Gray Hat Trick for Attracting Bloggers
Bloggers are notoriously self-involved (yes, even yours truly) and there’s a very good way to play off this feature when seeking to attract blog links. Just follow this short list of steps:
- Write about a blog post written by the prominent blogger or the blogger themselves on your site (not neccessarily attacking them, though if you have an honest disagreement and present it well, this can work out)
- Link out to the blogger’s post (or their blog home page)
- Send a few proxy bots through your link to “beef up” the traffic you’d normally send them
- Leave a comment or two on their blog post
- Watch as they see you sending them traffic through their analytics and feel compelled to respond (usually with a link back)
This can be done positively or negatively and in many cases where you have significant readership, you can eliminate step 3 (we’ve never done it personally because we’ve worked with larger properties or conscripted a few friends). I personally prefer sparking discussion in a very high-value, high-respect format, but other bloggers I know have reported that the links from controversy and drama are far more numerous. Go figure.
p.s. Obviously, this is a bit gray-hat (or, more accurately, gray-ethics as it doesn’t deal with the search engines), but since the premium tips are supposed to be “secrets,” it seems dishonest to stay quiet on tactics like this.
