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Link Attraction BS

I  really like ReadWriteWeb, but the guest post they are running about “Link Attraction Factors: Getting Dugg and Going Viral” by guest author Dan Zarella is the kind of post that tends to get under my skin.

Dan did some interesting research on how Digg stories go viral and what kind of keywords attract Diggers, but I think it’s a bit of a stretch to take that data and then write posts fitting those profiles:

The Keyword Tool analyzes a specific word or phrase and returns the average number of links a story mentioning that keyword got in 2007. While the Title Check Tool analyzes an entire title string and shows you which words tend to increase links and which tend to decrease links. These tools can be used by webmasters or social media consultants to help them tweak their copy for optimal social media link attraction, or by other researchers looking to expand on my work.

Sure – if your whole idea is getting links and driving ‘traffic’ – go for it. But no matter what keywords you put into your posts, unless you have something interesting to say, no ’social media consultant’ is going to keep those readers coming back for more.

The title of his own post, by the way, was at best a mediocre way to attract links.

thanks for your thoughts Frederic, I didn’t name the report in hopes of getting lots of links and I completely agree that good content is what keeps people coming back. But there’s great content that no-one wants to read, these tools help people understand what types of content others like to read and link to. Its about understanding what people want to see so you can give that to them.

Dan actually didn’t write the title on the post (that was me). And, well, we got you to link to it, right?