Link baiting: get 1000’s links to your website
With such a powerful tool as Link Baiting why to bother with searching for any links to your website, adding it to article and general directories, spending money on buying links? Forget about it, get one way natural links that will push your website to the top of search engines and social websites.
So, with link baiting all you need is to create some great content or an online tool, post it on social bookmarking websites: enjoy traffic and generate income.
Social bookmarking – you save your bookmarks to some public website that makes your bookmarks available to other members. You also tag your bookmarks with keywords – relatively new way of information classification. This website members search the information by tags, popularity or person.
Unfortunately, it is not so easy. But let’s start from the beginning.
Rand Fishkin defines link baiting as content targeting link friendly audiences. Very precise definition. Link friendly audiences – who are they? Bloggers and forum posters.
Rand who is one of the best link baiters offers his algorithm to succeed with this marketing technique:
1. Browse popular social bookmarking websites (del.icio.us, digg.com, stumbleupon.com, netscape.com, etc) and research what people tend to bookmark in your niche.
2. Brainstorm for 10-15 ideas for content or tools. They should be unique and appealing to your niche users. It is the hardest part: how to know that this information will appeal to link friendly audience? Answer: by trial and error
3. Develop a catchy title
4. Add web 2.0 look and feel features
5. Remember to add viral elements: ‘e-mail your friend’, ‘add to a bookmarking website’
6. Test if everything is fine and add the link bait to social bookmarking websites (list of most popular social bookmarking websites)
7. Be prepared: not every piece of your work is likely to become a true link bait. Also expect some criticism from community – there will be some persons who are likely to discover some weak points in your work.
I have been testing the algorithm for a few days. I did not make it really big, but a simple post ‘where to buy domain names’ brought me alone about 1,000 unique visitors a day. It is a record for my website. The visitors neither clicked AdSense ads nor were interested to buy any products/ services displayed at the website, but it is great from branding point of view. And it is time to turn to ‘old and good’ CPM advertising (CPM – banner impressions).
Summary: I have really experienced the power of bookmarking websites: they bring you traffic, generate new links (not yet any evidence in my case), a great branding tool. They make you less dependent on natural search engine traffic. And it is the greatest advantage to new websites that endlessly complain of Google sandbox.
It is not that simple to create a working link bait, but it is a much easier task than to get your website to Google top 10.
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