Link Baiting

Link Baiting - Gain Inbound Links

Link baiting is hard to do - what makes one site want to link to another? Use these hooks to be on your way to increasing your inbound links.

• Internet

The term link baiting is thrown around Web circles and forums often as a 'must-do' search engine optimisation technique. Do you know how to use link baiting to your advantage to increase your website's presence?

Think of link baiting like fishing. You throw out a page on your website into the World Wide Web, like bait on a fishing line. There are will normally be numerous other 'pieces of bait' out there waiting to get nibbled on, so you want to make yours the most appealing to potential fish (internet users).

By using some simple SEO techniques, your will bait look attractive to your target market, and you'll start to get 'bites', or links to your bait. The interest in your page will increase and get more widely spread, simply by being linked to. Ideally, you'll get the big fish (an authoritative source with a high Pagerank) to link to your page, and voila, you've successfully link baited.

What makes good bait? There are several 'hooks' that you can base your page content on, which will effectively optimise your page for link baiting.

Newsworthy Hook: This means you create content that reports breaking news, completely unique within the Web. Doing this before any of your competitors can see link baiting succeed at its fastest.

Controversial Hook: When you create content that is likely to provoke discussion and potentially offend, possibly in contrast to standard public opinion.

Resourceful Hook: An informative, authoritative piece of content, that collects relevant information and/or resources for users on a particular topic or happening and puts them all in one place. Along with information, this can often also be videos or photos.

Tool Hook: Taking the Resourceful Hook one step further is the Tool Hook, whereby you create a tool, widget, add-on or other useful program that is helpful and innovative enough for many people to want to use it.

Search Engine Optimisation images from Flickr: Hooked, Transparent Screen and Mac + Starbucks.