I like to think of myself as a happy, sunny person but in reality, I’m really not…I am usually the first person to say “no, that won’t work” when someone has an idea. I expect all restaurants to be out of everything that I want to order and to offer me fennel stew. I think gas will increase to $95 a gallon this summer, and I always have a hat with me in case of rain. I think it’s always going to freaking rain even if the sky is a clear cobalt. I think these guys look like they’d be fun:
I was once a goth, but now I’m a boss, a lot like Richmond on the IT Crowd. Oddly, I was indeed a sunny goth I think, but now that I drive a minivan and wear (fake) fur boots I think my outlet for negativity has suffered, and since I don’t look like the walking dead anymore (just a misplaced Inuit), I think like they must. However, this can totally be used to my advantage when building links. Hahahahahaha. Who’s got the last laugh now Mom?
(photoshopped image courtesy of the amazing Peter Attia)
So try thinking like a Goth.
1. Type in your regular happy terms to find the negative pieces that show up in the SERPS, read them, offer the writer an opposing piece or write one on your site and link out. Rain on someone’s parade. Perhaps searching for your brand and adding “sucks” to the end will help identify these. However, if you search for “Link Fish Media sucks” you get our company playlist, which is completely unintentional yet somehow incredibly amusing. Obviously it’s the Sting track that’s driving that result. Sting sucks. Search for that and you’ll be busy all day.
2. Wordstream’s awesome Negative Keyword Thingy lets you search for negative keywords so that you won’t waste money on worthless paid ads, and can therefore afford to buy that mint condition seminal Christian Death album.
(See how I have 7 out of 10 free searches left? To me, that means I’m screwed.)
Now, if you did PPC you’d enter these into the system so they would not be shown for these search terms of course. For link building, I’d search and use them to prevent irrelevant SERPs from clouding my head even further like this:
(Because I am also a bit lazy at times, it’s one I pulled from Google ( jaguar -cars -football -os) The best thing about this is that the first result is one for cars. Well done Google!!!)
3. Cussing. If you like Deadwood you like cussin’. They all wear very death-rock outfits on that show too. (There’s the tie-in to goth finally…um plus there was that band called The Damned which of course you know.) Anyway, we’ve had some amazing finds when we used curse words with a term. Here’s an example:
By searching for “damned organic soda” because I’m listening to Sisters of Mercy and not The Grateful Dead (like that would ever happen), I see this totally awesome result:
I hadn’t even thought about the potential to use organic soda for cleaning dog urine, so that’s opened up a rainbow of possibilities. Using curse words can lead to some off-the-wall sites and, even if they aren’t good link targets, you may still get some great ideas for discovery. (sounds almost positive doesn’t it?)
I don’t mean to imply that all goths are negative and cursey. Actually all the ones that I’ve ever met are, but I still shouldn’t stereotype. Plenty of cheerleaders curse and bitch a lot too. Just use that negativity for something other than thinking your black hair dye is going to make your hair fall out soon.