Defining the term “linkbaiting” is not an easy task. It can encompass many different techniques for many different practices, ranging from running contests to antagonizing other bloggers in the hope of gaining some sort of retaliation so they will link back to you. You can also provide other webmasters with tools (with embedded links back to your own site) that they can put on their site.

There are many types of linkbaiting. As outlined above, being controversial will always get your blog post or online article noticed and inspire someone to link to you from their site. Getting attention this way is not new. People have been doing this for years. Howard Stern isn’t popular just because he has a good radio voice. People take notice when he says something outrageous. This is a great business model and something that could be applied to your site. Controversial posts can get immediate and strong reactions. YouTube has gained notoriety for its plethora of wacky videos that people love posting on their MySpace profiles and showing to their friends.

People also love linking to “lists”. People seem to latch onto them and enjoy reading them because of their simplicity. They can also be very persuasive when all of the items get straight to the point and summarize each point succinctly. Using humor in your blog post or article can be great linkbait as people tend to enjoy funny observations and like passing them on.

Even though the term “linkbaiting” seems negative, it is really just a technique to get people to naturally link to you and get your site or blog noticed. The negative connotations associated with linkbaiting have arisen because of the various forms of “Blackhat” SEOs using unethical ways to get people to link to their content. Examples of Blackhat linkbaiting include over antagonizing a popular blogger in a comment just so he will engage in conversation with you and link back to your site. This is sometimes referred to as “comment spamming”. Also, using bizarre headlines to gain notice and then just copying and pasting someone else’s article is another example of shady linkbaiting. Blackhat linkbaiting is not just bad for your reputation, it can also get you penalized by the search engines and that is something you never want to risk.

All in all, having a purely informational website with dull content just doesn’t cut it anymore. When trying to vie for web supremacy, it is always a good practice to be as creative as possible. There really isn’t a definitive list or technique for baiting links, but people seem to be creating new forms of linkbait all the time.

Building links isn’t just a good way to increase the PageRank and positioning for a page in the search engine results pages (SERPs). It can also increase the keyword relevance for a page for its specific key phrase. This is because, in addition to the content in the title tag, the text content on the page and the name of the file where the content is found, search engines will also give a page keyword relevance based on the anchor text of any links leading to a page. For example, this link will give a little boost of relevance to this page: http://www.morevisibility.com/services-seo-optimization.php for the key phrase “search engine optimization”:

Search Engine Optimization

This is how some sites manage to rank very well for a key phrase even though all their content is hidden from search engines in images or other SEO unfriendly media. If enough pages link to the page with the appropriate anchor text, the page will rank well – even without indexable content. This is also why a good text anchored, keyword rich navigation menu is important in any well-designed site. However, on-site links only get so much credence from search engines. Links coming from other sites with your keywords in the anchor text – particularly if that other site is a highly respected site in your sector of the internet – are the most valuable in this kind of keyword targeting. As anyone who has attempted to do any amount of link building for their site will tell you, getting links from these kinds of sites can be tricky and having them anchored with your chosen key phrase can be downright impossible. That said, there are a couple of things you can do to increase the chances that the anchor text on a link leading to your page will have the appropriate keyword targeting:

1. Include the keyword in the name that you use to refer to your company. Some sites will only link to other sites with the company name. If your company name (or tag line) includes the keyword, it will be more likely to appear in the anchor text of links leading to your site.
2. Include the keyword in the title tag of the page. This is always good advice anyway, but some sites will use this as anchor text so keep the title short and well-targeted to your primary key phrase. Directory sites, in particular, are more likely to publish the link with keyword rich anchor text if it is also the title of the page.
3. Include the key phrase in the URL filename of the page. Many sites do not sanction individual anchor text and just choose to include bare links instead. If the URL filename contains the key phrase appropriately separated with dashes, then the URL filename carries its anchor text baked into its structure and anyone publishing the link automatically publishes the anchor text as in this example:
http://www.morevisibility.com/services-seo-copywriting.php. This kind of strategy works especially well with a social media campaign where the link is spread virally rather than by careful submission and the webmaster has less control over how the link will be built.

Building links with keyword-rich anchor text can be challenging, especially if the focus is on the kind of natural in-bound linking strategies most beloved of Google and the other search engines, but taking a little care in the design and labeling of the page can make the task a little easier. Happy linking!

There are many link strategies available that can help your site achieve the rankings you are looking for. You can submit your site to directories, write articles and push out press releases. One practice to watch out for is link farming. This black hat practice has been around for a long time and continues today. Be wary of link farm schemes and other tactics like this.

The idea behind link farming was to get as many links from websites as you could. It didn’t matter if the sites were relevant or not, as Search Engines would supposedly consider a site more “Popular” because it has so many links pointing to it. Most of the links in link farms have no relational subject matter to each other. They will most likely have a page on a site with a laundry list of hyperlinked keywords called Anchor text pointing to the various sites in the farm. When search engines see that a link farm has formed, they will penalize all involved, thus dropping ranks. Some have reported increased rankings at first, but soon after report a drop to lower than they were when they started.

Signs of a Link Farm

• Require reciprocal linking – this means that you have to put a link to their site, before you can have a link on their site. If you come across this don’t do it.
• Laundry list of sites on a Deep Level Page with no description about the site.
• Unsolicited emails telling you how great your site is and you should form a partnership with them.
• In some cases, there will be a page called “Link Partners” or “Links”.
• No discrimination for sites included.
• Ask for a link on your links page even if you don’t have one.

If you should run across sites that have one or many of the characteristics, do not participate. If you are still unsure, contact your Strategist at MoreVisibility and they will gladly assist you in determining the right link building strategy.