Link development can take FOREVER - unless you: Pay for Manual Submissions - which can be hit and miss for quality Linkbait: in other words, create a peice of content through any means that captures your market and makes them sound off on the issue. A few of the common factors that I've noticed from successful linkbait campaigns are: Appeals to Basic Emotion: ie Fear, Laughter, Heartache, Embarrasment Eye Catching and Simple: Graphics and Interaction is appealing and easy to understand. Encompasses the target audiences "State Of Mind": The language used including slang and graphic appeal determines exactly how long the person viewing the peice of creativity will remain on the page.(excluding outside distractions of course) - and whether or not they will interact and pass the page along. Intelligent Promotion: What I mean by this term is, the linkbait may be great, but I've noticed some pretty nice peices turning up with the wrong result. Sometimes the location of the piece is inappropriate(wrong target audience , websites visitors aren't on same wave length) or perhaps the sources that are told of the linkbait are indifferent. Ok, so in other words, it can be hard to actually get your linkbait into the right hands. In any case, I think this might be a good place to start a brainstorm on potentially successful linkbait pieces, here's my first idea to get the list started: Potentially Successful Linkbait, IDEA #1 For games related sites, give out awards to regular users of your arcade. Have a login that records their progress(logintime) and give out "KICKASS GAMER LVL 99 at YOURWEBSITE.COM" badges they can post to their forum sigs and personal pages. Adding "levels" to the badge concept, regardless of the resulting links, is a great way to keep them interested in coming back to your website to"win" reputation in the community you will build as a result. I'd love to hear some other ideas for successful campaigns, I'm going to add some more as I think of them myself.
This is a good thread.. I think we need to follow up on this idea. I think badges or widget will be great.. I can't think of any at the moment but I really love to hear any opinion on this technique.