Linkbait is very popular as a search engine optimisation method because the links it gains are often very ‘organic’ (or natural), and you are providing (hopefully) good information, or a fun game, that the world can enjoy. People who make linkbait will often try and get their content on sites like Reddit, where they can get tens of thousands of hits – and the bonus of people linking to it.

Types of linkbait content

There are many times of linkbait in addition to what have been mentioned. These include:

• Quizzes (people love to tell others they ‘scored 90% on the … test’)
• Widgets, calculators (handy tools that people can use, e.g. tax calculators)
• Articles
• Infographics

Making your linkbait content

Once you have decided what type of linkbait content you want to make, then you have to decide on what subject matter it should be on. It is a good idea to brainstorm as many ideas as possible here, because if you come up with a rubbish idea it can be a complete waste of time. Try and come up with an idea that:

• People will want to read/view
• Is quick to engage the reader (the quicker the reader thinks ‘this is interesting/fun’ the better
• Is simple to understand – the more people that can understand and use the information the better.

How to promote your linkbait

The hardest part is actually promoting it and getting views & link backs! On the linkbait page make sure you:

• Have buttons like Facebook’s Like, Google Plus button etc
• Have links to vote/submit to sites like reddit, Stumbleupon, etc. (check out addthis.com to do it for you)
• If you use AJAX, make sure people can easily link to it
• If it is a quiz, give the HTML code and BBCODE (for forums) to share the quiz results
• If possible try and encourage people to share the link via Twitter & Facebook. This might be very easy with a quiz!

Make sure that if you use Twitter or Facebook that you actively promote it on there too!

Contacting Bloggers and Asking them to write about your linkbait

If you can find some bloggers in your linkbait’s niche, perhaps try contacting them to see if they would write about it. Just don’t come across as being spammy – only contact them if it genuinely would be beneficial to them to blog about it!

Although it can be an attractive prospect to consider getting lots of lower quality links on hundreds or thousands of other sites around the web, this is very much a short term link building strategy and whenever Google decides that it will give less weight to these kinds of links your site’s traffic will take a big hit as a result of it. Instead, here are several link building techniques that have been proven to deliver great results with no intention of becoming less effective any time soon.

Micro Sites

Building micro sites around relevant keywords in your niche would have to be one of the most effective link building techniques. The main reason for its effectiveness is that you can to easily and quickly build highly relevant backlinks to your money site. You can’t get more relevant then building sites on keywords in your niche. But more then that, you can also dominate the SERPs for certain keywords in your niche. If you can manage to rank your main site and micro site in the #1 and #2 spots on Google, then the exposure you receive for that keyword will be huge and you will reap the rewards in the form of targeted traffic.

Press Releases

For websites that have something newsworthy to tell the world then press releases and submitting PR to the top PR media outlets is great way to generate links and receive internet exposure. PR web services such as PRWeb, PRNewswire, BusinessWire, and MarketWire all offer online PR distribution services at an affordable price for most web businesses. Just make sure when using this link building technique to get SEO-friendly links to your pages within the press release.

Hosting Contests

Hosting contests is another one of the inexpensive link building techniques to get highly relevant links to your site. You can find something of value to your visitors that you don’t use anymore and make it a prize for your link contest. The page that ranks the highest when you search linkdomain:yourdomain.com on Yahoo Site Explorer is the winner. If your website doesn’t already have a large readership then you can consider hosting the contest on high traffic blogs in your niche as well as on dedicated contest sites.

Social Media Marketing

Google is undoubtedly using social signals a lot more in their algorithm to order websites. How much of an impact social media already plays in the search results is still unclear considering its still relatively new, but without a doubt you want to be participating in social media for your site, its only going to become more important with the popularity and importance of the social web and the necessity for social proof that your products and services are all they are cracked up to be.

In order to make the most of social media marketing for link building purposes, look to build up solid profiles on the popular social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Stumbleupon. There is no shortcut to obtaining highly targeted followers and networking with others in your industry. Once you have a large network of related followers and friends, create linkbait content that is viral and that will create buzz and hopefully links to your site!