Sept. 2, Issue #337

Link Bait: Put Your
Link Building on Steroids

By Patrick McCord (c) 2010

The most significant and perhaps the hardest part of website optimization is link building. Website promoters beat the bushes trying to discover the blooming valleys of premium quality links to pick up some juicy links there. However, it isn't that easy and quite often all efforts may be in vain.

But as the saying has it: "If the mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain!" If you can't get links from well-established websites you can encourage them to link to you themselves! One of the ways you can build up tons of links is by producing premium quality content that may potentially go viral. This SEO technique is generally referred to as link baiting. Generally it's about enticing website visitors to promote your site via links from their own sites.

Here are the high spots of the link baiting techniques that may encourage anyone (be it a well-known blogger or the Average Joe) to link to your website:

Write About the Industry's 'Big Guys'

You can get yourself a huge piece of link pie if you write about the authorities in your given market niche. If you tell a story about the leaders who have impacted your niche or post an interview with them you are sure to build a good reputation and attract more visitors. But you must make sure that the story or the interview you post is really noteworthy and useful to readers.

Review Popular Products or Services

The online market is full of similar offers so folks often get confused when making their choice. That's why before making their final decision they search the web for reviews to compare products or services. So if you manage to write a detailed, informative and authoritative review, it is likely to go viral and to be reposted with the reference to the primary source (your website or blog). Besides this can not only get you good quality links, but also win some bonuses from the companies whose products and services you reviewed (like for instance a free version of their products) .

Give Out Some Freebies

Just confess how many times you entered the word "free" in Google when searching for something. People are easily drawn by free offers, so if on your website you give out some quality products or services that can significantly increase the flow of website traffic. You can offer some free software, free video or music downloads, e-books or tutorials, etc. Providing such free services as web hosting, free search tools etc. can also attract traffic to your website and help you get more backlinks. Moreover, you'll also be able to promote your own products and services over time.

Be the First to Write on an Issue

News travels like wildfire. Keep your finger on the pulse of your industry and be the first to break the latest news. That can significantly boost your website traffic and bring lots of valuable backlinks. And, note that not only the news itself, but also the analysis of news items or your comments on the news can attract more website visitors.

Stir Some Controversy

Creating content that goes against some wide-spread idea or criticizes some popular beliefs or practices may raise a wave of public interest and as a result lots of people will link to your website. But you must be careful using this link bait technique and make sure that all your arguments are weighty and convincing enough. Otherwise you run a risk of getting the reputation of being a flamer and might even lose precious link juice.

As you can see, link bait is a great link building technique, but it's impossible to predict whether or not it'll work out. That's why you shouldn't forget about other link building techniques such as directory submission, link exchange etc. There are lots of tools for link building out there that can help you handle those link building tasks.

Among the most widely used in SEO are Yahoo! Site Explorer and SEO SpyGlass.

Yahoo! Site Explorer (https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/) is the grandpa of all tools for link building. It is free and user-friendly. All that users have to do is enter the URL of the website and it displays a list of webpages that link to your website.

SEO SpyGlass is another tool for link building.. SEO SpyGlass evaluates each link according to 26 criteria, such as Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank, inclusion into Yahoo! or DMOZ directories, exact anchor texts and URLs of each link, domain age, exact link value and dozens more.

About The Author
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