by Bill Hartzer, 2/17/2006
One way to create link bait is to get ranked well for phrases that will become popular in the future. As I sit here writing this article, the term "link bait" might be a good target if you're in the search engine marketing industry. By searching Google for the following: allintitle:"link bait" you can determine about how many web pages on the internet are targeting that search phrase. Right now, as I write this, Google returns 25 results. Since that's not very many, writing content about link bait would be a good thing for your web site. By informing the search engine marketing industry about link bait--and because the term is new, there's a chance that others will search for it as it becomes a more popular phrase. As that phrase becomes more popular, others will need something to link to--and by ranking well for that phrase there's a good chance that your web page about link bait will get links from other web sites. This is a phenomenon that I've been following since 1996 when I created my first "link bait" type of web site. If you're a search term innovator, people will link to you--and links from other web sites mean better search engine rankings.
One of my 'pet projects' over the years (since I started doing search engine optimization in 1996) has been to follow the news--and if there's a topic that I am passionate about I usually create a web page or a web site about the subject within minutes of the 'breaking news'. In the cases where I have a web site about a particular topic and there's breaking news about that subject, I immediately post it on my web site. Since I'm one of the first to have information about that subject, I end up ranking well fairly quickly--sometimes within 24 hours. Other people follow suit and post information on their web sites about that topic--but since my site is already ranking well for that search phrase, they end up linking to me. What they don't realize is that they've fallen for my "link bait" which catches them--they're actually helping me by linking to me and I end up ranking well in the search engines for a very long time, sometimes even many years. How can you take advantage of this? If there's news in your industry, be the first to post it on your web site (or add a new page to your site). Be the first to get it to show up in the search engines and other people will link to it naturally.