He wakes up and finds himself walking in his apartment, holding a packet of cigarettes in his hands. What the hell is going on, he thinks.

He sees his girlfriend looking at him curiously.

- Hun, where have you been? Why are you holding those cigarettes? You don’t smoke…

- Yes… I… I mean, I went for a walk, and then Chris called me on the phone and asked me to get him cigarettes for him.

- Really? Can’t he buy his own cigarettes?

- He said, just in case, because sometimes when we hang out here he runs out so he doesn’t need to go out and buy more.

Geez… what a lousy excuse

What do you make of this situation? What do you think the guy was on?

I’ll unveil the mystery. It was a psychological experiment. The guy had been hypnotized and told to walk out of his apartment. He was handed the cigarettes and told to walk back in. Then he was woken up. He didn’t know what he was doing and why he was holding those cigarettes.
The experiment consisted on testing his reaction when he found out he had no idea what he was doing.

Would he admit he didn’t know or would he make up a story to rationalize his behavior?

Empiric evidence show that statistically, 6 out of 10 people tend to do the latter.

Psychological experiments show that 6 out of 10 people will agree with their peers even if they know they are right and everyone is wrong. On experiments where the accomplices agree on a false visual perception, 6 out of 10 subjects tested end up agreeing with their peers even if their eyes tell them that the longer stick is not the one everyone else claims.

This is incredibly dangerous. It means that given the right propaganda and public opinion manipulation, 60% of the population can agree on ideas that are contrary to their beliefs. Like, I don’t know, go to war with France, the UK, Russia, and wipe out a few million jews in the process.

Why is this relevant to SEO?

Listen up. I’ll tell you in one sentence why this is relevant to SEO, and more specifically to Linkbait Development: Human Beings are not rational, they are rationalizers.

Given a certain belief they will do anything they can to find rational arguments to support it. Even if they know they are wrong, they will end up convincing themselves, so they can fit better on that social group they want to be a part of.

This is what you want to keep in mind when you work on your linkbaits. What tribe am I targeting? What is their view of the world? What do they think about global warming? Are they pro Mac? Are they pro Google? Are they pissed at Matt Cutts about the whole paid links circus? Do they consider Danny Sullivan a Hero? Do they consider John Reese a hero? (not comparing Danny ) Do they like sports? Are they conservative or liberals?

Please please please think about this when you work on that headline, when you work on that description, when you work on that post. Because if you don’t something horrible will happen: your linkbait will fall on deaf ears, discredited because it is a subversive threat to someone’s symbolic system.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!