Saturday, December 6, 2008

How to Linkbait Your Way to New Links

By Ryan Kane

Link building is often associated with tedious form submissions and emails. It doesn't have to be that way, and in fact one of the best ways to build your presence online is not by trying pawn your links off on other sites but by helping other sites come to you. Like any good link building strategy, link baiting cannot be the only component of a campaign to build links. But as savvy link builders know, the ideal scenario is to have others do that work for you. As it turns out, one of the easiest and most natural ways to do that is through a process called "linkbaiting."

Although the term is a relatively new one, the concept of link baiting dates back to the first time one web site created a hyperlink due to genuinely interesting content on another web site. If your site contains valuable, interesting, unique information and articles, other sites will eventually link to you. Depending on how catchy and "linkable" that information is, it will spread on its own, virally, to other sites.

Ideally, we all want our sites to create lots of interesting information without any work by you. In certain industries, this can be difficult. The idea is to create your article interestingly, and in a linkable way. This includes making a catchy headline to snag the reader. Instead of a broad headline, incorporate one that has a specific agenda.

Using a numbered list in your headline is a great idea. Another popular one is using a "how to" format. This makes the reader feel that they have stumbled on easy, quick to read content. It is good to incorporate something that claims to save money. The first instinct is to be broader, as to attract more people, but the opposite is truer.

Once you have created your headline, you need to market it and the link. A good place to start is social bookmarking sites. Traffic can be high within hours. If you follow all of these ideas, you will be obtaining links to your site faster than you can imagine. - 15478

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