As I’ve said in a couple of my previous posts here, the SEO Loser experience has opened my eyes to the blogging world. I recently set up a Bloglines account I could use to keep track of which blogs had new posts without actually loading them all up. It seems to work very well, but the most interesting thing about it is that I’ve basically got 10-15 popular search engine related feeds side-by-side. What this means is that as I go down my list, even if only at a subconscious level, the qualities that differentiate each blog become clearly apparent. I’ve always noticed that a fresh perspective can sometimes be interesting, and often times those fresh perspectives come from the untainted or unbiased newbies.

In addition to attaining a “fresh perspective” from outsiders, a business technique I’ve found to be very helpful is simply looking at what the historically successful players are doing (for the business-school-ites we can call this benchmarking). Don’t go out and copy them or you’ll just be competing with someone who’s better than you. Instead, look at what they do and why it works. Then find out how you can ‘borrow’ principles from their strategy that would compliment or improve your own.

The specific example that inspired this post was Search Engine Land—Danny Sullivan’s new undertaking. I also think that because I am new to the blogging world I have a fairly objective opinion and assessment as I go from page to page on my Bloglines list. But when I’m comparing Danny’s Search Engine Land—which I approached thinking “Oh God, let’s come up with something more creative than ‘Land’”—I’m really, really impressed. This guy is a machine. Looking more carefully, I see that he has a few other, skilled posters helping out, but regardless–Search Engine Land is pumping out the posts (7 new posts today by the time I was eating lunch, and looking back a week or so this doesn’t seem to be out of the ordinary).

First of all, with that kind of output, it would be hard not to get links. Second, these don’t seem to be mass-produced posts. Granted, a large number cover industry news that you can read about elsewhere, but most of these topics include a unique perspective. More intriguingly, however, is the fact that among these copious posts some really good linkbait is hidden. Yesterday, for example, Danny blogged about Search Engine Land’s stats. It was fun to read his review, particularly because it was so personal and comes from a guy who has spent years working with established, authority sites. What do his stats have to do with linkbait? Well, he posted his referrals for December in a tabular format with a link to each. The top referrer (Google) had sent a mere 1229 visits and the last-mentioned referrer only sent 88. What does this tell me as an SEO-minded blogger reading his post? Whoa, if I send him even 88 visitors I might get a link from his blog next time he does this! Maybe that wasn’t the goal of his post, but I bet I’m not the only one who had that thought as I read.

Let’s assume I was alone in this; I was the post’s only link-baited blogger. Big deal! There are another six posts to read and it’s only four and a half hours into the work day! The volume of content they’re producing will eventually hit a nerve with just about everyone. And with blogging today, hitting a nerve means getting links. The lesson I hope to take away from this is simply that while link baiting works and is a great technique, it’s not the only technique. You don’t have to wait a week between each post trying to come up with something people will just have to link to. Sure, those posts are awesome. But so are a lot of others.