Yes I do believe that Matt Inman (formerly CTO of SEOmoz) is an SEO genius, not to mention an outstanding web developer and web designer too. Search Google for “online dating” (without the quotes), and his brand new site (launched in April ’07 or so) Mingle2.com comes up #1, above eHarmony, above Match.com.
How’d he do it? By creating a dozen linkbait quizzes at his site at mingle2.com/bb – stuff like “Cadaver Calculator“, Matt was able to get 80,000 backlinks for Mingle2. Bloggers eat this stuff up and post it to their sites like crazy, and the link anchor text shown below these quizzes links back to mingle2.com using the keywords “Online Dating”. Apart from that, though, Matt developed the Mingle2 site in “66.5 hours” using PHP Cake, and he did the visual design for the site as well. Mingle2 went from nothing to 700,000 monthly uniques in a couple months. As a dating site I think it is elegant and fun to use.
I heard about Mingle2 when Matt stood up in a site critique session at the Search Engine Strategies 2007 conference in San Jose and asked the panel to critique his site. I then met with Matt and offered to buy his site and hire him. But alas, another company (justsayhi.com, owned by Next Internet) beat me to the punch and Matt accepted their offer before I had an opportunity to counter.
I’m saddened to see, though, that Mingle2 buyer Justsayhi appears to have hijacked all of Matt’s link bait quizzes and are redirecting their traffic away from mingle2 and sending it to Justsayhi.com instead. Was this transaction an effort by Justsayhi to hire a marketing guru (Matt) and capitalize on his link bait and marketing skills, rather than to develop and promote the Mingle2.com site? According to Matt, Mingle2 will be integrated into JustsayHi, so that does appear to be the case. I would have rather seen what Mingle2 could do with the proper promotion and development, given that it was getting around 400 new profile signups per day as recently as August ’07. It’s a far more innovative site than Justsayhi.
I still have work for you Matt, if you become available! And if anyone else out there thinks that they are way more talented (and at least as multi-talented) than Matt, please by all means contact me.
So that’s why less than 3 weeks after your blog entry, Mingle2 is down to the fifth result page of the online dating query and justsayhi has climbed to the top
Surely Matt Inman is a major asset to have in this competitive niche!
Yeah, mingle2.com got 302′d to justsayhi, apparently. Kind of a bummer because I thought he really had a unique site there, it was actually fun to use.
but he is getting paid big bucks for that so i doubt it hurts him. lol.
Wow, Matt is a genius! I wonder what his payday was. Great site Scott, I am glad you started it and will be following your every post!
The bb link doesn’t work as the url is incorrect and then if you remove the “i” the bb post has been moved. Have you considered changing this post as it is incorrect regarding ranking etc also.
The point of the post is to show the linkbait, but you can’t get to see it.
James
Job opening?
Here’s the link to the link bait quizzes:
http://www.justsayhi.com/bb
I am curious, what did he use to code the actual quizzes? Did he also create the quizzes in php cake? I am interested in testing this out for my own site, but I am not quite as code-savvy.
Yes I believe he used PHP Cake since that’s what he used for the rest of his site.
[...] obviously proud of his accomplishment, went on to explain in great detail exactly how he did it during SES San Jose in 2007. Something he would probably later wish he had just shut the f**k up [...]
[...] obviously proud of his accomplishment, went on to explain in great detail exactly how he did it during SES San Jose in 2007. Something he would probably later wish he had just shut the f**k up [...]
[...] obviously proud of his accomplishment, went on to explain in great detail exactly how he did it during SES San Jose in 2007. Something he would probably later wish he had just shut the f**k up [...]
[...] MARKET his new dating service. The guy is not only a talented designer & developer, but also a great at marketing He has created a few quizzes and widgets that thousands of people posted on their sites. And in [...]
[...] obviously proud of his accomplishment, went on to explain in great detail exactly how he did it during SES San Jose in 2007. Something he would probably later wish he had just shut the f**k up [...]
Great idea! However, note that this has been his original idea in marketing. Now, there is no point in simply copying his idea, because a million others are going to do the same. The lesson to be learnt here is that originality and innovation in ANY field, including marketing, always pays in the long run, sometimes more quickly and sometimes slowly. There is no substitute for innovation and hard work. Simply duplicating another person’s idea will not work. Great job. Keep it up!
no offense but what web world are you from? There was nothing original what Matt did, he just did it well. Linkbaiting has been done for a longggg time. Matt’s quizzes has also been used for baiting for a long time as well…
Great job Matt, no wonder we never see you around the irc world anymore
[...] who is the former CTO of SEOmoz, has been called a “SEO genius,” and he put that talent to good use to get his dating site Mingle2 to the top of key Google [...]
Well looks like a lot of blogs are advertising for him too, like this post. This really helps get back links.
[...] who is the former CTO of SEOmoz, has been called a “SEO genius,†and he put that talent to good use to get his dating site Mingle2 to the top of key Google [...]
that he’s an SEO genius, I will not deny. However, if there was more quality control on the site, I think it would’ve been great. I’d say about 20%+ are fake profiles with stolen photos.
Could be, but he ranked #1 for “online dating” for a very long while. His linkbait quizzes are also very creative and continue to generate a lot of buzz for his new venture.
http://www.oneplusyou.com/q
There was nothing original what Matt did, he just did it well.
[...] featured all the time on Digg. The Oatmeal is created by just one person, a guy named Matthew Inman who has been called a SEO genius. He launched a dating site by himself in 2007 and was able to get a #1 ranking on Google for the [...]
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[...] describing Matthew Inman, creator of the popular comic blog site The Oatmeal, includes the word “genius” in the first few lines of text. This describes not merely his comic wit, but extends to his [...]
[...] featured all the time on Digg. The Oatmeal is created by just one person, a guy named Matthew Inman who has been called a SEO genius. He launched a dating site by himself in 2007 and was able to get a #1 ranking on Google for the [...]