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By Philip C (c) 2008
Specifically, linkbait is used to attract visitors to your
website whether through interest, anger or knowledge seeking. Linkbait is
content that is specially written to either educate, entertain or inflame your
readership and prospective readers. These articles create buzz, and the buzz
spreads virally from site to site in the form of links and comments that others
make about what is written on your site. These inbound or back links are used
by search engine algorithms to rank a website. The higher the rank, the higher
the listing, the more traffíc that arrives at your website. More visitors
create more buzz which in turn creates more visitors. Linkbait creation is a
marketing campaign on steroids and falls under the task of link building. Its
sole aim is to increase the quantity of high-quality, relevant links to a
website.
Search engine optimized on a specific keyword phrase,
linkbait comes in two flavors: specific, helpful, useful content written by an
authority in a niche market or content that will incite discussion and
sometimes argument on a niche subject. Either way, linkbait articles attract
visitors to your website.
Here's the difference. Your content is supposed to generate
links from other websites, right?. That is the goal. You want people to like or
hate your article/post/rant enough to write about it on their website and post
with that follow-up a link back to your site and page of where the content is
sitting. This is basic viral marketing in that visitors don't just read your
material, but webmasters who find you are either riled up enough to rant about
your post/article on their website or love it enough so that they quote it and
refer to it. This becomes a never-ending source of links back to your site.
What happens with backlinks or one-way links from other
sites? The search engines keep a count of how many sites link back to your
website giving you love and higher listings in their search engines which
translates to more traffíc for your website. This form of viral marketing is
used successfully by many; however, a lot of webmasters are overlooking this very
easy method to boost their natural search engine listings. Natural search
engine listings are the ones you don't pay for, that help your website
naturally improve and hang around in search engines for long periods of time.
Looking at linkbait, there are essentially a few different
types. Let's go through those, and then look at the best, always guaranteed to
attract forms that have been used since the term was invented.
Informational: If you provide information that educates and
informs your readership, they will always return and use it as reference.
Copyblogger and Problogger often provide these types of articles.
News: Keeping up with the breaking news on the web and
around the world is followed by readers who want to know, in capsule form,
what's happening.
Humor: Funny stories, bizarre pictures or videos, cartoons
and jokes are always a wínner. People love a chuckle and references or
collections of these are always a traffic attractor.
Controversy: Rant and rave on something or someone in a
negative fashion and people will love to stop by and dispute your view. It will
always yield a ton of attention. Writing something unpopular gets and keeps
readers who want to air their views on your views. They will also rant about
your unpopular views on their sites and link back to yours so that others can
follow suit.
Resource: One of the best forms of linkbait is building a
resource líst. A good líst will not only be indexed and listed, but will be
passed by word of mouth and links on other sites. It creates a great deal of
credibility for you and your website in a particular niche, and will become a
reference work. Creating a niche specific líst is an invaluable resource for
people in that particular realm, and will make your readership loyal. If you
have a great resource page, it is literally gold. You can have hundreds of
other pages of content, but what will steadily attract people and cause them to
return and refer others is a good resource in their niche.
One of the best examples of the resource type of linkbait is
Smashing Magazine, a blog devoted to nothing but lists of resources that draws
a continual stream of visitors and is referred to by all who visit. It has
everything and is not only an extremely interesting read, but one of the best
resource link sites around. As a result, folks quote it, refer to it, use and
love it. The resource lists are quality content, and that's the big difference
between success and failure in this form of marketing. If you create a lousy
linkbait article, it will fail. Further, your credibility will suffer. First
impressions count on the web and with only nine seconds to convince the
arriving traffic that you are worthy of them sticking around, you need to deliver
quality content, astounding resource lists and consistent high levels of
content that is valuable and entertaining.
All in all, you really need only remember one thing when
starting this type of marketing campaign: provide quality content that is useful,
interesting and entertaining. Deliver it in a professional style and make it as
user-friendly as possible. Optimize for search engines, and folks will find
you. Allow for comments on your material and traffic will come.
About The Author
Real Estate Hyper Links is a New York search engine
marketing firm specializing in various techniques to achieve higher search
engine rankings faster than normal search engine optimization campaigns for
real estate companies.
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