Buzz Marketing and Backlink Strategies That Still Work

In Episode 037, Mark opens with a humorous greeting from “the Queen” and covers buzz marketing strategies, the LateNightIM.com rebrand, Josh Spaulding's free Rapid Niche Profits report, niche site updates, and a listener question about backlink strategies.

What You'll Learn in This Episode

How to use trending news topics to drive traffic to your site
Why long-tail keyword tools like HitTail can uncover hidden traffic opportunities
What to do when a niche site fails to gain traction
Which backlink strategies still work after Penguin and Panda
How your WordPress template can affect your SEO

Episode Summary

Buzz Marketing and Trending News

Mark highlights Lynn Terry's article on ClickNewz about leveraging buzz content to drive traffic. The technique involves monitoring Google Trends, Twitter trending topics, and news outlets to identify high-volume search terms, then creating content that connects those trends to your niche. Mark used this successfully on his own blog, driving 6,000 visitors overnight by targeting Google April Fools keywords. The challenge is converting that traffic, since buzz visitors may not match your target audience. AdSense or a compelling opt-in offer can help capture value from the traffic spike.

Niche Site Updates

Mark introduces HitTail, a keyword analysis tool that monitors your incoming search traffic and suggests long-tail keywords worth targeting. He is testing it on the corn sheller site by creating new pages for recommended keywords.

The snoring niche site remains a disappointment at four visitors per week. Mark discusses possible explanations including the domain's previous ownership history and notes that Josh Spaulding expects roughly 30-40% of micro niche sites to fail. The cost of failure is minimal, making rapid iteration the right strategy.

Listener Q&A: Backlinks After Penguin

Jeremy from Minnesota asks about effective backlink strategies post-Penguin. Mark's answer: most strategies that worked before still work, with two exceptions. Avoid over-optimized anchor text (Penguin's primary target) and avoid blog networks that Google has de-indexed. The key is diversification: mix article marketing, directories, guest blogging, commenting, and social signals together with varied anchor text.

On Jeremy's template question, Mark confirms that poorly coded WordPress templates can absolutely hurt SEO. The Yoast WordPress SEO plugin resolves most on-page issues regardless of template.

Key Takeaways

Trending topic content can drive massive traffic spikes when connected to your niche
Long-tail keywords you never targeted may represent significant untapped traffic
Expect niche site failures and keep your per-site investment low to iterate quickly
Diversify backlink strategies and anchor text rather than relying on any single technique
Check your WordPress template for SEO issues and use the Yoast plugin as insurance

What's Changed Since This Episode

Mark recorded this in late September 2012. Content marketing and SEO have evolved substantially.

Buzz marketing now happens at machine speed. Real-time content marketing tools and AI-powered content generation allow creators to capitalize on trends within hours rather than days. The fundamental strategy remains sound, but the execution timeline has compressed dramatically.

Manual link building has been largely replaced by content marketing. The backlink strategies Mark describes, article directories, blog commenting for links, and Web 2.0 content creation, carry minimal SEO value in 2026. Creating genuinely useful content that earns natural editorial links is now the dominant approach.

Resources Mentioned

Related Episodes

Listen and Subscribe

Listen to Late Night Internet Marketing on Apple Podcasts or subscribe at latenightim.com/internet-marketing-podcast/. Have a question for Mark? Call the digital recorder at 214-444-8655 or drop a comment below.