You’ve probably heard about the importance of writing with your target audience in mind. However, if you want to exponentially increase your search engine traffic, you also need to write for a 2nd target audience. That audience is called the “Linkerati”.
This interesting term was coined by Rand Fishkin. He wrote a post in April where he argued that the secret to SEO was appealing to a link-savvy audience. He called this audience the Linkerati.
Here is a relevant quote from Rand’s post:
The “secret” is that the audience most sites appeal to is NOT the same audience that provides links, yet this group (the Linkerati) has the power to make or break a site’s rankings.
Notice what Rand just said. Links come from the Linkerati, not from the initial target audience. These two audiences are different.
Rand goes on to say that many sites do a reasonable job identifying their customer base, or the initial target audience. However, he attests that those same sites struggle with identifying their niche’s Linkerati.
This is why many quality sites have less than stellar Google rankings. They have content that appeals to their customer base. However, they don’t have enough content that appeals to their industry’s Linkerati.
So, what appeals to the Linkerati? Rand helps us answer this question by giving us some their characteristics. He writes that the Linkerati…
- own websites/blogs
- are techy, often geeky
- participate in social media sites, forums, and groups
- enjoy humor, irony, and offbeat news
- are looking for great “stories” to share
In my opinion, the Linkerati are harder to write for because they want to read remarkable content. They want to find content that is worthy of passing on to others and linking to. Producing this type of content requires creativity.
On the other hand, prospective customers are usually just looking for useful content and products. These things don’t require creativity. You just need to know what your customers’ problems are and then do some research to find solutions for those problems.
By also focusing on producing content for the Linkerati, you will get more links and search traffic. You’ll have a much better shot at long-term SEO success. Also, your branding will improve because that content will cause your site to stand out from the crowd and differentiate itself from competing sites.
Rand’s secret is very helpful, because effective SEO is mostly about getting a lot of quality links. If you can get many quality links, you’ll get search traffic. It’s that simple. So, write for two audiences. Write for your prospective customers to increase your conversion rate and also write for the Linkerati to increase inbound links and search traffic.
Source: The Secret to Ranking at the Search Engines (that’s really no secret at all)
5 Comments to "The 2nd Target Audience: The Linkerati"
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Yes, it’s all true. I didn’t know about it before tried myself :). People who know nothing about SEO build links for SEO blogs… Because they find it interesting and new. They come from SEs mostly when you leave some illegal words in a text and they find it exiting…
http://blogoscoped.com/forum/108074.html
Just did a post about this site on Blogoscoped
But the Linkerati are usually people like the frequent submitters at Digg, Reddit ,Netscape, Delicious etc. These are extroverted linkers.
Introverted linkers tend to just bookmark or use Google reader or email it to a friend they are absolutely certain would find it useful
/blogoscoped.com/forum/108074.html
Just did a link and post about this site’s tools on Blogoscoped
But the Linkerati are usually people like the frequent submitters at Digg, Reddit ,Netscape, Delicious etc. These are extroverted linkers.
Introverted linkers tend to just bookmark or use Google reader or email it to a friend they are absolutely certain would find it useful
thanks
This is very true. Ideal to look for these people is to monitor the blogosphere for blogs in your niche and monitor tags on social bookmarking sites.