Linkbaiting Techniques in Web 2.0 and Traditional Media

Some good reading
  • Link bait - Wikipedia
  • The art of Linkbaiting - by Nick Wilson
  • Linkbaiting for Fun & Profit - by Randfish, published in SEJ
  • 20 Linkbaiting Techniques from ProBlogger (see also An Introduction to Linkbaiting and 8 reasons why lists are good)
  • Tips on writing content for your blog - by Piaras Kelly PR
  • SEO book's 101 way to build link popularity (see also: examples of good linkbaiting)
  • Examples of useful linkbaiting content - by Matt Cutts

    Problems with LinkBaiting
  • Since it's not science, it's junk science (my own deep thoughts included)
  • The term itself is harmful, as long as it leads to more confusion than clarity

    What's there to clarify?
    Things jointly referred to as LinkBaiting fall into three different categories
  • The first commandment of any media: be interesting, if you want readers to be interested (publish scoops, run exclusive stories, milk celebrities for quotes, break news ahead of Reuters, don't be dull, don't get off topic)
  • SEO technical tricks, aimed more at search engines than at human readers (use keywords, use tags, submit to catalogs, offer RSS feeds, use META tags, try to get linked by sites with huge PR, buy keywords, buy links, join AdSense etc)
  • Exploiting known patterns of blog readers' behavior
    I suggest, that only the latter category should be termed LinkBaiting, as opposed to classic editorial and SEO skills, that happen to be no different from the ones used elsewhere, including both Web 1.0 and traditional offline media

    LinkBaiting Proper
    Since the aim here is to make your blogging readers link to your page, the question is really simple: why would they want to do it?
    Here are some basic motivations:
  • because a link to your page was part of something really useful they've got from you
  • because you exhaustively covered some topic, sparing them the trouble of explaining it all to their own readers
  • because you made it easy for them to link back to you
    Now let's have a closer look at some techniques to strengthen those motivations.

    Something Really Useful
    Roughly 95% of bloggers have no idea about programming. Else, they would have started blogging years ago, using HTML-creation tools and homepage hosting. The only reason they waited to see bloghosting tools is that they couldn't program or even adopt the simplest PERL script for content management.

    While most bloggers can not develop web-based interactive applications, they would gladly use and incorporate such applications in their blogs. And if a link to your website is the price to pay for it, they'll pay it gladly.

    Interactive applications many bloggers would like to use are statistic tools, custom search forms, datamining utilities, and all sorts of graphic widgets (countries I've visited; my blog is ... days old; my blog is worth $XXX.XXX etc). Such utilities cost next to nothing to develop for a web apps professional, but they are eternally reusable.

    Exhaustive Coverage
    This is how Wikipedia got so popular, despite its low reliability and nonexistent credibility. People really need a place to link to, when they mention a term they have no time or motivation to explain. Wikipedia does the job, and gets paid back with a 9 Google PR (Google's own Gmail has 8).

    When you blog about any subject you've previously studied at length (scientific topic, political issue, a destination you're keen to visit), try covering it exhaustively, the way an encyclopaedia would have done. It's a very simple task, and an extremely rewarding one, in terms of linkbaiting. It's not necessarily about text: same trick can be used with photos. Instead of just reprinting someone else's shot, make a directory of best shots for the chosen location. Consider it "value added on top of Flickr".

    Make it Easy to Link Back
    You can use classic buttons, such as Digg it, Post to del.icio.us etc. It's strongly recommended that you do. But you can also include the "link back to this article" post within the article's body, in plain HTML. For many bloggers it should tip the scales of "to link or not to link" dilemma.