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What is Link Bait and How Can It Help Me?
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.
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