What is Linkbaiting

By Amrit Hallan

Linkbaiting is a term I’ve been coming across a lot on various blogs and forums. For a few days I ignored it thinking it was some “blackhat” seo tactic to promote your links due to the expression “baiting”. Some detailed reading made things quite clear.

The meaning of linkbaiting

Of course the straightforward meaning of linkbaiting is encouraging others to link to you. Legitimate linking brings you quality traffic and who doesn’t need quality traffic? Linkbaiting generally takes place in your niche area. For instance, I write on content writing, copywriting and blogging on this blog, and if I write something really compelling, people interested in these subjects would like to link to my post.

So how do you make other bloggers and webmasters link to you?

Write compelling content

Nothing can bring you more incoming links than compelling content. Write content that people would like to read and recommend to their own visitors. Now, what makes your content compelling for your linkbaiting efforts?

  • Write unique posts: Choose topics that other people wouldn’t like to touch and do it wisely. If you are making a claim or a counter-claim then back it up with substantiated data. People will link to you even if you become the laughing stock but then that is not a long-term strategy.
  • Make people think: Posts that force you to think and that tickle your intellectual buds get linked to a lot.
  • Write posts that teach new things: We all want to improve constantly. For instance, I write content for web pages. So I’m always looking for blog posts and online articles that teach me new things and help me improve my skill so that I can deliver better to my clients. Such articles get linked a lot through social networking websites like Digg and del.icio.us.
  • Write posts that are relevant today: This could be anything: politics, sports, science and technology, war or natural disasters. If your posts talks about the current state of affairs and if you do that in your unique style people will put your link on their blogs and websites.
  • Publish quality links consistently: You don’t need to write long, analytical posts all the time. Other people are constantly writing stuff you can link to. If you expect people to link to your interesting posts and then you too should link to interesting posts appearing on other blogs. This gives you an opportunity to be versatile and voice your opinion on what other people say.

Exchange links

This may seem as an obsolete manner of encouraging linkbaiting due to the indiscriminate link-exchanging campaigns by phony seo experts, but requesting link exchanges within your niche is not a bad idea, especially if your blog is worth linking too, and you think the other blogger’s blog is worth linking to, too.

Participate in forums and comment sections

The more you participate in online forums and blog-comment sections, the more exposure your links get. If you give constructive comments over the time the other readers begin to respect your opinion and start visiting your blog or website. This can also bring in people who would like to put your links on their blogs and websites. But please don’t just leave comments for the sake of putting your link there — people can easily make out what you are trying to do.

Write reviews of other blogs

You can write reviews of other blogs and let them know about it. If your review is well-written and constructive, they’d love to mention it on their blogs, and who knows, they might put your link in their permanent links section.

Conclusion

Linkbaiting is an ongoing process and at the crux of it is the content you have. So you cannot just have a one-month long linkbaiting project and expect a good result. It takes months, and even years to get noticed. They key is: constant effort, good interpersonal skills, and above all, unique, relevant content that is generated persistently.

Copyright © 2010 Amrit Hallan
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Amrit Hallan is a freelance copywriter, and a website content writer. He also writes optimized content for better Search Engine Ranking. To know more about his services, visit his content writing and copywriting website at http://www.amrithallan.com He also publishes his thoughts on content writing, blogging and online copywriting on his blog at http://www.contentblog.net.