Scoreboard Media Group, Internet Audience Development

Stephen Colbert (pronounced “Coal-BURT”, if your name rhymes with Neil Patel) occasionally does a bit called, “The Craziest F*@#%ing Thing I’ve Ever Heard!”  Right now, that’s how I feel about this ignorant Link Ninjas vs. Linkbaiters psuedo-meme floating around SEO circles.

First of all, let’s just agree on this up front…if you are engaged in the Competitive Internet, whether for clients or for your Lazy SEO endeavors, if you don’t know how to Link Ninja or Linkbait, you are up Shit Creek without one or more paddles.  Both are necessary skillsets and they are not substitute goods.  That should be the end of the conversation right there, but the whitest of white hats will argue that until they are blue in the face. 

Let’s say you are trying to rank for something like [mortgage] instead of [Quahog PPC Manager] and you have a budget of $5,000/month.  You can call up your Link Ninja and they’ll probably get you between 75 and 125 really good links.  Some of these links may provide immediate traffic.  They will likely produce zero mindshare.  And, let’s not forget, at the end of the day, we seek mindshare above all else.

Now, let’s say you call up that grey-to-black hatted jackass that non-Threadwatchers love to hate.  You give him $5,000 to play with.  There is about a 65% chance you’ll come back with a piece that made it to the frontpage of one or more major Social News & Media sites.  That will yield between 500 to 2500 links.  It will bring you 30,000 visitors.  And all those visitors, if it was crafted correctly, have now yielded you a significant mindshare event. 

So, I don’t know if this is a Generation Gap thing or a bunch of sub-par SEO firms without Social Media Assets are spreading FUD to keep clients.  But the facts are indisputable…given the opportunity for your subject matter to be viral (and you can just about take anything viral)…Linkbaiting is your better ROI than Link Ninja’ing, all else held constant. 

Bruce Lee cannot defend Japan from the Enola Gay.  That’s about what it boils down to and pardon my Texan insensitivity to bombing people.  That said, the smart money is on teaching Bruce Lee how to fly the Enola Gay. 

Now THAT is the Craziest F*@#%ing Thing I Have Ever Heard…and I love it.

Lastly, the term Linkbaiting is stupid and something I am really advocating against a lot wherever I’m engaged.  I tend to run with “Viral Content” type references, but do yourself a favor and read Copyblogger’s take on it all.