Link bait is something other people want to link to of their own free will. As the number of people linking to the bait increases, so does the site’s PageRank. This can help push the site up the rankings for one or more keywords, perhaps even helping it into the top spot.
Link bait can only work if people find it useful. In particular, it works best when people who write blogs, “how to” guides and resource sites think it will help their readers. As such, link bait tends to have these features…
- The benefit of having it is easily understood by others
- There is a well-defined target market that will find it useful
- 3rd party blog authors will link to it because it’s useful to their audience
- It’s the sort of thing people will click on if you tweet about it
- It’s not too long, wordy or involved
Examples of link bait include The DIY Guide to SEO, the Web Marketing Process Campaign Plan, and the Lead Generation Campaign Calculator. Each of these tools provides a specific service likely to be of use to the people they’re aimed at.
You can create your own link bait, and make it available for download via your site. Your link bait might take any of the following forms…
- Video
- Audio
- Text
- Slideshow/Presentation
- Flash application
- Ebook
- Top 10 list
- Web utility/application
In addition to the bait itself, you’ll also need a landing page. And if you have a landing page, you might as well collect an email address before making the item available (i.e. for future marketing communications).
Once your landing page is up, it’s time to start promoting it. This can be done via Twitter, Facebook, a Squidoo page, directories, classified sites, forums, and blogs. In particular, find those blogs, forums, etc that deal with your target market. Write to the blog owner, and make him/her aware of your item. With a bit of luck, s/he will spread the word to thousands of people and you’ll pick up lots of powerful inbound links very quickly.
You shouldn’t limit yourself to a single application. Always be on the look out for new ideas, because you never know what people will find attractive. Any given idea might turn out to be the one that gets you right to the top of Google.