When Linkbait Goes Mental
Online marketers who are searching for ways to bring more traffic to their sites will often be told to produce Linkbait content. The caveat should, of course, be that the content of the linkbait should be true.
Recently a high-profile example of what many would call unethical SEO practice stirred up some controversy. A blog posting (titled When Linkbait goes MENTAL!!!), by Lyndon of CornwallSEO, bragged about how Lyndon was able to dupe several news outlets to report on a fake story that he created.
The story ran in credit card site, money.co.uk, the UK Sun tabloid, BBC’s Radio One and was discussed on Fox News (see below).
Lyndon’s stated purpose for the article was to fabricate a story in order to get inbound links. Lyndon said:
…none of it is true, it’s a completely made up yarn. How do I know? I wrote it. It’s what I do for a living. I write content for websites which creates a buzz and hopefully gets links and people to the intended target.
The story was specifically crafted to appeal to the online crowd and included a number of “hot buttons” which resonated with people of a certain mindset.
Pandering to prejudices? Absolutely.
The intention was to create something so unbelievably magnetic that people had to pass it on and tell others in the form of linking to it, sticking it on their TV show, printing it up, and chatting about it on a radio show.
Did I know the story was going to be this big? No of course not, but it is what I aim for. Whether or not a piece of content goes viral is not up to me. The factors which decided the success of such a thing are too numerous to quantify and compute.
Not surprisingly, many left comments pointing out the ethical problems with this linkbait method. The surprising thing for me was how many encouraging comments there were.
What are your thoughts? Is creating fake news stories as unethical as I believe it is, or does the profit motive justify any tactic?
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May 16th, 2008 at 9:48 am
[...] http://www.widerfunnel.com/traffic-building/when-linkbait-goes-mental [...]
May 17th, 2008 at 8:16 am
Yes you’re right with this increasing social apps like opensocial from Google we need to be on the social line to get more benefits, its gonna take a lot of new market ventures in short time.
May 18th, 2008 at 12:23 am
[...] few days. For those that missed out, Lyndon Antcliff went public with an outrageously successful linkbait case study, in which he generated half a million page views and media mentions from Fox News and The Sun [...]
May 19th, 2008 at 7:46 am
This is why as a blogger or a publisher of any type its becoming more and more important to verify and research your stories so that you can avoid becoming a sucker to stories like this.
May 19th, 2008 at 11:04 am
@Doug
I agree that news publishers, including bloggers, need to verify our sources. I can’t comment on the fact-checking processes Fox and BBC have in place. A talented Con Man knows how to craft a fraudulent story that overcomes normal fact-checking filters, however.
We’ll always have Con Men, but the more important issue here to me is that there’s a brazen group of people discussing in public how to lie to millions for their own financial benefit. It’s being applauded and justified (and derided by some, thankfully).
May 28th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
I’m still beating my head on the wall that I was so gullible as to not know you could use a credit card to buy a hooker now. Does that mean the local street cocaine dealer takes mastercard and visa as well?
May 30th, 2008 at 11:02 am
@Jan
Funny. I don’t have personal experience, but I believe the story was that the kid rented them through an agency?
I ran into another related article this morning that may help Marketers that have lost their ethical basis for how to promote their products:
http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/goldsmith/2008/05/when_is_spinning_the_message_a.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-WEEKLY_HOTLIST-_-MAY_2008-_-HOTLIST0529