The term “Linkbaiting” has been floating around blogs for a few years now. A lot of people may have questions about it or might still be confused on what exactly it is. Whether you know what it is or not, chances are you have linkbaited before. (especially if you are sites such as entrecard or mybloglog. There is of course some debate still on whether or not this is a good method or bad, though I believe it does have its own benefits.

What is Linkbaiting?

Linkbaiting continues to gain momentum as it is used by webmasters that wish to generate more incoming links to their website or blog (from another site). The term itself is rather general and can be broken up into a lot of different aspects; I will go over a few of those in this post. Linkbaiting can cover contests/competitions, commenting on other people’s blogs, attacking people’s high profile blog posts, putting scripts/tools on your site or blog that can be proven beneficial and have them wanting to come back, among more things.

If you are a blogger, chances are that you have done some form of linkbaiting in the past. Some forms of linkbaiting are rather bad form and I would like to try to avoid (no matter how starved for traffic I get). One technique which I find rather despicable is to attack another blogger in order to try and get them to talk about you (which would mean giving you more presence and awareness, whether in a post or more comments.

Why is Linkbaiting Good?

Short Term Effects of LinkBaiting:

• Increase in traffic
• Increased Earnings
• Increased Subscribers
• New Loyal Readers
• (there are many others - I am just listing the basic ones)

Long Term Effects of LinkBaiting:

• Google’s Link Juice (Page Rank)
• New Incoming Back Links
• Better SERP’s
• More Visibility

Examples of Linkbaiting

There are endless amount of ways to ‘linkbait’ to your website or blog. Some which are known to be common and acceptable, while others are a bit more shady or unorthodox.

• Contests - Add a competitive edge to your website or blog by using a contest. This is a great way to get more people flowing to your site.
• Tool - If you are good at programming, why not add a tool to make them keep coming back? Page Rank checker, or back link checker.. Anything really! I will probably do something like this in the future, myself.
• Surveys: Hold surveys/quizzes/tests. These have been popular for years. Ever since the tests on bolt or okcupid, users have been drawn to them. If you place an HTML results script to allow people to plug and play to their own website, it can become viral.
• Find a Scammer: Expose the guy as fraud! Not only that, if you know something that can create some real buzz among your readers and the blogging community itself, take the opportunity! You will find many trackbacks to your blog and an increase in Traffic!
• Awards: Who would have thought? Give someone an award or make a poll on your site and give different categories. This can create some major buzz.
• Comedy: I know, not a direct ‘linkbait’. However, be funny! Make people crack up! A funny photo, video, or story would be enough. Many people seemed to enjoy my bill gates video that was taken at the Jan ‘08 CES Expo in Las Vegas, for example.
• Comment a Blogger: This is probably one of the easiest ways. Comment on other blogger’s and use your blog site as the URL field which is usually asked. Be creative and unique and people will check you out.

Conclusion:

Though yes, Linkbaiting can be powerful. However do not get obsessed with the idea. You should not be looking at your traffic on awstats or google analytics every 10-15 minutes because you want to check the progress of how your techniques are doing. This is not the way.

A Good quick Guide on LinkBaiting can be found here

If you do it right, and if you are creative enough, linkbaiting is a very useful and powerful method on gaining a large amount of traffic and incoming links.

Good luck! Enjoy yourselves!