You’ve heard of linkbait or linkbaiting, right? I think we’ve all heard the words tossed around in conversations about how to get more traffic. But there’s confusion about what linkbait is and what the process of linkbaiting is. Many wonder if it’s okay to linkbait, or if it’s unethical. Let’s start at the beginning. Linkbait is described by some as a technique used to get more links. Others say that linkbait occurs naturally as a by-product of offering high quality content to your audience.
Linkbait is a piece of content that’s on your website or blog. It could be a video, a picture, an article – just about anything that gets some attention from your target audience.
It’s there to gather links from everywhere that it can. You can look at anything on your own site or blog as linkbait. You don’t put it there to repel people, you put it there to attract their attention and to get them to subscribe, bookmark or link to it for others, right?
When you look at it this way, linkbait is a very simple concept. All you need is a piece of interesting content in a media format and someone to notice it and share it. Suddenly, you’ve got traffic and links.
So that describes what linkbait is. It’s good content, basically. As a technique, linkbaiting is simply placing interesting content in your web page or blog. Original content that has good information is always good for linkbait.
Top 10 Lists, how-to’s in either list or video format, and anything that’s new and unusual will garner more traffic and hopefully more links. Forms of linkbait can include:
· Informational articles
· Video
· Free giveaways (reports, eBooks, etc.)
· Contests
· Forums
· Podcasts
· Interviews
· Something controversial (but ethical)
· Humor
· Reviews of products or services
· Cutting-edge technology or information
· Current events (news when it’s really fresh is great)
· Entertainment
Ways to effectively linkbait are:
Write unique content. Focus on topics or angles that either haven’t been thought of or aren’t being done by many people. If you choose something controversial be smart about it – make sure you can back up any claims you make with facts.
Give your audience something to think about. You can write about any topic you choose and be very factual and common sense in nature. This is fine, but it’s also good to change things up and make people think or rethink how they view something, do something, or feel about something.
Give your viewers an opportunity to learn something new or do something new. That’s a great way to keep your audience interested, as well as reach a wider spectrum of viewers.
Try to keep on top of or even ahead of current events. Depending on what your niche or focus is, if you can hone in on and report on something new, you stand to get lots of good attention for that.
If you find a blog post or some content that is relevant and good, link to it. Your viewers will appreciate your efforts to make them even more well-informed.
Participate in forums and discussion groups. Give others help and ask good questions.
Comment on other people’s blogs. Don’t comment just for the sake of getting a link. Leave intelligent, thoughtful comments that aim to make a good impression.
On your blog, write a review of another blogger’s site. Make sure to let them know you wrote the review. Assuming it’s a well written and constructive, the blogger will be sure to mention your review on their site, and make a permanent link to you.
One other way to linkbait is to simply ask for a link exchange. Avoid those link exchange campaigns that link you up to thousands of useless places - they aren’t worthwhile and it’s not the best practice ethically. But you can certainly ask to exchange links with people in your niche who are worthy and who think you’re worth linking to also.
Linkbaiting doesn’t work overnight. You have to work at building a site that’s full of great content and you have to work at building links by using all of the common and accepted methods.
You could get lucky with that one article or video that ends up on the front page of Digg, but you might have to spend time working with your target audience and tweaking your formula.
Just like putting a worm on a fishing hook, a big fish will eventually bite. When used like this, linkbait and linkbaiting are perfectly effective and ethical ways to build your Internet presence.
Linkbaiting is what any SEO conscious marketer is trying to do anyway. As long as the content you’re using is good quality and you’re doing it with the right intent, it will help your marketing efforts. The blogs, sites, and content that are poor, spammy, boring, and generally not worth the time it takes to browse them aren’t going to be able to keep anyone’s attention, even if the webmaster or blogger was using a less than ethical way to get backlinks.
It’s perfectly okay to fill your site with excellent content and make sure that your readers have ample ways to share it. That Share/Save/Bookmark button should always be in plain site.
It’s good to suggest that users Stumble your work or give it a Digg. If you have good content, they’ll be happy to do it for you, and in the process of sharing,
