I was talking to a good friend about Technorati and how I feel they are really dropping the ball. Anyway the conversation had led to discussing the Technorati top 100. My friend mentioned if it was not for all the political bloggers he thought I would be in the top 50 let alone 100. I looked at the technorati top 100 and sure enough tons of political blogs. We joked about it for a bit and he sugested I make a pro-bush political post and just see what happens. I thought this would also be interesting cause it would be my first attempt at posting purely for buzz and links in mind. (I am always accused of linbaiting but the truth is I just write whats on my mind)
It was really interesting to see what happened.
I made the post at 3:14pm. Initially I put the category of the post as “linkbait” about 15 minutes later I switched this as every post was OMG THIS IS LINKBAIT (as you can see below). I thought this also kind of skewed the results a bit so i took it out for the first hour and placed it into the politics category.
Comments:
In the first hour more then 70 comments were placed. Some people were so adamant about getting there comment in that they even emailed me to see why it was not posted. This was by far the most commented on non contest post I had ever written time wise.
Comment Karma: More votes were given out in this post then ALL OTHER POSTS COMBINED
Chat Room
From the webmasterradio chat room which is probably the biggest and most active chat room for SEO people that I am aware of:
[23312]Caydel - http://www.shoemoney.com/2007/01/24/george-bush-greatest-president-ever/
[23312]Caydel - someone is angling for comments from angry readers
[23312]meta - wow that last url is a great linkbait
[23312]meta - or..... shoe money is one of the idiotic 28% of americans
[23312]meta - heh
[23312]Caydel - you mean the smart 28%....
[23312]Caydel - the idiots are the 72%
[23312]meta - the ignorami 28%? :)
[23312]Caydel - but yeah, complete linkbait
[23312]TechLH - whats the point of him linking to wikipedia twice
[23312]TechLH - something weird about that post
[23312]meta - double the love
[23312]Caydel - I think he wants to rank for "George Bush'
[23312]Caydel - lots of authority on his site, plus linking to another authority
[23312]Caydel - plus, by the time the comments are done, lots of Keyword mentions
There is much more discussion but the url www.shoemoney.com/2007/01/24/george-bush-greatest-president-ever was mentioned over 7 times in the chat room. Of the 200 chat messages 63 of them were referencing the post so it was roughly 30% of the entire conversation during the 1 hour the post was up.
Emails:
I recieved 18 emails in the first hour the post was up referencing the post. Most of them were asking if I was serious or not. Out of the 18 people who emailed me I had only ever corresponded with 2 of them ever before.
Forums
It only took a few mins for posts on both wickedfire and digitalpoint. I have not checked other forums but there maybe posts elsewhere.
Note To Self: If I ever blog for a living choose politics as my niche.
Caydel… that guys such a comedian.
Politics being the most popular topic in the blogosphere just goes to show that its mainly filled with people nothing better to do.
I love your experiments and how you share them. Nice man very interesting
Didn’t see that coming. 😉
post something good about bad people and this is what heppens
You don’t write linkbait, just attach a digg button to select posts (at random of course) 🙂
I loved the poll; that alone would probably incite people to comment. It was a good laugh Shoe; thanks.
The most amusing part of that post was all the comments freaking out about you supposedly deleting their previous comments about linkbait.
I love the comments by people that are taking the post seriously! Too funny,
Jack
Ha! Knew it…I pointed out it would have been the 52nd state on wickedfire. :p
I love when a half-thought out, somewhat illogical theory of mine gets quoted in one of the most read blogs in the search/internet marketing sphere…
That last post seemed like the most blatant linkbait you have posted so far. But with all the cash you’ve got rolling in, I figured the Republicans are probably treating you better anyways. 🙂
If you ever questioned Shoe’s marketing genius, this experiment should push you over the hump. Great job Shoe – your picture on this post is perfect! I hope you had a blast writing that piece, it looks like you did.
I love it! Pure brilliance. I have a political blog just so I have somewhere to let off steam other than making my wife listen to me all the time. It’s an occasional thing and I never expected any traffic because the Daily Kos and all of those eat up so much attention. When I get bored, I just make things up (articles about WMD being finally located in Vermont, things like that).
I actually don’t get any traffic to speak of, but every once in a while I look at my search logs and see some funny stuff. About a year ago, I noticed all sorts of people who were showing up searching on “Bush is Evil”. Went to Google and found out I was ranked #1 for the phrase (lately there’s a lot more competition for that phrase, so I’m sure I’m off the first page, though I haven’t checked in months).
The funny thing is I also had a post “Is Angelina Jolie a Good Person?” The post was letting off steam about all the people who care more about Angelina Jolie’s marriage than their own. Again, I never expected traffic what with People magazine having an Brangelina cover every two weeks, but to my surprise a dozen visitors a day trickled in for months.
Like you say Shoe, I didn’t intend any of it as link bait (and they got no links BTW), but it is amazing how pretty much any political/social topic you blog about, no matter how stupid, obscure or competitive, will eventually get natural traffic, even if you’re on page 50 of the Google results. For every blogger with too much time on his hands (e.g. me), there are 100 (or 1000) readers who *really* have too much time on their hands.
Whats interesting about the big marketing and money making blogs on the internet is the commenters… they’re generally either one of two… sychophants or haters.
And virtually all the haters no matter who’s blog they go to almost always come from Digg.
“Note To Self: If I ever blog for a living choose politics as my niche.”
Haha :). Or choose SEO and make posts that look like they MIGHT be link bait but also MIGHT be serious so other SEOs can debate whether or not you’re link baiting them :).
I thought your guy from Illinois was the greatest president.
Great experiment shoe! funny and proved quite a bit at the same time. 🙂
And yes, I was definitely standing up and clapping during the State of the Union address like all Americans … but I was just watching a game during that time 🙂
Interesting experiment. I didn’t know you were a fisherman, Shoe. Nice redfish.
Hi there!!! Signing your site… not bad at all!!! Simply and great!!! I wanna know your opinion about my 🙂
Lieber grumble!!! hoffe dir gehts gut da in der fremden weite… wenn man dich schon nicht persænlich besuchen kann…
Thanks so very much for taking your time to create this very useful and informative site. I have learned a lot from your site. Thanks!!
[…] Please read this post first before commenting. This was a 1 hour case study on political link bait. […]
You are evil I tell you evil!
😉
The Mad Ape
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[…] I can only think of 1 time I intentionally did a linkbait post asking if George Bush was a great president or greatest president ever? Then I followed up 1 hour later with the amazing results. […]
[…] I can only think of 1 time I intentionally did a linkbait post asking if George Bush was a great president or greatest president ever? Then I followed up 1 hour later with the amazing results. […]
[…] I can only think of 1 time I intentionally did a linkbait post asking if George Bush was a great president or greatest president ever? Then I followed up 1 hour later with the amazing results. […]
Todd go take some maths lessons as well.