How Hank Scorpio got me 200+ natural links to my blog

Every man and his dog seems to be blogging nowadays, and I’m sure as heck no exception. I started up mine a good 2 years ago, and have been regularly posting stuff related to Beyoncé, Nicolas Cage, Kim Jong-il and whatever else catches my eye. Sometimes I’ll reblog something I’ve seen posted by another user, sometimes I’ll actually go to the effort of making something – usually a screen grab of a particularly appealing scene from a film I’ve just watched (that last one again features Nicolas Cage).

If you look at each one of those posts, you’ll notice a little number below them. That little number reflects how many fellow bloggers have liked and reblogged the image. Whilst it’s always good to see that some other person on the Internet shares your affinity for the scene/video/song and they ‘like’ what you’ve just posted, a reblog is worth a lot more as it means the blogger will be sharing it with their own personal readership. Not only this, but each reblog carries a ‘source’ link, meaning each reblog provides a link back to your blog – very effective for SEO purposes.

Allow me to show you my most successful personal example of this. Simpsons fans will recall the episode when Homer works for the perfect/megalomaniacal boss Hank Scorpio. I remember this was on TV once, and I laughed hysterically at the moment where Hank plays the ‘disappearing coat’ trick on Homer:

Hank: Would you mind hanging my coat up on the wall, please?

Homer: Mm-hmm. [taking his coat] Hmm, uh, let’s see… [the floor is one big room, with windows all around] Um, uh, well, uh…

Hank: [laughs] Relax, Homer. At Globex, we don’t believe in walls. Matter of fact, I didn’t even give you my coat!

Homer: Mmm? [his hands are indeed empty] [Hank is now wearing his coat, although backwards] Wow.

I impulsively decided to post this scene on my blog – a screen grab of Hank proudly posing with the backwards coat and the ‘punchline’ written below:

This was purely intended to share my appreciation for a bit I found funny in The Simpsons, so I tagged it appropriately and pressed send. Then, over 400 people reblogged and liked the image. Assuming that these likes and reblogs are fairly 50-50, that would mean around 212 reblogs of the Scorpio image with little/no effort. And remember, reblogs = links.

Shortly after, my blog’s page rank increased from unranked to 3 and page authority increased from 0 to 37.  Whilst I’m not saying you need to post obscure moments from classic TV series to your site in order to get similar links, you may wish to consider utilising your blog more to engage with your audience more and encourage them to naturally like and share your content. The trick is to strike the balance between what’s popular and what’s relevant to your site. Can you link cats to insurance? Justin Bieber to garden sheds? Memes to payroll software?  Take a step away from the computer, put some coffee on and get some heads together – you’ll be pleasantly surprised when the ideas start flying in from all angles!