Linkbait is one of the most often talked about SEO techniques on the web; however, what isn’t talked about are the specific types of linkbait.
- Linkbait
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From Problogger: The term linkbaiting is a one that seems to have surfaced over the past 12 or so months and that is used by webmasters to describe a variety of practices – all of which seek to generate incoming links to a website or blog from other sites.
Techniques and Utilizing Linkbait
- The one site technique – You write something to encourage backlinks from a specific site. This can be anything from a review to a trackback (agreeing or disagreeing with the article). This technique is usually generates ’surprise’ linking, but with enough know-how it is quite successful.
- Baiting a specific group – This technique was made famous by the many abuses of Digg. A while back, whenever anyone wrote an article/blog post about Digg it would be frontpaged immidiately. Why didn’t you do that? Alright, I didn’t either, our loss.
Today, the most common group baiting is to political groups and celebrity followers. An great example is the photoshopped image of Sarah Palin’s head on the bikini body holding a gun. Other examples are LoLCats and “Fail!” photos.
Image by Althewebmaster - Using gadgets – Creating badges or WordPress plugins isn’t all about helping others; it’s also about helping yourself. You better believe that 99% of the time a badge or plugin is created the author is hoping for a linkback.
- General baits – This is generally the most common, but can also the hardest to bait. General humor, lists, interviews, and rants are among the many within this category. Most baiting will occur within your own niche and may move outward to StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg, or one of the other social media sites.
If all else fails, porn it up! Pornography is always a well viewed subject, only people are more discrete about it. Don’t expect tons of comments, but do expect great StumbleUpon traffic and reddit traffic from the NSFW category.
Written: Oct 6, 2008
Harish
October 6, 2008 @ 10:35 am
hey you are right gary.I agree with you.Using the powerful social media.its possible to invite tons of traffic.
fragileheart
October 6, 2008 @ 9:18 pm
LOL I like your last suggestion best – but it would get me banned from Entecard! lol
Dennis Edell
October 7, 2008 @ 4:29 pm
I LOVE explanation posts like this, thanks! This is a keeper