What Is Link Bait And How Can You Use It

Are you using link bait to create inbound links to your website?

What Is Link Bait? you may ask. Much the same as fishing in a lake for trout using worms on the end of your hook, link bait is content you post that others will be willing to link to. This is a great way to create organic, viral marketing that helps your site’s SEO.

The main concept behind successful link bait is creating a high quality piece of content, whether it is an article, a video, or photo, or any other piece that is unique, interesting, or informative. After all, you won’t catch many fish with an old piece of wood. Neither will you attract links by posting something that isn’t out of the ordinary or exceptionally well done.

Let’s take a look at the most successful types of Link Bait…

Make A List

Lots of people surf the web looking for lists. It could be the top twenty five tips for performing some kind of task, a list of the hundred all-time greatest movies, or a glossary of terms used in a specific type of industry.

Whatever you choose, the harder it is to create or the more laborious it is to compile, the greater your chances of getting someone to link to it. After all, who wants to recreate a lengthy list of information that is not easy to come by? It would be simple to post the top three social media sites but much harder to compile a list of social sites and forums related to a specific industry. The more work you put into it, the more your efforts will pay off.

Create Something Really Great

Another form of link bait is to simply make something really unique, innovative, creative, outstanding, interesting, cool. Think of a site like the onion. If you’ve never heard of it before, stop by for a visit and find out why it has become so popular over the years. It pokes fun at serious news by posting stories with hilarious titles and funny pictures. It takes much of the same news we can all get from other sources and turns it into a truly irreverent look at society. People link to the content there (like I just did) because it is so well done.

Try to find a profitable niche related to your business that isn’t being exploited yet, then let your imagination run wild.

Become an Authority

Much more difficult than creating a list or making unique content is positioning yourself as an authority on a subject and writing truly great blog posts. It takes time to get known, time to build up an audience, and time to be recognized as an authority on a particular subject or in a specific field, but others have done it.

Perhaps you have heard of Seth Godin. Way back in 2002, he started out with a very small blog about advertising and marketing. Today, his site regularly appears in the Technorati list of top blogs and his posts get dugg numerous times. This is because he took interesting subject matter, wrote about it, and did it well – so well that he captured a very large and loyal following. You, too, can do the same thing, but don’t expect success to happen overnight.

Remember that no matter what type of Link Bait you choose to create, you have to spread the word, at least initially. Use social bookmarking and social networking sites to get traffic to your content, then watch it spread around the web virally. The more popular your site becomes, the more links you’ll get without any further effort.