Why a Link from The New York Times Doesn’t Matter
A post recently flew out and received some attention about getting a link from the New York Times. This link was the end result of a linkbait exercise by the wordstream team, the proud owners of a shiny new link from a noteworthy national publication.
Links were the goal of the exercise, primarily one from a national publication. SEER would be fired by clients if we brought them zero sales, but let them know they were linked by The New York Times, WSJ, or another national publication.
This type of exercise creates a lot questions from clients about how many links their site gained this week/month. Companies that constantly ask how many links weve landed for them are companies that have a short history with SEER, because the focus on links is a performance indicator where 3 link that drive traffic & sales are better than 1000 links that don’t.
A linkbait plan with poor goals is also a poor use of time. In 2008, SEER had Friday linkbait/alcoholic refreshment linkbait brainstorm meetings that lasted all of about 2 weeks because we found they were a giant waste of time. They produced a few ideas, but there were several other more productive routes to get links that provided solid traffic that also converted.
Linkbait that creates links but no traffic or conversions is like fishing and constantly having your bait stripped from the line.
True story, SEER recently had a client that received a link from The New York Times. Within a few days, this link was buried in the site beneath hundreds of new articles. We saw no uptick in traffic and no increase in sales. For SEO purposes, I would have taken a link from a subpar mommy blog in exchange for the NYT link.
Creating a plan for linkbait is not the first step to take in linkbuilding efforts. Unless there is a great case for jumping into a linkbait, talking with your client will provide far better results. Some of the GREATEST links you can achieve for clients are through using what your clients already have, but looking at it from a different perspective.
Time and time again, we ask clients in depth questions about items that would go unnoticed if they were to try & get links on their own (and hopefully they dont read that they need backlinks and go out & buy 5000 directory links:).
- I dont need to know names, but what universities did your VPs attend?
- What goes on at your offices that is unique?
- What are some companies you have worked for/with in the past where you still have a good relationship?
- You sell a lot of items. What would you be willing to give away?
How did our client get a link from About.com? Find out where their employees have previously worked.
How did our client get a link from 3 of the top 20 magazines in the US (that drove traffic & sales)? Find products your client can give away & write them.
How do I get a link from an ivy league school? Ask where your clients went to school, where their bosses went to school, where the CEO went to school, where their interns go to school.
These are some basic questions that create TRAFFIC, LEADS and SALES which are some pretty typical performance indicators. Without asking detailed questions and taking an interest in activities inside & outside the business, these achievable linking opportunities would not be uncovered.
Linkbait has a place in SEO, but our clients dont pay the bills with links from the New York Times that dont bring traffic & sales.
Posted: 02.25.10
Tom Demers:
Hey There,
My name’s Tom Demers, I’m with WordStream. Interesting take: I’d agree that links that drive direct sales and leads are very valuable. I’d also agree that things like getting links from vendors and friendly companies and getting links from Ivy League schools are very valuable.
But what’s the difference between a link from an Ivy league school and a link from the NYT? We’ve used the same tactic and it almost never drives sales/leads/relevant traffic. Not unlike a lot of link baits, though, it drives traffic indirectly, by improving your domain authority, link popularity, and trust and allowing you to rank for the term. In a lot of query spaces it’s enough to pull together as many nepotistic links as possible, but for more competitive verticals to drive large volumes of traffic you often have to implement more leveraged means of attracting link popularity, and some times the best means of doing that is with link bait.
Plenty of sites drive tons of traffic without gimmicky link baits, and many sites drive a lot of traffic and develop great rankings on really heavily searched terms on the back of well-thought-out link baits. If this isn’t an area of expertise then it very well may make more sense to focus on other types of link building, and if it is then it may be a much more leveraged means of generating a lot more link attention than some of those outlined above.
Anyway I wouldn’t disagree with your approach, and I’m glad you’ve seen success with it and have happy clients, thanks for the comment: interesting rebuttal!
Jon Payne:
Wil – Amen. We had a client with a real nice link from a couple of major media sites (shall remain nameless) recently too, and also didn’t see much impact in terms of rankings and search value. The traffic was decent but very much not on target (not buyers).
Adam:
Tom – definitely good points. As far as ivy league schools, we saw traffic & leads from these, although I’ve seen better with some community college links. As John also saw above, the NYT link did not lift the rankings for the keyword that had the anchor text. While we don’t expect one link to ever do the job for a specific word, the keyword targeted actually decreased in rankings. Many other factors involved of course, but the link didn’t drive traffic, sales, or increase rankings.
Another post we’ve been meaning to kick out is how much time to spend on linkbait. Definitely worth doing with clients who are flexible and don’t have the red tape, but others may decline on 19/20 ideas that could be killer. Worth thinking them out & presenting? Maybe. Worth spending a lot of time developing? Definitely not unless the client gives you a big green light.
As we’ve said in several other posts, it’s always better to do something than nothing. In this instance, we want to provide realistic expectations for our clients on what is a big link win and what is a link that’s just nice to talk about. Hopefully your NYT link was more helpful than ours. We thought it would be great for our client but were definitely wrong. Thanks for the reply!
Jon – thanks for the info too!
Josh Ziering:
I agree with Wil — links for the sake of links is fine for a case study, but if those links don’t provide intrinsic value to the client, they aren’t worth much. Carefully designed linkbait will make it easy for people to include keywords in the anchor text and then you’ll have one way inbound links from authoritative sites with your keywords, something that will help your rankings.
Josh
Jon Payne:
Adam – sorry I totally assumed Wil wrote this in my previous comment. I won’t make that mistake again!