Link Bait

What is Link Bait ?

A webpage with great, interesting content that people will share with others. They may share it through email, or over Facebook or Twitter, or even social news and bookmarking sites like Reddit or Digg.
Link baiting is the practice of crafting content that is designed to get other content producers to link to it. The purpose is increasing the number of inbound links to your content and thus improving its performance in search engine results.

Content

The most important element of link baiting is creating compelling content, something that the reader finds value in. Examples of link bait, in this context, include breaking news, striking images, infographics, controversy, humor, educational material and applications. If your content has value for readers, they are likely to share the link.

Beyond the quality of the content itself, the most common link baiting tactics are creating titles that draw readers to the content and developing reciprocal relationships with other content producers, in which you share links to their content and they to yours.

Both link baiting tactics can be used either well or poorly. A well-crafted title grabs the reader’s attention and accurately represents the content. However, one common misuse of link baiting is the creation of catchy — but misleading — titles for articles. Similarly, if you share links to high-quality content, you, your readers, and the content creator all benefit. However, if you frequently share links to content that is not intrinsically valuable, your own content will lose value for both readers and search engines.

Elements on Web Pages

There are many different elements on web pages that can be considered link bait, if someone links to it. There is no specific definition of what exactly link bait must be, if it is interesting enough to draw visitors and to be linked to other websites. Some of the elements used as link bait include:

1. Humor Hooks – Funny stories, practical jokes, pictures, or videos

2. Informational Hooks – News articles, ezine links, and anything else that carries important information, especially frequently updated information

3. News Hooks – Like information hooks, news hooks provide current information and can even follow big news stories

4. Tool Hooks – Useful tools that can be downloaded or used on the web page

5. Evil Hooks – Mean, inflammatory, or unpopular editorial comments

Blogs are also frequently link baited, mostly because they can touch on several topics and change regularly. Link baiting is a good way to begin a mini marketing campaign without spending much money or time.

Conclusion

Is your company in need of help? MV3 Marketing Agency has numerous Marketing experts ready to assist you. Contact MV3 Marketing to jump-start your business.

 

« Back to Glossary Index