Guest Post by Angie Stewart
Getting links to your website from a wide variety of domains, servers and geographical areas can be difficult. Link-baiting is a way of attracting links from other web users by writing unique, valuable and compelling content that entices people to link to it.
This in its self can be an extremely difficult task; what makes good link bait?
Some examples of good link bait
1. Breaking News
Breaking news is great for driving traffic to your blog and attracting links. Whether you’re reporting it or recovering something recent in your industry.
Search Engine Watch is a particularly good example of this done well, for example they recently covered a news story on Google fighting claims of bias in instant search results. This was only published a few weeks ago, but already has a good number of links to it as well as a lot of tweets on Twitter.
In order to find good news in your industry, try setting up Google Alerts for relevant terms.
2. Tools
Industry tools are great for attracting links. As an example, this could be a due date calculator for pregnant women if you supply baby clothing or a way of working out the number of calories you should consume in a day based on your weight loss requirements if you’re in the diet products industry. Whatever your industry, there will be something of use.
3. Fun
Fun not only attracts links to your site, but can also be viral if you get it right, being shared on social networks and forwarded around by e-mail.
This is a brilliant example of one of my favorite link baiting techniques that I’ve come across just today. During the Christmas holiday season, Portable North Pole was offering a way of making a personalized message from Santa. This was a relatively new site with low Google page rank at present (PR0), but on checking the back links, I can see they have a lot of good quality links pointing to them, so my guess is that they will have a good Page Rank on the next update.
4. Humour
People always like something to break their day up, try providing a joke of the day an amusing stories section on your blog; this will encourage more repeat visitors as well as encouraging links.
5. Social Network Access
The breaking news in the SEO industry at the beginning of this month is that Google & Bing are counting social network links (in particular Twitter) in their algorithm.
So make it easy for them by providing quick links to their social networks. It’s an extremely simple process to allow visitors to tweet your posts on Twitter or like them on Facebook and as we now know this as value to your SERP (Search Engine Results Page) position, it can be considered a link baiting technique you’d be silly to overlook.
Link baiting only works if…
In order to make the most of these, you do need a steady stream of traffic to your blog site in the first place, these tactics are not going to go viral if no one knows they’re there n the first place, but as long as you’ve got that, these are all great ways to dramatically increase the traffic and links to your blog.
So which link baiting techniques are you using and how are they working out for you?
Angie Stewart, Online Marketing Consultant at Manchester based in Maginus. Working as part of Maginus’s online marketing agency department, Angie is a keen contributor to many industry blogs and is recognized as SEOAngie on Twitter.
About Kiesha Easley
Twitter: web_design_uk
says:
Another great link-bait idea is eBook. I had created an eBook a couple of years ago and published it on my website, after which I forgot about it. However recently, when I was looking at Google Webmaster Tools, to my design I found that it has been linked to over 1,500 times. I could not believe my luck.
Can anybody suggest shortcuts for generating backlinks??
I tried a lot ..guess blogging is not my game :)
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I was thinking about doing a favorite book type thing.
ask 100 bloggers in my niche what their fav book is on the subject. tell them if i use their book in my post I will link to their blog
20-30 should respond when the post is published i tell the 20-30ppl i used their book and give them the post link.
I am assuming most of those ppl would link to my post….
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Thanks for these useful tips. I particularly liked the one on using tools that will solve readers problems. Will try it out!
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I just started blogging again recently, and today I wrote a post that was, I will have to say was kind of selfish, but any way, I put out a challenge to go out each and every day and get involved in one’s niche blogs by commenting useful comments. The main purpose is to build your links. Your post will come in very handy in the next few months for me and others like me.
Thanks
Patrick Simpson
http://www.getziggys.com/
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i have noticed that most people will be looking out for something that they can get for free like games or softwares or something like that. as for the breaking news part, people may only look at that for a few days. after that the trend changes. so you need to whats the hot trend everyday and accordingly make the posts.
aww, Angie you’re giving away my best secrets here lol ;)
….also, you can say something controversial to generate discussion(just look at Jerry Springer) :)
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Its really good to use link baiting as it generate some traffic but i haven’t tried yet. So from these tips i would like to give it try as it sounds great. And well, is all about generating some good traffic to the site.
There are some nice ideas.
In my opinion there is need to think outside the box and create controversial content
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Thanks for the info. Link Baiting is a great way to drive traffic. I have been able to do this with out even realizing what i was doing. I am still fairly new, but when looking at some of my stats its amazing, where your site can get picked up.
I love first 2 methods. Both are equally helpful while several bloggers do a mistake creating “Breaking News” what they do is try to create a plain story with shocking titles. Such method may distract visitors and may not even attract any link back too.
Creating tools is indeed a great way. You can’t imagine what quality links your site may get until you see them. Useful tools may also help increasing returning visitors.
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I wish I could think of a way to find a great breaking news because who ever gets it first will have zillions of links pointing to his post.
I love fun and humor you list because that is what gets viral so easy.
I would add one thing that also gets viral even faster and that is – a stupid, annoying video/post/whatever. Remember that orange on YouTube or double rainbow, was it?
I think tools are the least used way to get viral, aren’t plugins and WP themes a great way to go viral and get a lot of links?
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Link baiting is good as long as it isn’t overused.
You can get links by creating a great useful post that will help a lot of people, or which is referable (that is if someone wants to explain something, they can do it by referencing your post).
But you methods can be good to help a new blog get some inbound links pretty fast.
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Solid tips. Thanks for sharing them. I have been using some of these tips (except breaking news, that’s for CNN, lol), and I have to admit that provided you have a steady stream of traffic, they do the job pretty well. I think that in a way, if you write a “killer” content and post regularly, links will eventually come. It happens a lot for example in “weekly” roundups, where bloggers tend to post for the “best” or most interesting of the week.
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Good link baiting ideas. It seems that it is simple, but do something original, something that will actually work is not so easy. Thanks!
Your right it does sound simple enough but getting that kind of traffic from original content is difficult.
Hey Angie,
Great stuff. I think I find myself, probably more often than not, linking to inspiring and really good “how to” stuff. Don’t know why…I guess it just turns me on. :)
Keep Baiting,
Brandon
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Twitter: Ileane
says:
Hi Angie,
Thanks for the tips. I like to make tutorials for using different web tools and that works out pretty good for me.
Nice list.
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Hi Angie,
These are great ideas for content to include on a blog. Breaking news is probably the hardest to do unless you blog for a living.
Really, anything that your audience cares passionately about can go viral, at least in that community. And really, the people interesting in your niche are the ones who will stick around if you regularly write compelling content.
For truly viral content, you would probably would need to write something that is a bit more universal, and your example of humor and fun are two that I see often on the first page of digg and a few others.
Great ideas! Have a great day.
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As long as link baiting is NOT overused on any blog -it is an excellent strategy to get some incoming links. Thanks for the tips
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Angie..you can get links just by being yourself in your given niche..and if people like what you have to say then they are linking and going to share your content..just that simple.
“Black Seo Guy “Signing Off”
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