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 traffic 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 winner. 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.
