Linkbaiting 101 – Increase your backlinks

I wrote a post in the past about Link-baiting but at that time I was still getting adjusted with the blog. After reviewing it, I decided to do a better version of that post. I think I didn’t explain everything correctly. Besides this article will be more in depth.

Definition

Link bait is a powerful technique which consist of having interesting content that attracts users to give you a back link, or as Matt Cutts defines link bait: “interesting enough to catch people’s attention.”

Image credits ToonRefugee – Copyright 2008 James Cook

Advantages of Linkbaiting

There are two major advantages of linkbait which can lead to alot more advantages.

Traffic – Traffic to the website increases tremendously due to linkbait. This traffic is insanely high during the early days of the content. Such as my post about 13 ways I promoted my blog to success recieved over 2500 visitors within the first 24 hours. The sudden rush of traffic means:

• Increase in New Subscribers and Readers.
• Increase in People bookmarking your sites because you got more readers now. (More mouth to mouth advertisement).
• Increase in revenue from advertisers.

Search Engine Ranking Positions (SERPs) – Linkbaiting is getting you alot of backlinks. And you should know by now that tons of backlinks mean higher SERPs and higher PR. Your blog pages will start ranking for long-tailed keywords. Which means more traffic to those pages and more traffic to your blog in general. Balkhis rank well for alot of competitive keywords in the industry (Which I can’t share for obvious reasons). But ranking good for some terms gets you alot of new readers. Also higher backlink count, higher pagerank, higher traffic means your site is now worth more, therefore you can charge more for private advertisement.

Linkbaiting Techniques

Linkbaiting is for people who have vivid imaginations. The techniques are unlimited. You just have to open your mind and see them. There are some that are very commonly used among the webmasters. Feel free to use any/all of them at your own discretion.

1. Contests / Giveaways – are one of the best linkbaiting techniques I have seen online. If you haven’t seen most contest ask users to write about the contest to get alot of entries in the drawing. I have seen almost all contests do that. Why? Because you are giving away a valuable prize people will write about it. *For instance if you are to give away a Macbook Air which cost $1800. You get 100 people to write about your contest (Permanent Backlinks). Then you get tons of traffic from social media and a big boost in your readers. You get well worth return for your investment*
2. Free Tools – Creative tools are always a good way to get alot of backlinks and exposure in the webworld. Take iWebtool for example. They got tons of exposure for their tools. People writing about them left and right. This is another good way of linkbaiting.
3. Lists – I have seen people who make lists also tend to get alot of backlinks and traffic. For example 45n5. He made a list of top make money online blogs and he gets tons of backlinks for it. Like this one. I was also speaking with Nabil from Enkay Blog who have a list of top 100 Female Bloggers which apparently gets alot of traffic. If you know of a female blogger nominate them at Nabil’s list.
4. Controversy / Attacks – Controversial posts tend to grab alot of attention toward the site. I wrote once about HostGator committing a federal offense which grabbed alot of attention (Sadly they still haven’t fixed it). Also attacking companies and other webmaster/bloggers can also get you alot of backlinks, but I would prefer not to take that route because you burn your bridges that way.
5. Be the First – I have mentioned it numerously that being first in a niche puts you at a big advantage. It also gives you a boost with linkbaiting also. Even if you are the first one to write about a new story, you will get the results. *For Instance if you are the first one to write about an event, most likely than not you will be the one mentioned at other places*
6. Usefulness / Good Content – Like always a useful post and good content will always grab readers. So if you are a blogger and you write a useful post than most likely than not you will get good traffic to your website or that article. Tutorial posts help alot in these sort of things. Such as my Vlogging 101 Guide.
7. Accomplishments – I have seen that listing about your accomplishment also plays a significant role. It will get you more backlinks and more exposure. Like when I was published in the newspaper or sharing the google PR, Alexa, subscriber count, revenue or any other accomplishment your blog made usually will get you backlinks.

My Opinion

Sometimes people ask me whether Linkbaiting is bad? My answer to them is YES and NO. Some techniques such as attacking others are BAD in my opinion. Whereas techniques such as useful content, contests, being first is not always bad. Linkbaiting can be a very effective promotion technique if used wisely. But abusing it can hurt your reputation.

I know I will get comments that will point out the negatives of linkbaiting, and all I will say to that is like everything there is a good use of linkbaiting and a bad use of linkbaiting.

Note: I have some what used all techniques listed above. They are not mentioned in any orderly fashion. Sometimes I have used the techniques just to gain backlinks other times, backlinks were not even my main concerns, it just kind of got the hit. No these are not the only 7 linkbaiting techniques. There are plenty more that are listed online, and more that comes with your imagination.

What do you think about Linkbaiting?
Do you think its good or bad?
Have you used any of the techniques above? If so share how it worked out for you?
Do you have any other technique which I didn’t list? If so share it with all of us.