Brown:
Thanks, Guillermo! I hope you find it helpful.
Even if it doesn’t result in too many quality links, I hope at least the copy & paste metrics provide some good insight on your content strategy.
livingseolife:
I found this fasinating. It’s a great tool not only for seo links but also to have a good insight of how my contents are being shared (so I can find out why and produce more of these). Great find great case study. You deserve a big thanks.
- Ferdous
Don:
I’ve been using Tynt for at least two years. Welcome to the party ;-)
Mike Gracen:
Interesting stuff. I will definitely be taking a closer look at this. thanks for the post!
Allie Brown:
@Ferdous – Thanks for the positive feedback!
@Don – Glad you’re aboard the Tynt train too. We’ve had this tool on our radar for a while, but never had solid data to share until now. :)
@Mike – Thank you for the comment. I hope this tool comes in handy for you.
Pedro Mendes:
Hi.
Great tip!
In feedburner is possible too, if you uses him, this a good option, don’t need migrate.
# Sorry for my english I am brazilian guy
livingseolife:
Thanks Alllie..I have got 10 links (3 Gold 3 silver and 4 bronze) in a single day on my personal blog!
Allie Brown:
@Pedro – Thanks for the comment!
@Ferdous – Nice to see that it’s working for your blog already. Thank you for sharing your results!
Yvonne:
I was skeptical when I first heard about this so thanks for this post! Can’t wait to see the results.
Virgil Ghic:
I’ve been using this tool for about a month, the problem is that as you said above 99% deletes the link. That’s sad especially if you invest a lot of time writing that article. Over all I love it, it helps to find which part of the article creates conversion.
Allie Brown:
@Yvonne – I’m glad to hear you’re going to test it out. Best of luck!
@Virgil – I agree. In this example, our client’s blog receives a ton of traffic, which is why we were able to get the 25 links out of it. But it’s definitely worth it from a content insight perspective.
David McClellan:
@Allie-
Do you think that this takes away from a positive user experience? I am making a case for Tynt and a question that came up was that people might be annoyed and turned off by it especially with the high rate at which people delete the link. Also, what copy parameters did you have Tynt set (eg. 8 words, 25 words, etc.).
Thanks
Allie Brown:
@David – Good questions. I think Tynt will ultimately cause a better user experience because you can use the data to determine which types of posts are valued by users based on the amount of copy+paste shares. I think the moral thing to do is attribute the original source when you take content, so hopefully they wouldn’t be too offended. Also, many times users do credit a source but choose to write it without linking back, which could be why so many removed the link.
I’d also consider showing them the list of companies that are currently using Tynt (http://www.tynt.com/about-tynt/clients#axzz1kbOytKsG). I think if it really hurt the user experience, they probably wouldn’t stick with the tool.
If you are really trying to push for it, see if you can convince your team to test it out for a month to see if it drives any results for your site. It’s a free service, so there’s not much to lose!
And as for the parameters, we set them at 7 words, but that decision is really up to you and what you think would be the best fit for your site. Hope this helps!
David McClellan:
Wow. Thanks for the help Allie. We are going to be jumping on a call with Tynt and hopefully implement it on one of our sites for a trial run. We have implemented it on a handful of pages but don’t think that it is enough data to make an educated decision. We may end up setting the parameters a bit higher. Thanks again.
Chris M:
I’ve been using Tynt for a while now and have seen some fantastic results, so if anyone is wondering.. Yes, it’s worth giving a go.
David Sottimano:
Wicked tool, thanks for sharing! I’m definitely going to try this out and publish some stats somewhere ;)
Shez:
Hi Allie,
its shez from twitter. I bookmarked this post at 25 Jan when you shared the link and today I just read it. well congrats for your first its very much informative.
We normally use Bitly[dot]com but your post just gave some creative ideas to boost Link building strategy.
Thanks again
shez
Allie Brown:
@David M – You’re welcome, and good luck with your trial run!
@Chris – I agree! Thanks for sharing :)
@David S – Please do test it out and let us know how it goes. We love reading the stuff you guys publish over at Distilled.
@Shez – Thank you! Hope you see some results from this.
Sean:
The only downfall is it does not work if you have share buttons for embed code. Any idea on a work around?
Was told it only works on right click copying of images
Allie Brown:
@Sean – It works if you use keyboard shortcuts to copy images or text too, not just right click.
I haven’t run into any issues with Tynt not working alongside share buttons, so I’m not sure how to help you out there. They do have a Tech Support question, so I’d ask them: http://www.tynt.com/support#axzz1mN6YuYif.
And thanks for the comment!