How-To

What is linkbait and linkbait examples for beginners

Successful website promotion requires flexibility: the use of different strategies for external and internal optimization. One of the exciting and creative strategies is linkbait. Link promotion is a time-tested SEO method. It allows you to win over search engines and provide relevant, voluminous, and constant traffic. Building the linkbait that search engines love is not easy but doable if you stick to proven methods. Below we have shared the secrets of successfully applying this technique, but first, let’s find out what linkbait is.

What is linkbait?

The term “linkbait” literally means linkbait. It consists of posting content that is interesting to users on the site. This content should be attractive enough for users to link to the site themselves. As a result, the site will rise in search results and, also, will receive traffic from user links.

The word “bait” has some negative connotations. The thoughts immediately come to mind about the insidious tricks and lies. However, this is the most “white” of all optimization methods. It aims to attract visitors’ interest without using bots or other tricking search engine methods. Therefore, site promotion based on link bait is weakly dependent on updates to search algorithms.

Why linkbait?

Most website owners believe that quality content is enough for promotion, yet this is just one factor. This myth comes from Brian Clark’s statement that “link bait is just a sexy term for high-quality content that benefits the reader.” Don’t let this statement deceive you.

You may spend a lot of energy and create excellent content, but only a few people will know about it without enough links to it. It takes even more effort to get a link.

When you spend a lot of energy, but nobody reads your excellent content. Free illustration from Ouch.

MOZ and BuzzSumo conducted a study that analyzed one million random articles. Most of the articles were well written, but more than 75% did not have backlinks. So most potential readers won’t find these articles.

Using linkbait, you increase the reach of your pages because:

  • Search engines will rank your content better
  • You will be able to get referral traffic from the links
  • You will get more interested readers, and thus your audience will expand

What areas does linkbait use?

Some people think that not all sites can promote with linkbait, but they are wrong. No one disputes the existence of specific topics, where the target audience is several thousand people. But even with their help, you can get a lot of links.

For example, an industrial equipment site owner can post articles using cases or exciting information about their products. People will link to them, and the site owner will get more traffic on their main site.

Content for linkbait

Some types of content can make a good target for linking. Below we have provided the most compelling examples that you can use in creating your content.

Fascinating research, statistics, or data

People love to study research, data, and statistics. Therefore, they will link to your material if the article includes these elements. The goals can be different – evidence for research, information for an article, etc.

Fascinating statics. Free illustration from Ouch.

You don’t have to develop massive studies. Sometimes small finds can attract a lot of attention. For example, MOZ has created a guide on how to research keywords. They focused on clear statistics, so many websites referenced the material.

Discussion

Copyblogger (one of the leading resources on digital marketing) deleted a Facebook page several years ago and wrote about it on their blog. Most of the marketing communities have argued about this situation. Many bloggers have published articles and referred to the source of Copyblogger. The blog article became bait and attracted the most readers.

Let’s see how this works in reverse. The bloggers expressed their opinion about this act, and Copyblogger readers visited the website and left comments, as the topic was debatable.

Infographics as a bait way

Visual content is the most effective way to attract links. Every time someone uses someone else’s picture, they link to the source not to look like plagiarism. According to HubSpot, websites that created this infographic received 178% more inbound links and 70% more views than regular articles.

To add a little humor to the article, the authors use memes. Create relevant memes. For example, timed to coincide with the release of a new series Game of Thrones.’ But consider that people who used your memes will not necessarily link specifically to you.

Top lists — attracting famous people or events

You’ve probably seen lists that include the best movies, music, people, or events. Such content’s primary goal is to attract backlinks from those people, the author mentioned in the article.

Уou can see something like this in Forbes magazines. They publish the top richest people globally, the best actors of the year, the best films of the season, etc. So, when Jeff Bezos saw his name on the richest people globally, he published a post on Twitter linked to the article. As a result, the content was seen by thousands of new readers.
But this tactic may not work for resources with small audiences.

When your face at Forbes top list page. Free illustration from Ouch.

Tips for using linkbait

There are a few nuances that you should consider:

  • Create unique and creative content. Choose original topics for your posts and always back up your stories with evidence. For example, Cambrian House decided to buy 1,000 pizzas to feed Google employees, recorded the entire process on camera, and posted it on its website. The result is over 4000 links and several thousand users within the first few days after publication.
  • Create useful content. When Aaron Wall released his SEO tool for Firefox, his site got over 2,000 links and several thousand users in just a couple of days. Since many people have linked to this site using the word “SEO” in the anchor text, it has risen significantly in the Google search engine rankings for the query “SEO.”
  • Offer viral ideas. How do you make a link go viral? The potential for an idea to go viral is in the form of its expression. If the form is visual, understandable, attractive, and unusual, the idea will seem interesting to many users. For the audience to accept the idea, it should be new, relevant, memorable.
  • Do not send or post spam. Please don’t make yourself a bad name by bombarding bloggers with emails asking them to link your content or review the material. If the person is interested, you will be informed, but do not be intrusive.

Conclusion. Where to get ideas for linkbait?

As you can see, many things can be linkbait — just get creative. But before creating content, study your target audience, preferences, and needs. The main task is to find out the most suitable form for presenting information to site visitors.

Let’s look at my own example. The owner of the VPN service publishes articles on different websites for more people to know about his product.
If a reader is interested in these articles, he will follow the link to the official website. Perhaps the website will inspire the client to create his article to share VPN’s experience.

And this will be his linkbait.

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