Link Building with Ego Bait

Hello and welcome to. Seo is not that hard. I'm your host, ed Dawson, the founder of keywordspeopleusecom, the place to find and organize the questions people ask online. I'm an SEO developer, affiliate marketer and entrepreneur. I've been building and monetizing websites for over 20 years and I've bought and sold a few along the way. I'm here to share with you the SEO knowledge, hints and tips I've built up over the years with you, the SEO knowledge, hints and tips I've built up over the years. Hi there, ed here. Welcome to this latest episode of SEO is not that hard.

Today, I'm going to be talking about link building using egobait. Now, egobait, let's just define it. To start with, basically, what we're trying to do here is we're trying to generate links to our website. What we're trying to do here is we're trying to generate links to our website by stoking or stroking other people's egos. So this is where, instead of writing a piece of of getting those people or organizations to link back to our website, and we're going to do that by actually creating some content that is actually going to feature them in a way that's going to make them want to link back to us. So this is just playing on the fact that most people. If you talk about them, they're going to listen. Um, you know, I've had pages written about me or about my companies, um online, and whenever they come up, whenever I come across them, or whether whenever I'm introduced to them by the person who's written them, I'm going to pay attention in a way that I'm not going to to any other content, and it's not just specific to me. I think everyone in the world, every company, every organization, every person, is going to feel the same about that. So let's look at some different types of ego bait.

The three types that I think work best are interviews, roundupup posts and awards. So let's dive into each one. So the first one is interviews, right? So in this one, what you do is where you feature the influencer that you're trying to get a link from and you interview them. This could be a podcast interview, it could be a one-on-one interview where you actually speak to them and write an interview, or it could just be where you send them a whole bunch of questions and ask them to reply back with written answers. Obviously, it depends on how well you know this person to get in front of them, but I think you'll find that most people like being approached for this kind of thing. So if you were to just contact them, however, and ask them what their favorite format is, then you'd probably like to get a response from them, and what you do is you come up with some good questions, hopefully thoughtful questions, that help tease out their expertise, helps them talk about themselves and helps them promote themselves, essentially, and then you create an article, a post, from that, put it on your website.

Like I say, if it's a podcast, you might make a podcast out of it and you might, from a podcast, also make a written transcript from that and create a written piece of content from that. I've certainly been interviewed on other podcasts where obviously, I've been featured in the podcast and then also they've subsequently created written content from that. Obviously, once you've got your interview post up and live with them, you obviously want to share it with them and say, hey, I've got the, I've got the interview live. Thanks doing it for us. Do you mind sharing it with you? Know, on your website and with your followers, and you'll find you know, lots of times people are quite happy to do that. I've certainly shared across my socials, other places, anywhere that I've been um interviewing any podcast I've been on, so these things work really well and you know, there's no way I would have necessarily promoted those people's websites if they'd just come to me and said will you promote my website for no reason whatsoever? Do a bit of ego bait? I'm straight in and, like you, would be too. Now, roundup post is very similar to doing interviews, except you're not just featuring one person and you're going to feature experts across your industry and this is likely to be less in-depth on that one person and more about a particular, say, trending topic or particular technical item, something like that, where you are going to get a range of people to quote across it. Obviously, the great thing about this is you can essentially do the same things in to use, but it's a bit more short form for each person who's been featured, less of a input required from them, it's more likely going to be just written responses rather than like a podcast type thing. But you get to cover more people, you get to stroke more egos and therefore you more, more like to get more backlinks or more, more shares from these influencers, these people, these experts that you want to get recognition from, so similar I mean. You'll have seen these things. I'm sure that, as you've come across web pages, websites, doing this exact same thing.

Then awards the third one Now this one, yeah, works better better, I think with companies than the first two. The first two tend to be very personal, related. Um, you know, it's hard to interview a company. Obviously you can approach a company founder, but it's hard to interview a company, whereas a company you can give an award to, and companies like to share awards. In fact, most awards that people enter and have to share, they actually pay to enter.

There's businesses out there that make a whole living out of creating award ceremonies and then enticing people to apply. Often they have to pay to apply and to get to the awards ceremony they have to pay for a table. Um, and you know, essentially it's just an events company that's sucking people in by giving out, uh, you know, creating awards, categories and then getting people to come and pay to be at the you know overpriced seats at their award ceremonies. You don't. If you don't pay for your table, you don't get to go. And even if you pay for a table, you're not guaranteed to win anything.

But that slightly digresses from using it for link building. If you're using it for link building, you might look at it slightly differently. I think I've actually spoken about this in a previous podcast, about how you can specialize in using awards as a way of gaining links and getting your other websites, sometimes even competitors, to talk about. We used it with Borbonic UK. We gave out awards for, let's say, the best supplier, the fastest supplier, the one with the best reviews, all those kind of things, and that's the kind of thing that can get those companies to link back to you, because if you've been given an award, they like to tell people, hey, we've been rewarded this award and they'll link back to you. So, again, that's a way of stroking the ego of a company, although awards also works fine for individuals as well. Um, say, just, it works that much better with companies as well.

Other types of ego bait include things like listicles, such as where you might do a. You know the top 50 seo experts you should be following this year, um, where you can just list a whole load of people and hopefully, you know you can either contact them directly and say, hey, we've been, you've been covered, do you want to share it? Or you know they might hope they might find it themselves. The more you think people you put in you know you might find that, um, they're less likely to want to sort of promote their competitors. Also, if they're too closely related to what you do, you might find that kind of thing isn't quite sophisticated enough for them, um, but it can work really well, um, and it's obviously a lot easier to put together than having to think about questions or do awards or, you know, do that kind of that kind of level of effort. But because it's low effort the reward might not be quite as great, but it's worth a try. And also, directories Directories can also be quite a good ego bait, especially if you're putting together very specific directories.

So sometimes, directories of, say, keyword tools. You might find that doing something like that you might get keyword tool suppliers might link to you if you're covering their directory. But yeah, again, tends to be less effective than the ones where you actually try and get people's input into them or create very specific awards for them. But still, all those kind of things can be worth a try. But just to finish, the key thing with any ego bait is A getting people on board with it. Kind of things can be worth a try. But just to finish right, the key thing with any go bait is a getting people on board with it.

If you can get people on board to give an interview or to be interested in an award, you know getting people's input up front can really help, especially for those very specific ones where you're going to feature someone in depth and then follow up. The follow-up is really, really important because if you don't ask people to link back to you or to share it with their audience, then they're not necessarily going to do it. So always follow up and just suggest oh yeah, would you maybe consider sharing it. Don't make it a condition of doing the piece they don't if you don't want to make that condition up front, because it will put people off if you do that. But once it's been done, if you've covered people in a way that that's nice to them, they like it, you know you've made them look good. Just ask them to share it. You'll find they're more like they are and you might get your link and your social shares and that's where it's going to be worthwhile. So I hope that's been useful and given you maybe a new idea to think about when you're looking at doing link building. Um, if you've got any questions and then do give me a shout and, yeah, look forward to seeing you next time.

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