April 21st, 2010 by Susie

Linkbait is an all-encompassing term, which relates to the way in which you post links to attract traffic to your site. Quality inbound link building is one of the most important SEO tools you can have, and search engine optimization services are always looking at new strategies to attract more visitors to their clients’ sites, and thus drive pages further up the search engine rankings.

There are several types of linkbaiting. The one most familiar to people is placing links to existing pages in, for example, social news and networking sites. However, link building services also create new web content and services on clients’ sites, to boost SEO rankings via increased incoming links (also called backlinks.) Building backlinks are an important part of any search engine optimisation plan.

Building quality linkbait does three things – it gives external users helpful, interesting and useful content; it drives your site up the Google rankings (Google looks at backlinks when deciding on site trustworthiness) and it drives scammers off the top pages. Depending on the service or product your site offers, there are several linkbaiting options available to you. For example, you can offer guidance and advice. This can be via streaming video tutorials, articles on “How to” sites, blog posts etc.

To be effective, it should be obvious the content your linkbait connects to is not for financial gain, and it should enlighten, inform and be accurate. Don’t write (or have written) 200 words of meaningless drivel connected by anchor text. It will boost your online reputation management plan if you place links to respected industry or educational sites, customer reviews and  more. Make sure you sign off with a list of your credentials, and use the same pen name in all your posts.

Another popular form of linkbaiting is a viral campaign. This isn’t the same as uploading computer viruses! Viral campaigns are widely used in TV advertising (the Evian “roller babies” ad was a recent one) and you can do the same kind of thing. YouTube is an excellent site for hosting videos with a strong viral element, and a humorous approach is best. Remember to place links back to a page on your main site, or the campaign will be wasted. Also, set up a “301 redirect” link back to the main page, once the campaign is finished. 301 redirects are important SEO tools, and preserve search engine rankings if pages are renamed or moved to other locations. Basically, it tells the browser: “This page has been permanently moved, but you can come here instead.”

Anything you do that creates interest will forge important backlinks. This can include deliberately controversial posts that generate a reaction. This must be carefully implemented, as it can have a big negative effect on internet reputation management, but it works if, for example, you run a political or charity fund-raising site. A safer option is to create backlinks through reviews on comparison sites, Amazon and such like.

Other useful link building strategies include creating useful online tools and applications (e.g. a sidebar tool); external blogs (in addition to your company’s site blog) and unique news items on SMM sites like Digg.

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