Link Baiting & Effective Link Building
There is a tactic out there embraced by bloggers but rarely used by typical websites. It is called Link Baiting. Today I’ll explain what link baiting is and how everyone, not just bloggers, can use it to build quality links.
This is a topic that’s been around for a while but I don’t think a lot of people know what it is, or how to use it to their advantage. I think the name “Link Baiting” could be considered a black hat technique which is why most people wouldn’t consider it as a legitimate organic tactic.
However link baiting is merely link building with a twist: Rather than hunting out links, you are bringing the links to you through unique and popular site content.
So how does Link Baiting work?
Link Baiting is just like fishing. You publish a new page on a topic (I’ll cover those later) and set it free on the web. Hopefully others pick up on the content as fresh and interesting and link to it. The article is the bait, and the link is the catch.
A properly created page can capture huge links on its own with little to no effort from you.
For example, on another site, about a year ago, I wrote an article about the Florida Update. I spend the month or 2 after the initial update analyzing results and I then published my theory on what the update was.
That article has earned 88 links to date. And the best link, in my view, is a link from the ODP from the Google News category.
In fact my article appears in the top 10, and is linked to as a reference in many of the other top listings for a Google search for “Florida Update.”
So what was so special about the article?
While I never intended for it to be link bait, it turns out it was a typical “hook” page. Performancing blog has a really good summary on link baiting which I will further explain here.
With link building there are essentially 5 types of “hooks” or pages built to encourage links. They are: News, Contrary, Attack, Resource and Humor.
A News hook is one where you report on industry news. But it’s not just a rehashing of someone else’s post. It should be unique – either a scoop that no one else has caught, or it could even be a summary of various viewpoints. A news hook could also be comprised of a story you have proved to be false.
Contrary hooks are when you contradict what someone else says. It should be someone prominent in the industry and it should be controversial.
For example, if I was to write an article that proclaimed that Danny Sullivan’s latest theory was bunk, it would probably generate buzz. Especially if I could provide corroborating evidence backing up my assertion.
Recently Mike Grehan posted just such an article on Clickz in which he again pointed out that he doesn’t believe in a Google Sandbox. He even refers to other posts in which the Sandbox has been beaten to death.
Soon after he posted this article (which, by the way was posted just one week ago) many other SEM’s jumped on him purporting to have proof of the Sandbox.
And if you use Yahoo’s Site Explorer to look at who links to this article you will see that Yahoo! Has already picked up on almost 80 links to this one article. I’d say that Mike has done a great job of link baiting!
Attack hooks take the contrary hooks a step further, by launching personal attacks on people taking the debunking of theories to the next level. The original post from SEOmoz was close to an attack hook, but after they edited it it became less of an attack They reacted to the Mike Grehan article on the Sandbox with some haste and turned it personal. To their credit they did tone it down some but it’s pretty close to a flame. Who knows, maybe this article will be considered an attack on SEOmoz and will generate similar buzz.
A Resource hook is more of an informational page. It’s one that aggregates a bunch of information and distills it for visitors.
In fact this site is much like that. We take a bunch of news, distill it to its most meaningful and then provide our interpretation of what it means. Then, others pick up on the article and either repost it, or at least link to it.
Finally is a Humour hook. With this link bait you post jokes, funny stories, weird or funny pictures that you’ve found or anything else that will warrant a review from others and hopefully a link.
There are tons of blogs devoted to this such as the Obscure Store & Reading Room and Small Town Misfit which scour the web for weird and funny stories and then display them, encouraging others to link to them. And it must be working – Small Town Misfit has over 1,600 Yahoo! Links while Obscure Store has over 1,700.
So if you were ever worried about the amount of link building you’d have to do to become an “authority” consider link baiting in your arsenal. It can be a very effective way of building links quickly and easily. Also, its an effective way to build your reputation and brand online as more and more people learn about you through these links.
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Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for Textlinkbrokers.com
This is, what everyone knows or have heard about and nobody did ;-)
Good content is the best thing to get links, visits and good positions at the serps…
I fail to see what the purpose is of this article. I think that every post that one makes on his or her blog is an attempt at link baiting. As far as the various types of link-baits are concerned, these appear to be more a manifestation of commonsense than insightful marketing technologies.
Check out http://www.lasikathome.com/index.html
it’s the funniest link bait I’ve seen in years! lol
I’m guessing this Lasik At Home thingey is MySpace Humor/Joke Bait… with an AdSense spin… Liking it!
Link Bating is a effective way to gain links in a small time of period, But it required a good quality of content, If you just rehashing of someone else’s post it can’t help full because google spider find it that trick so, it’s all about an unique, good and interesting content. So, here also content is king.
Jim
http://www.tatvasoft.com
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Hi,
Excellent Post!…very informative information i gpt here. after reading this article one thing you must understand that, your content has to be unique and good….
Rahul
http://www.encodexindia.com/
Yeah, link baiting is one of my favorite tools. You covered most of it. There is however an additional way of using link baiting technique and that is Moving Social Networking traffic your way by posting Crazy Headlines like “Money is Falling From the Sky! Quickly click here to find out where exactly!” I mean you would not believe how many people click on that title and will visit your site.
Here is an example of link baiting Social Networking Traffic :) http://digg.com/gaming_news/The_Money_is_Falling_from_the_Sky
Besides that, I’ve also experimented with “Britney Spears Got Caught Naked again”. I have not had a chance to see the traffic stats yeat, but I think this should be in high numbers :)
Link bait really are good to get link. however, people mostly link to the page where the articles located, not to domain.
No Doubt link baiting can provide us alot of links in no time but shouldnt we have to do it daily.
As on digg.com every second home page stories are shifted down.
Whats future of this social bookmarking thing ?
