Link baiting falls under the task of link building and simply aims to increase the quantity of relevant links to a wesite.
The straightforward meaning of link baiting is encouraging others to link to you.
Matt Cutts from Google defined it as anything “interesting enough to catch people’s attention”.
Link baiting is all about gaining reputation and constant effort is the key. It might take months or even years to get noticed but if you are persistent people will be talking about your content soon.
There are many ways to gain such links - a few of which are listed below.
Write compelling content
Nothing will bring you more incoming links than content that people would like to read and recommend to their own visitors. Whether you want to stir up controversity, write posts that teach new things, use humour as a tool to attract attention or simply write a Top 10 list, content is still king. If you provide visitors with great content, you will be rewarded with the links and traffic you deserve.
Free Tools, Apps and Plug-ins
Launch a useful toolbar, a widget, an app or a plug-in and you’ll be flooded with links. Users love freebies and services which solve prolems will naturally generate links.
Reviews and comparison
Product rating, reviews and comparison help users make more informed purchasing decisions and people will want to let others know about your unbiased advice.
Competitions
Launch a competition on your site. The promotion will get your site featured on several giveaways/freebies sites and will be linked to by several other blogs around the same theme.
News and Scoops
If your site is the first to break a story that is interesting and relevant to your niche, then people will happily add a link to spread the word for you.
It is worth investing some time in providing a few hooks for which people will want to link back to you.
By using link baiting techniques, you will also increase the amount of content on your website. The more content a website has the better its chances are of showing up high in search engines for more keyword variations.
We would love to hear your suggestions on link baiting techniques that you’ve seen used or used yourself!