I’ve always struggled to understand how widgetbait would be an effective linking strategy for most businesses. Of course, Matt Inman demonstrated how it can work (and fail) for dating websites, which automatically translated in my brain to ‘working for markets that are fun and not to be taken too seriously.’ But how does it work in industries like insurance or tractor engines?
Since university, I’ve had a private LiveJournal blog where I communicate with several friends. Upon checking my Friends Page this morning, I saw a quiz on a friend’s journal titled “How Long Could You Survive Chained to a Bunk Bed with a Velociraptor?” My friend scored 57 seconds, so of course I had to try the quiz and see how long I lasted. I only managed a mere 44 seconds.
When I clicked through to the quiz, I noticed the footer of the website:
BunkBedsPedia??
Then a light went on. I get it! Just because the industry is traditional, or serious, or even boring, it doesn’t mean your widget bait has to be!
I decided to check the inlinks for the site on Yahoo!, and they seem to have acquired quite a few. Yes, most of them are from free blogs, but those blogs are hosted on strong domains like blogspot.com and livejournal.com. There are even links from Coudal Partners, CTV.ca, Digg and Reddit.
So if you can come up with a unique, fun widget or quiz, it can spread throughout the blogosphere and provide you with hundreds of back links regardless of what market you are in.
An aside: the widget itself has some technical issues. While it links back to the quiz that is located on the site, the anchor text does not use their target keywords. While they are building links using this strategy, they aren’t really helping themselves to rank for anything relevant.
