Use Link Bait to Catch Better Search Engine Rankings

by Bill Hartzer, 2/17/2006

I first heard of the term "link bait" from Aaron Wall (www.seobook.com) at SEO Book (http://www.seobook.com/archives/001113.shtml) when he mentioned it back in a post on his SEO blog back in August of 2005. He says in his post that if "you are in a field that can't build links naturally create linkbait". What really is link bait? It's something on your web site that causes someone to link to you. Aaron gives some examples in his post, but a classic example of link bait would be the Subservient Chicken web site by Burger King. So many people ended up talking about that web site that they linked to it--it currently enjoys about 29,300 links according to Yahoo! and ranks number one on Google for the word chicken. By creating something on your web site that's funny, controversial, informative, or creative, it will gain natural links--which is the key to top search engine rankings.

You don't have to be a big brand or have a lot of money to create link bait. Many people have created link bait on purpose--and many have created link bait without even knowing it. It doesn't have to cost that much to create something that people will link to. For example, it's sometimes difficult--if not impossible--to get your competitors to link to you. But, consider this--take, for example, the case of Andrew. He works for a high tech company with a lot of competition. Andrew recently took his digital camera to an industry convention where he took photos of many of the attendees, the booths, and some of the after-hours events. He posted the photos on his web site after the convention, sent out a few emails to his colleagues and other industry insiders he met at the convention. Before he knew it, most of Andrew's competitors were linking to his web site and the photos he took.

Go to article page:

Internet Marketing Strategy: The Write Way To Get Web Site Traffic

Since the birth of the commercial Internet good writing has driven the development and search engine positioning of web sites. Good web site content (next to keywords) has been and always will be the King, Queen and whole Royal Court of marketing success on the web. When you're trying to develop a successful web site you soon realize that your web site content is an important part of your success strategy. Read 'Internet Marketing Strategy: The Write Way To Get Web Site Traffic'.

Article categories

Latest articles

Keyword Research Strategies For Article Writers

If you write articles, you probably know how important it is to use keywords in helping to get them indexed by search engines, and in getting the attention of publishers who might want to use your content. Read 'Keyword Research Strategies For Article Writers'.

Are You Targeting The Wrong Keywords?

Like it or not, the keywords and phrases you select to describe your site within your META tags and body text can make or break your listings in the search engines. It's a sad fact that most companies are targeting the wrong keywords and losing traffic as a result. Even sites that have excellent rankings will not benefit if those rankings are for unsuitable keywords. Read 'Are You Targeting The Wrong Keywords?'.

Professional Keyword Research Strategies

Keyword research is an integral part of any SEM initiative, whether it may be PPC or SEO, so it's important to do it right. Its also important to do it right from the start, Google spiders (the bots that indexes web pages) can takes up to months before they cycle to your site, so if you target the wrong keywords initially, it could take months to fix. Read 'Professional Keyword Research Strategies'.