• Register
• Log in

SEO Theory - SEO Theory and Analysis Blog

Algorithm analysis, Web community relationship analysis, SEO practices and techniques, industry news, etc.

• Home
• About SEO Theory
• SEO Glossary

Avoiding the unsustainable link-baiting pyramid scam

Posted by Michael Martinez on May 3, 2007 in Link Theory, Web spam

It’s only a matter of time before link baiting becomes so formulaic that people launch “build your link bait reputation” schemes. There are already proto-pyramid link baiting schemes rolling through the blog community. I participated in the popular “blog tag” game earlier this year, as did Matt Cutts of Google and many other reputable people.

Inventing new ways to link to other people, and to attract links, is a perfectly fine thing to do. I have nothing against it. But contriving a link manipulation scheme so that it becomes a scam is not, in my opinion, a fine thing to do at all.

Has anyone done it? I can’t really say. There are far too many blogs, forums, and Web sites out there for me to form an opinion on whether it’s been done. But all the reciprocal blogging I’ve been seeing over the past few weeks makes me wonder what is brewing in the blog community.

I have often said that about the only difference between most so-called “Black Hat SEO” techniques and so-called “White Hat SEO” techniques is excess. If a Web promotion idea works and if it can be implemented in volume, spammers will abuse it to their advantage. Many people who start learning about search engine optimization by reading blogs and forums (and tutorials) often incorporate known spam techniques into their strategies without realizing it.

So it would not surprise me to learn that people become encumbered in a twisted link baiting game that works very much like a multi-level marketing structure. In classic multi-level marketing, you recruit as many people as you can to join your “sales team”. They each, in turn, recruit as many people as they can to join their own sales teams. If you keep the process going long enough, you’ll end with a large sales group.

Under certain structures, these types of sales organizations are perfectly legal. The problem is that they cannot statistically deliver on the implied promise of wealth for everyone who joins. Success in the multi-level marketing industry does, in fact, come from hard work — and much of that hard work involves selling. But you can only sell so much product and you’ll eventually subscribe to the concept of “multiplying your effort through others”.

Build your sales organization to go out and sell product to many more channels than you can serve and you’ll realize great success. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people who strive to build their successful sales organizations fail to realize that success. They don’t have enough friends, relatives, and associates who need “a little extra money” to build up a large enough group. Or they are not great motivators. Or they’re just a little too pragmatic and realistic to want to do more than actually pick up a little extra money each month.

Here’s where link baiting can be perverted into a scam. You can contact a dozen of your Web friends and say, “Hey, I’m starting a new link baiting program and I could use your help.” You write an article about this great link baiting program, where you briefly outline how it works. In the article you tell people how you’ve spent years trying to figure out the best way to get links. You’ve tried every trick in the book. Nothing works.

But now you have the secret to link baiting success. All you have to do is create a great value that people will want to link to, and you’re done. But wait, there’s more! Anyone can share in the program. All they have to do is tell a few of their friends about the program and they’ll be able to join in.

There’s no registration fee, no motvational seminars, no product to sell. It’s not a “sales” or “marketing” task at all. All you have to do is link to the Great Link Baiter’s blog and tell your friends to do the same.

So they link to the link baiter’s blog and then you write your article, explaining how you’ve spent years looking for link success and you’ve tried all the tricks. Nothing worked. But now you’ve joined with other people in building a great link baiting program and you’re going to share the secret. That’s right, your article now shares the secret you got from the Great Link Baiter.

So now you ask people to link to your article and to tell their friends.

Hey, you can even toss in a paragraph about your brother-in-law is an attorney and he says this is all perfectly legal. Just ask people to link to the Great Link Baiter’s article and your article and then to write their own articles. But to make sure the list of links doesn’t grow too large, tell people to remove the top link from the list and add their own article to the bottom.

Cut it off at, say, six links.

That way, as more people join the Great Link Baiting program, they’ll only be linking to at most six other articles in their own articles. And they’ll be so excited and enthusiastic about the program they’ll ask all their friends to join it and they’ll get more links and then their friends will benefit too and….

And it won’t stop. It will keep going around like the Good Times virus hoax, the Nieman Marcus cookies hoax, the Bill Gates $1000 email hoax, the save-some-dying-child hoax, etc.

It doesn’t have to happen this way. It can happen in many ways that don’t even vaguely resemble the “six names on my list” scam. It can happen on any blog, any forum, any Web site.

It will involve requests for links that are coupled with dreams of glory and promises of linking success because all you have to do is get your friends to help you.

Remember that search engine rankings are not determiend by links. They are influenced by link manipulation. The difference between real search engine optimization and link manipulation is….

Guess…

Don’t peek…

EXCESS.

The next time someone proposes that you link to their great article, ask yourself: Is this something I would normally link to if I discovered it on my own? If the person asking for a link is your friend or relative, sit them down and say, “Hey, you ever get an email that looks like….”