Who are the Linkerati?
The linkerati, a term created by Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz.org, are people who have the power to influence the flow of traffic to websites because of their willingness to create and share links. They can be important to the success of a website because quality links help websites gain higher placement in the search engines. They also help websites garner more website traffic, which translates into more potential for earning money through selling products and services, offering advertising spots, and even just providing links to information on another website. Bloggers are often considered important linkerati. This is because they often create and share links to other websites and blogs. Sometimes they even write about content found on other websites and blogs, garnering even more interest for the sites they link to. People who post on forums are considered among the linkerati as well. According to search engine optimization experts, the links provided by forum posters aren’t as well recei
In my comments from digg is Not Social Media Marketing someone asked me, what is a linkerati? In my arrogance and blinkered vision I expected everyone to know who the linkerati are. But not everyone spends most of their waking day immersed in the murky world of getting eyeballs to websites. Obviously I have to as I am a blogger whose goal is to teach and coach my readers to social media marketing nirvana. But not everyone knows the jargon and as this is a pretty new industry there are a lot of fresh new faces. So lets get down to basics. The linkerati is a term coined by Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz, and before you say it’s just a made up word, all words are made up. It’s not like when Humans decided to do the “language” thing they were giving a dictionary. If you ever want to get well known within an industry, invent a word which everyone will use describing something everyone is thinking about but can’t put a word to. Rand gives a nice rundown on what groups of people make up the linkerati
The web savvy bloggers, journalists, etc. Focus on tech centric link happy audience. Also keep users in mind. Linkbait opportunities: Go to various social media and news site. Look for industry relevant content. Look if competitiors have done successful campaigns. Get an idea of what works. Discover the big players in your field. Research blogs, forums, communities. Leverage community after launch. Target community appropriate to your subject. First – select a content focus – wrote blog post about “dating my ex was like playing doom 2 in nightmare mode”. Meld together branding and viral elements. Want to build brand value – brand association. Want to be on topic if you can, to get keyword relevance. Web 2.0 look and feel is good, but not essential. Some sketches on paper have gotten many Diggs. Make your link bait simple and user friendly. Target emotions, the emotions that make people link. The linkerati are emotional. They are angry, excited, like controversy – take advantage of this
