The SEO Industry Needs a New Term for Linkbait - Part Deux: Lyndobait Anyone?

by Scott Allen

If you’ve read my previous post on this topic, you’ll notice that this one is a bit more lighthearted, so enjoy.

Recently Lyndon Antcliff, often seen online as “Lyndoman”, shook things up a bit in the SEO industry by creating some brilliant fictional linkbait that received international news coverage, and garnered thousands of inbound links for one of his clients. There’s been plenty of coverage of the story, and if you’re not familiar, I suggest you read Search Engine Land’s coverage. Nick Wilsdon also has some excellent coverage of the story along with Google’s response.

Read the original linkbait story here: 13 Year Old Steals Dad’s Credit Card to Buy Hookers | Money UK.

Whether or not you agree with the concept of using false information as linkbait, you have to recognize the creativity that goes into something like this. What makes this type of linkbait remarkable is the sheer magnitude of responses it generated, leading to links.

If you dissect this a little, it shows that the effectiveness of linkbait can be measured in the level of response it evokes in readers. Mildly effective linkbait evokes mild responses, while powerful linkbait evokes powerful responses. Definitely something to keep in mind while brainstorming future linkbait ideas. Thinking outside the box is often a challenge, but can bring great results.

To generate this kind of massive response, it requires sparking reactions from a large cross-section of the populous…not an easy task. So, despite widely varying views on the appropriateness of Lyndon’s methods, I’d say we all have to agree that at the very least, he has raised the bar for linkbaiting.

Maybe we need a new term for the upper echelons of linkbait that use extreme creativity to generate responses of this magnitude: I propose Lyndobait. :)

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