One critical component of search engine optimization (SEO) is building links to your website.  These links can be called “inbound links” or “backlinks”.  Although one of the most tedious component of SEO, link building can be the determining factor in having your website position on page one versus page two. It can be what enables you to be differentiated from your competition, possibly even moving your site above theirs in the search results.

To build quality links to your website and to utilize your time most effectively while doing so, it is important to note that not all links to your website are perceived as being equal to the search engines. The SEO value or “link juice” that is passed to your site from a link can be determined by many factors. Below are a few things to look for when establishing a link building program:

Are the links nofollow?
A link that is nofollow is essentially telling the search engines: “Don’t follow this specific link.” This is an HTML attribute that enables webmasters to tell the search engines to not transfer “link juice” (PageRank or anchor text) from these links. The search engine will still technically follow the link.

There a few ways to identify if links are “nofollow”.  First, you can take a look at the page’s source code to see if the nofollow tag (rel=”nofollow”) exists.  Another easy way to determine if a link is nofollow is to install a tool such as the SEO for Firefox plugin. With this, the nofollow links will be highlighted in red.

Does the link come from a page that is restricted in the robots.txt file?
A robots.txt file is uploaded to the root of a website’s domain to tell the search engines to not crawl specific pages on the site.  Therefore, as the search engine will not crawl these pages, links from them will not pass any “link juice” or SEO value to the destination page. 

Redirects can also keep that valuable SEO “link juice” from being transferred through a link. 301 redirects are the most SEO friendly way to tell the search engines that a change of address has occurred for a particular page.  If the page that contains the link is 302 redirected (temporary redirect), the links from this page will not be followed.  There are a few tools out there that can help you to determine how a web page is redirecting and this is one that I use frequently: Rex Swain HTTP Viewer.

There are other things that can prevent “link juice” to be passed from another site to yours, but hopefully these will help to identify the most obvious ones.

For those who are not familiar with www.slideshare.com,  it is a site where you can share PowerPoint presentations with people online.  Using SlideShare can be a great way to promote your business, or to demonstrate products or services to potential clients.  Other benefits from SlideShare include opportunities for link building and more presence in thesearch results.

Slideshare offers users an account where they can upload a profile photo, include information about themselves and include a link to their website.  This profile page contains the link to your site.  It does not have a “no follow” attribute, so you can get some link juice passed to your site from SlideShare once your page is indexed.  It is important to complete all the necessary fields when signing up for an account to get the maximum benefit. 

Once you upload your presentations to SlideShare, you can then get and “embed” code to share your presentations on other sites and blogs.  This embed code also makes it easier for others to share your presentation.

Like many other social media channels, SlideShare has a community section.  This community allows you to share ideas and resources with other users.  You can also have people follow you and follow them back, like you would in Twitter.  Having followers and being involved in the communities can help you to connect with those who are already interested in your products and services.

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.