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Linkbaiting for Traffic

In this posting, I am going to touch on Linkbaiting blog postings to attract visitors to your site, links from high traffic blogs and web sites, and to gain online credibility.

So, what is Linkbaiting? Have you ever noticed with offline business marketing companies will bring in PR companies to attract a wider notoriety in their given market? Who do a lot of companies use in these marketing campaigns? Most times a trusted celebrity or their voice in the advertisement. This lends positive credibility through making it appear  that the celebrity trusts the product and company behind it.

In the online world, we call this Linkbaiting and can do this with blog posting and web site content. This link-friendly content is meant to attract connections with other bloggers, social networking sites, aggregators, and news agencies.

A linkbait can be an article, blog posting, photo, list, or anything that can hold a URL link back to a high traffic site. the key to this is that you want to make your piece controversial in some form to provide a viral piece that people will pass along and want to link to. For the most part, linkbait material holds fast to the following guidelines:

• Hones in on high traffic blogs or web site portals such as Digg, Fark, Yahoo! Boing Boing)
• Must be viral- and link-worthy in that it creates compelling discussion, unique information, or is so good that people want to pass it along)
• Allows for easy linkability, comment on, blog, excerpt or share capability
• Lastly, is timely with content important today

So, how does this work? If you have developed a good linkbait piece that others will want to link to and share with others, the following is what occurs:

1.   You post your linkbait content, and submit it with sites such as Digg, del.icio.us, Reddit.

2.   When other sites administrators read your content which is linked to the higher traffic sites, they in turn will link to your content and in turn your blog or web site. This will include RSS aggregators. This is when the wild fire catches steam.

3.   If your content is so newsworthy and useful by a number of people, it may enjoy a constant updating of links even after the initial published information has dies down a bit. this will keep readers coming back to your site.

4.   If your linkbait piece is good enough to garner the attraction of link popularity, this will not go unnoticed by the major search engines - and thus will boost your rankings.

Success Tips

Identify High Traffic Sites

First you must identify those portals you wish to link back to you. Who are the top online personalities in your field? Which social networking and marketing sites are best suited for your piece?

Write What Your  Audience Wants

Don’t just post for the sake of obtaining trackbacks because it won’t happen. Write with your readers in mind. What is the compelling topic of the day? What is everyone else writing about? Check out Google Alerts and sign up to receive daily email listings of what is being published online under the key words you want to write about. not only does this tell you what the hot topics are, but also, who is writing about it.

Write Content That Is Effective

Locate the topics that are so intriguing that no one is writing about them. That may be because the top people don’t even fully understand it.

Proper Formatting

Ensure that your content is written as close to perfection as possible. Top sites will not want to link to content that is not professionally delivered and appears to come from an expert. Does it read like something a top news agency would want to write about?

Online Credibility

Linkbait is hard to catch fire if you do not have an online following or if you are new to the online world. If someone Googles you, will there be plenty of good information about you they will see? this is another area you will need to build up by submitting articles to directories such as ezinearticles.com and affsphere.com. Post to high profile blogs and sites also. This will attract links to your site or blog.

Grab Them Where It Counts

Your headlines and descriptions that are submitted to social networking sites, blogs. and search engines are vital links to this project. Think about what makes you read an email from someone you do not know, or a search result. It is the compelling words in the title and description that will grab the users attention. These must also contain your keywords that some sites search for and receive daily Google Alert emails on. for examples of how to write great headlines, here and here.

Try, Try, and Try Again!

Like anything, linkbaiting takes practice. You will more than likely have to run through this several times before you get good at it. Keep in mind that you do not want to burn those bridges you are trying to create in the process. Do not constantly barrage bloggers with your link request. You will eventually catch on as to how effective your writing can be.

Linkbait Resources

SEOBook-How to Identify Different Types of Linkbait

ProBlogger - An Introduction to Linkbaiting

Lessons on Linkbaiting

The Art of Linkbaiting