Still on the subject of linkbait: I just had an experience that gave me a few ideas about how offline advertising of a URL can indirectly help a website's search engine rankings.

See, I've been offering blogging and Twitter lessons to people in Perth. As well as advertising in local newspapers (still the most effective method, it seems -- so print is not dead yet!) I've been distributing little home made flyers throughout the suburbs of Perth.

Now, yesterday I got a call from a woman who asked if I was the guy who was offering these lessons, and she told me that she'd read about them via the West Australian newspaper's "Inside Cover" section recently. (That's just an assortment of locally oriented observations, many of them quirky and humorous.) However there was no URL or phone number mentioned. She had acquired my number after phoning that page's editor and asking if he knew it.

It turned out that he'd received one of my little basic flyers in his letterbox. Being a bit of an old-school journalist who wasn't into blogging, Twitter and all the rest he'd found it surprising that someone would offer to teach these skills. It was an illustration of how much times had changed, he wrote, remarking on how these flyers traditionally advertise such offline services as gardening, plumbing, and babysitting.

Now he didn't mention the URL in the story, but he could have. (And I know for a fact that URLs are mentioned in print because I have had this happen as a result of flyer drops previously.) And if he had done so that would have helped a lot. That paper's circulation is huge, after all. And even if it hadn't been listed in the online version of the paper (thereby functioning as a backlink) it would have increased the likelihood of others in Perth linking to it.

In any case I think the main thing to remember is that he wrote the little snippet because he found the flyer so unusual. So, just as you should try and make your blog posts and articles stand out from the online crowd, do the same with your offline website advertising. If you can, try and make it funny or witty, or put some sort of an intriguing angle into it.

If you do this you may well provoke a local blogger (or even mainstream journo) to write something about it. And while a backlink is not guaranteed, it's possible.

You can certainly increase the chances that one is included by featuring it on your advertising material. And even one or two of these from well regarded websites strongly associated with your city could be gold for local SEO.

Social media is going absolutely gangbusters these days, and is very useful for anyone with a website or blog. The more people you connect with online in your niche, the more you learn, and the greater the likelihood of getting those valuable, natural one way links to your URL.

But you shouldn't forget offline social networking. (You know, the real world activities people used to engage in during the olden days before the internet completely took over our lives!)

Of course, you can use the big social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin to find get-togethers in the real world. However they do lend themselves much more to online networking.

One site that is much more focused on offline activities is Meetup. Joining this site could be a really good move for anyone with a locally oriented business website or blog. For those in Perth, where I live, there's this group. I might even go there myself some day.

I'm surprised that there aren't many other sites like Meetup. But Zenergo looks like a new and promising social networking site with more of an offline focus.

Of course there are plenty of other ways to network with locals in your niche. I just did a search for "meet bloggers in Perth" and several seemingly independently organized events popped up (mostly mentioned on blogs -- funny, that!).

You could even organize and promote such a gathering yourself. Not only would the event itself be a great way of making valuable contacts in your locality and niche, but just the act of writing about it on a blog could actually be good linkbait.

Firstly, you might get some bloggers linking to the details about when and where it will be held. Then if you took some photos and/or videos at the actual get-together and posted them afterwards, that content could generate still more links down the track.

People are increasingly using search engines to find local information and websites. One thing that will help a locally oriented business site get more of this quality traffic is if it can get some one way links from other blogs and news sites targeting the area.

Links from news sites are particularly beneficial because they are generally well regarded by Google. Say you had a Perth based website and scored a mention in an article in the West Australian. If it were included as a dofollow link it would be gold SEO-wise. But even if just the name of it were mentioned it would help. Lots of people would find the site and have a look. As a result you'd have a good chance of scoring one or more links from local bloggers or even other news sites.

But getting that kind of free publicity would be difficult unless you had an already well known business in a niche that lent itself to such coverage such as entertainment or event management. You'd probably have better luck with smaller, local newspapers such as those published by the Community Newspaper Group. A link from one of their online editions would would be very valuable.

The trick would be to make what you do newsworthy somehow. Say you had a cafe. You could hold some sort of event in it such as a coffee appreciation class. You could teach people about different blends, and give away some freebies. That's just the kind of thing a local, community journo might find interesting.

You could just e-mail the editor to try and get the paper's interest. Or you could use Twitter. Considering how much journos love to tweet you could jot down some of their names from your local paper and search for them on the site. You'd be sure to find a few sooner or later.

After building some rapport with them you could mention or even direct message them about your idea. (But I wouldn't DM them too early. They'd probably just ignore you if they didn't know who you were.) Even if they didn't go for your first attempt, you would have made connections that may well bear fruit further down the track.