Cant we see 1000 of sites like digg.com – like i just saw one of indian guys site http://www.Tagza.com
Where this storm will end by the way ?
Perfect answer !!
I read that links were King, and content was Queen in the game of getting results on the search engines.
If that is the case, then link baiting is definitely the Ace up the web masters sleeve.
“Link bait really are good to get link. however, people mostly link to the page where the articles located, not to domain.”
So then you pointing from page to all other pages and it is definitely will increase PR of domain
This is pretty controvercial – If you get it?
Is this a link bait?
Something about becoming more attractive.
Is it a joke?
check:
http://www.leveluplife.se
For an example of a complete disaster when it comes to link baiting, did you here about tumblr.com. They were spotted by Ed Dale, shown to a few keen internet markateers, who flooded it with so many posts that the owner of tumblr.com deleted the last 10,000 posts to teach them a lesson. Doh!
This is probably reverse link baiting, you could call this fishing!
It’s a new idea to get some natural links, site helps to download the games.
Thanks that was great. Like the idea of getting other people to do the link generating work …
link building is the best way to increase thetraffic on ur site
Quick must post link and semi-snarky comment and I’ll get traffic.. Ping Back, Ping Back…bleh and meh..
Link baiting is a new and progressive method of increasing link popularity.The above given points are very useful but it involves a lot of hard work,writing high quality content and proper popluarity.palcomonline is a web design,development and hosting company based in noida,we provide expert seo services.
This must be a good link baiting article huh? I can see you’re now getting 164 inlinks all from different sites based from Yahoo Site Explorer.
I need to try this
Really interesting and well written I will startto prepare something on my site.
Hi RobSullivan thanks for such a helpful and great post describing about Link Baiting.
Link Baiting is one of the way to get link popularity through good content blogging or articles. It need a deep research before writing on any topic and as you said it should be creative and unique for best results.
Thanks for such a great post!!
Nice to read a very new concept of link baiting from you…I would like to see some more posts from your end for better link baiting understanding..
Thanks again for this gr8 post…
Nice article. Link-baiting is definitely an effective link building way.
Good start. But how to create the interesting bait is still a problem.
thanks for the article!
gxkingdom.com
thank you for the article.. i list the top 7 link baiting guides.
Thanks for the great article. Lots of useful suggestions on link baiting. Now I just have to come up with link bait for my company’s site.
http://www.antarcticadigital.com
nice post,, I’ve learned a lot… thnx..
This article is good for a basic reading abt link bating, but the what is more imporant is that to learn various and thrilling link bating tactics and strategies. Just closely look around you, coz link bating tactics are all over the place….
Wonderful advice, I will implement this right away, thanks!
thanks for the advice verry usefull
Very great for us, Thank you very much and keep up the good work.
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Interesting Read, Thanks!
This was a wonderful info on link baiting, earlier I considered this as Black hat SEO but looks like there is nothing wrong if we do it with little bit of caution.
Thank you for this article, it is very helpful for me, I try this tip of link building, i think it will justify my hopes
link baiting is a wonderful technique in SEO, your content is Bait and you can get a link through your content.
you’ve explained in right direction other wise some webmasters has considered as a black hat.
i’ll suggest you to new users for work in content for link baiting so you will get amazine results.
and make good network in social media places who can unserstand and rate in your sites topic.
Thanks for your support and helpful info.
Jay paul
Well the article was interesting but i am a new blogger i need more help in building links and traffic please do reply.
thanks for the nice article.
The most effective strategy for successfully increasing your link popularity is to construct a content rich, user friendly, optimized website which is regularly updated.
Off toppic question for the clowns trying to spam the comments: do you know what “rel=nofollow” does?
hint: you don’t get any “benefits” out of spoiling the comments.
Regards
Yuriy
Excellent Post!
There was a debate somewhere on link bait and what came out is that if the page is not relevant to the content of the website you can get penalized by Google, so that thing has to be kept in mind.
Of course it is excellent, it is proof that no follow links are followed!
Is there some irony in an article on link baiting, that baits more links in itself :)
Interesting post. Thanks for the tips!
Matthew Keddy
http://www.3Ceco.com
Link Baiting is not that Easy, but honestly i want to learn for this kind of very effective link building. Some SEO and Link Building Company offered Link Baiting Service but when i tried it seems that their Style is not a true Link bait, it was Paid Blog Post. Yeah, the Link Baiting is the different if you compare to all types of link building, other link building it takes a lot of time, while link baiting can teach you on how to reduce link building in your part. Thanks to this post and i hope i can do it this kind of Link Building in the near future… :)
Great article!
To get the big ones.
Fat worms, doe balls, liver, shrimp and googlebots work for me.
Thanks for the bait tips
Great article. Thanks for bait tips
Thanks for the info. I linked to it in my blog post here.
http://trafficlab101.com/42/linking-strategies/
thanks again.
Rob Bish
Link Baiting is something that has been used for years and will probably be used for much longer.
Thanks for the post
According to me,Link Bainting is difficult to do,because it requires unique content. And finding unique content is quite an uphill task to achieve. There are lots of other ways to do link baiting,but after for that you need lots of years of experience as an SEO or Web Master. So, for a newbie like me, it is better to go for link building:).
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Thanks for the information. Excelent post.
Good article about links. I have been trying to work out how to generate more links in a field like broadband or internet services. I guess just keep providing great content!
Thanks for the info
Good article. Thanks.
Easy Approach towards Link Baiting & Effective Link Building. Informative article with niche ideas.
Cheers
Subramanian Chockalingam
CEO
OrangeLab Design Studios India Pvt Ltd.
Relevancy is key to linking and constructing a content rich, user friendly, optimized website which is regularly updated.
I’ve seen some weird link bait….Its some kind of an Auction?