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.
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.
RSS Feed
