Memes as Link Bait

I've been attacked by a Meme. Matt McGee tagged me last week and I missed it. (oops) I'll play along...in a minute, but first I have to turn this into a link building lesson. You see, memes started off as a way for bloggers to pass the time and have a little fun, but they've quickly been adapted by many within the SEO world as a unique way to set some link bait. How is a meme link bait you ask?

It's pretty simple really and you can already see it at play in the opening of this post. Matt McGee "tagged" me, along with four other SEMs and linked to our blogs. Now each of the tagged individuals that makes their own post will likely link back to Matt and will also link to the new folks that they tag. Thus sending some link love back to the original player and passing some new link love along to those that they're inviting to the gang. Savvy link types will invite "power-bloggers" to the game knowing that the return link from those blogs will give them a bit more search weight.

So, now that you get why and how this meme fits with link building, I'll go ahead and play along.

Five things that you probably don't know about me...

1.) I was once a nationally ranked competitive rifle shooter. In high school I went to the Olympic Training Center to compete in the junior nationals and I also qualified for the Olympic trials in '92 and '96.

2.) I had a pet chicken named Fluffy for eleven years and no, I did not live on a farm or in the country.

3.) My son Emmitt was born at home on my back porch and yes, we did it that way on purpose.

4.) Just this past week a film crew from South Korea flew to my town to shoot footage of my kids and I for a documentary they are doing on breastfeeding and breast milk banking. (No word yet on if I'll be dubbed or have sub-titles...)

5.) I took two years of Japanese in high school and another 4 quarters of Japanese in college. (No, I can't still speak it, though I understand a bit here and there...)

So it's tough going to find someone to tag since the industry has been playing this game for more than a week and no one bothered to tell me I was tagged...but I'll tag Paul Jahn, Stoney deGeyter and Paul Bruemmer.