What I'm not:

• A hot-shot SEO firm owning search engine marketer with a nice smile.
• I don’t have a blog with 5,000 subscribers.
• I don't speak at big time SEO conferences like Pubcon and the Elite Retreat.
• I don't grab lunch with Matt Cutts, or spend the weekend in foreign countries with Danny Sullivan.
• I don't have any contacts in prominent positions anywhere in the in the industry.
• Hell, I don't even have an SEO contract.

By David Chase

1. Do Linkbait, Dingbat

It's not "cutting edge" search engine marketing anymore.  It's an inescapable priority.  Doing linkbait isn't a 'special' service; it’s a very necessary one.  If you're a Search Marketer and not taking advantage of the social web, you might as well be a basketball player running the floor barefoot.  What's your excuse?  "My clients have boring subject matter?"

Let me share a little something with you: I hit the first page of Digg for a B2B company whose content is as boring as a college science textbook.  To be more specific, some of the site's major terms are "benchmarking data," "root cause analysis," and "organizational assessments."

This particular piece of linkbait brought the site over 40,000 unique visitors and over 500 backlinks and counting  (within a 3 day period).

You should already know the residual benefits of something like this.

The process?

I'm not a writer (lol, couldn't have fooled you anyway, right?), so I went hunting for one:

I use Elance and Scriptlance (my favorites, amongst many others).

I found a columnist for the L.A. Times who writes 700 word articles for less than the cost of lunch for a week.  Talk about press releases that get picked up by major publications like the plague - but that's an article for another time.

You got your writer, now you need an idea:

"Brainstorming" is the easiest part of the puzzle (but this is very market dependent).  If you're the SEOmoz staff, it might be necessary to invest hours, if not days, even weeks, trying to find the next big topic to rattle the community in the internet marketing world.

If your site sells watches:

"Why Wearing a Watch Gives You a 22.3% Better Chance of Landing a Hot Date"

If your site sells vacuum cleaners:

"5 Reasons Why Men Who Vacuum Regularly Are Lousy Lovers" 

If your site sells human resource solutions to fortune 500 companies:

"5 Top Factors that Affect Your Employee's Productivity" 

Take a page out of Chris's "Headline Remixes" over at copyblogger.  Be extremely conversational in your titles; diggers love these like a fat kid loves cake.  (Yes, I like 50 Cent too.)

Getting Dugg - what makes this linkbait article better than all others even though it's a grammatical mess.

• Leech off Their Reach

If you are reading this blog, you probably have been involved or are just getting involved in the SEO community.  You've purchased a premium subscription from SEOmoz, or bought the SEO Book from Aaron.  You've purchased access to SEO Black Hat's SEO Forums, contracted link building services from Jim Boykin over at We Build Pages, or maybe you've done nothing but read blog posts.  The point is, you are part of the community.

Simply send an email to some of these authors, bloggers, product owners, and ask them to digg your article.  Here's an email to SEOmoz's very own Rebecca Kelley just last week:

Hi Rebecca, I think you guys do a great job.  Thank you very much for sharing your expertise and passion with the SEO community.  I read many business related blogs everyday and I have to say you and Mr. Fishkin's posts are the best. I have a blog as well.  Its in the Human Resource and Market Research market.  I recently posted an article written by one of our organizational psychologists titled: 5 Top Factors that Affect Employee Productivity

I was wondering if you could digg the article and maybe promote it amongst your contacts if you find it worthy of doing so. Thanks again for your work and impact on the community, I look forward to seeing you and the rest of the seomoz team at Pubcon '07!

Thanks,

David

Result: Rebecca found the article interesting and dugg it.

Rebecca has lots of friends on Digg. I'm sure those friends saw her digg and dugg what she dugg.  (You following me?)

Send a similar email to other people in the community, let them know you appreciate their work and ask them to help promote your article.  You might be surprised at just how available and helpful they are.

Article Layout:

I like 2 “call to actions” in the article. "Please digg this!" on top and at the very bottom of the article: Just like this: "PLEASE DIGG THIS!"

Don't be afraid to ask for the digg.  From what I've noticed, diggers actually think it's cool when your site is about something completely unrelated to technology but the owners of the site still are aware of social media and "Digg" in particular.  This gives extra kudos points.

Add a few relevant pictures (I like 123RF.com) - nothing groundbreaking here.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING

Probably the most important thing is to get your article initially posted on digg by a power user.  Just find blog authors who blog about social media optimization and ask them to post your article to digg.   It's really that easy - granted that your content isn't complete junk.  Then instant message your friends ask them to digg the article to get the ball rolling.  (if they don't have digg accounts, ask them to sign up for one), send some emails to the seo/marketing community, and if the content is engaging, you have a winner.

You can email David Chase your feedback at: David2288 -at- gmail.com 

Part 2 of the 5 part series is: The Synergistic Power of Organic Rankings and Paid Search