http://www.metroseo.com/2007/12/17/10-best-link-bait-articles/

Good luck, Quality Gal.

I’m not sure about Rands post on SEOMoz from 2006 though
( http://www.seomoz.org/blog/long-list-of-link-searches )

There’s some I agree with, but some I don’t…not sure how Rand feels about these today…but here’s my thoughts.

The Obvious:
I totally agree, search the Obvious, you’d be amazed sometimes.

Advanced Operators:
Rand lists these:
allintitle:snowboard equipment
allinanchor:snowboard equipment
allinurl:snowboard equipment
allintext:snowboard equipment

allintitle yes, allinanchor yes, allinurl….um…have a feeling you won’t get much there (’cept stores)…allintext….hum…never used that one…I figure if it shows up in a SERP, it’s got it in the text 99.99% of the time…

how about the most obvious advanced search operator (use yahoo):
linkdomain:yourcompetitor.com -linkdomain:yoursite.com

Alternative Search Sources:
…yup…he lists some nice ones there…

Directory Search Terms:
Personally, I don’t really think this has much use in 2008. Sure there’s less than 5 “major directories” that have any value….and “minor directories” are often tossed with the bathwater since there was so much link trade directory spam stuff.

Blog and Forum Searches:
Forums…eh, what real value is there as far a link juice that reaches your site if you’re posting for link value?

Blogs…oh man…

I wouldn’t dig too deep if your looking for blog links…you could dig yourself right into Hell.

Everyone around the office knows I’ve never been a fan of links from blogs (that aren’t natural…. and recently I’ve hated them a lot more than I normally do….blog links now have to pass many many more quality aspects before we’ll even think of contacting a blogger about anything.

Blogs have many drawbacks. If the person who owns the blog start selling links to people, over time that site gets added to multiple people/networks/databases, etc…and then you can be drawn into something you never intended to get in (a network).

Also you have to keep in mind that just because a blog is related, does not mean it’s a good link….these people selling links are spreading a disease that is like food to a hive of SEO Bees…once someone finds food/the blog who will sell links, the SEO’s go back to the hive and tell their friends…and some of these friends keep lists, and they tell their friends, and before you know it, the blog is getting paid left and right, sometimes over and over again, sometimes by the same guys…and then guess what….if you’re tied in with that…you can go down with that network.

The sad thing is that’s what’s being created out there with so many blogs. The ole MFA (Made For Adsense) blogs got turned into MFSL (Made for SEO Links) Blogs.

These can creates networks over time if they are used in that way..and one day….if you’re lucky, only the link value will be gone…if you’re not lucky you could drag your self right down with it.

Sure….there’s people who buy a bunch of blog links, some percentage of that “counts”, they move up…then the post gets burried in the sites internal link structure over time, and the rankings fall as the posts get aged. SO then they do it again…and again, they rise, then they sink….and if they keep doing this month after month, they’re going to map themselves into a network that they might not want to be in. It can be a dangerious path to start down.

sorry for the rant there…where was I?…oh yea Rands 2006 list…next was “Submit-Type Searches”.
Submit-Type Searches:
hum….I’d recommend that today as much as I’d recommend submitting your site to 2000 search engines. You’ll have the same effect.
Link Pages are dead, footprints also kill these that will show up for “add url, submit url, add site, etc phrases”, I’d estimate that 97% of what you’d find with these searches would be worthless,

Sure there’s alway someone who comes up to me with the “I submitted my site to 2000 directories last month, or I submitted my site to 100 blogs last month, or I did 2000 recip/one-way/3-way links last month, and then tell me that it’s working great for them today….and if they dip in rankings, they do it again, and if they keep doing it…they might not like the end result.

SOrry for the big rant….it was actually a much longer rant prior, but I lost it all once, and this is my short version off the top of my head…..Sorry also for taking the topic off topic of “content” QualityGal…I’m off my soap box.

First please read this post: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/long-list-of-link-searches

This is a good tool that automatically does what Rand is talking about: http://www.soloseo.com/tools/linkSearch.html

Here is a good link to check on your links and competitors links: http://www.linkpopularity.com/

and this is one of the better anchor text checkers: http://www.backlinkwatch.com/index.php

Hope it helps.

Thomas

Also, I enjoy reading Michael Gray:
http://www.wolf-howl.com/

The last one is for taking a break, getting inspiration and to see what type of content works (and why) and what type of content doesn’t (and why).

copyblogger.com
seobook.com
bruceclay.com
seomoz.org

linkbait specific articles:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/brainstorming-linkbait-a-four-step-approach
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/every-site-is-linkbait-linkerati-worthy
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/creating-content-that-appeals-to-a-linksavvy-audience

I really feel that QualityGal’s past 2 years of experience rating webpages make her perfectly qualified for this role within our company.

She’s already starting to rate….er, I mean, evaluate our content, and improve our content to ensure it matches the users intent as well as ensuring we have quality content.

Can ya help us out by sharing your favorite linkbait bookmarks, or other articles you think are great reads?

I’ll have her subscribe to these blogs as well:
SEOMoz - http://www.seomoz.org/blog
CornwallSEO - http://www.cornwallseo.com/search/
Dosh Dosh - http://www.doshdosh.com/

Who are others you recommend she learn from?