|
Home | Main Index
| Banner Ads
What is Link Bait
and How Can It Help Me?
By Philip
Specifically, linkbait is used to attract visitors to your website whether
through interest, anger or knowledge seeking. Linkbait is content that
is specially written to either educate, entertain or inflame your readership
and prospective readers. These articles create buzz, and the buzz spreads
virally from site to site in the form of links and comments that others
make about what is written on your site. These inbound or back links are
used by search engine algorithms to rank a website. The higher the rank,
the higher the listing, the more traffíc that arrives at your website.
More visitors create more buzz which in turn creates more visitors. Linkbait
creation is a marketing campaign on steroids and falls under the task
of link building. Its sole aim is to increase the quantity of high-quality,
relevant links to a website.
Search engine optimized on a specific keyword phrase, linkbait comes
in two flavors: specific, helpful, useful content written by an authority
in a niche market or content that will incite discussion and sometimes
argument on a niche subject. Either way, linkbait articles attract visitors
to your website.
Here's the difference. Your content is supposed to generate links from
other websites, right?. That is the goal. You want people to like or hate
your article/post/rant enough to write about it on their website and post
with that follow-up a link back to your site and page of where the content
is sitting. This is basic viral marketing in that visitors don't just
read your material, but webmasters who find you are either riled up enough
to rant about your post/article on their website or love it enough so
that they quote it and refer to it. This becomes a never-ending source
of links back to your site.
What happens with backlinks or one-way links from other sites? The search
engines keep a count of how many sites link back to your website giving
you love and higher listings in their search engines which translates
to more traffíc for your website. This form of viral marketing
is used successfully by many; however, a lot of webmasters are overlooking
this very easy method to boost their natural search engine listings. Natural
search engine listings are the ones you don't pay for, that help your
website naturally improve and hang around in search engines for long periods
of time.
Looking at linkbait, there are essentially a few different types. Let's
go through those, and then look at the best, always guaranteed to attract
forms that have been used since the term was invented.
Informational: If you provide information that educates and informs your
readership, they will always return and use it as reference. Copyblogger
and Problogger often provide these types of articles.
News: Keeping up with the breaking news on the web and around the world
is followed by readers who want to know, in capsule form, what's happening.
Humor: Funny stories, bizarre pictures or videos, cartoons and jokes
are always a wínner. People love a chuckle and references or collections
of these are always a traffic attractor.
Controversy: Rant and rave on something or someone in a negative fashion
and people will love to stop by and dispute your view. It will always
yield a ton of attention. Writing something unpopular gets and keeps readers
who want to air their views on your views. They will also rant about your
unpopular views on their sites and link back to yours so that others can
follow suit.
Resource: One of the best forms of linkbait is building a resource líst.
A good líst will not only be indexed and listed, but will be passed
by word of mouth and links on other sites. It creates a great deal of
credibility for you and your website in a particular niche, and will become
a reference work. Creating a niche specific líst is an invaluable
resource for people in that particular realm, and will make your readership
loyal. If you have a great resource page, it is literally gold. You can
have hundreds of other pages of content, but what will steadily attract
people and cause them to return and refer others is a good resource in
their niche.
One of the best examples of the resource type of linkbait is Smashing
Magazine, a blog devoted to nothing but lists of resources that draws
a continual stream of visitors and is referred to by all who visit. It
has everything and is not only an extremely interesting read, but one
of the best resource link sites around. As a result, folks quote it, refer
to it, use and love it. The resource lists are quality content, and that's
the big difference between success and failure in this form of marketing.
If you create a lousy linkbait article, it will fail. Further, your credibility
will suffer. First impressions count on the web and with only nine seconds
to convince the arriving traffic that you are worthy of them sticking
around, you need to deliver quality content, astounding resource lists
and consistent high levels of content that is valuable and entertaining.
All in all, you really need only remember one thing when starting this
type of marketing campaign: provide quality content that is useful, interesting
and entertaining. Deliver it in a professional style and make it as user-friendly
as possible. Optimize for search engines, and folks will find you. Allow
for comments on your material and traffic will come.
Read Articles |
