Linkbaiting, like many forms of link development and viral marketing, is a double edged sword. It can dramatically influence you inbound link profile (IBLP) for the benefit or detriment of your organic search performance. Being too effective in non-influential spaces can clutter your link profile and not reach your ultimate goal of conversions. Linkbaiting, like viral marketing in general, is intended to spread your links throughout the internet bringing you a cache of links to your site, but this come back to the most important and constantly argued point of quality or quantity.
Without digging into the debate over quality and quantity (because we all know that quality is ideal), the point to this series is to find out what will help you on your way to link success. The most effective linkbait techniques include both of these in generating large amounts of quality links from quality resources. The whole concept of link building is to get links from quality resources to improve authority for a topic. So, to be effective in your execution you need to reach your audience and give them a reason to link to your content.
Here are a few linkbaiting techniques that many have employed to drive effective links from quality resources:
- Awards
Awards can be an effect means of linkbait because you will most likely have awards for sites in your niche or topical area (examples are: SEOmoz’s Web 2.0 Awards, Search Engine Watch Awards and SEMMYS.org). In these examples, SEOmoz and SEW are a great way of rewarding others for doing things right (as with the SEMMYS), however, the SEMMYS is a more effective means of linkbait because they incorporate their industry in nominating, voting and choosing their winners. The other way to build more notoriety (and links) is to extend this to the general public. The buzz that can be created to nominate and vote can be a great way to build links. - Badges
You can see below a couple of great examples of badges, one for the TopRank’s Big List and the other for AdAge’s Power 150. Badges and rankings for relevant sources of information is a great way to gain links and build community around your topic. It can also help you to build relationships with other webmaster’s in your niche because they appreciate the traffic from being included. - Content
Lists, white papers, research are the original and, in many ways, the most effective source of linkbait. This is different from my previous post on Content Development for Link Building because it isn’t about just building and publishing quality content, but linkbaiting is all about getting it promoted in the right places and at the right time to “encourage” others to link to your content. Timeliness is probably the most critical component, that is why news sources get the best links because the usually are delivering “the scoop.” Delivering a scoop is a great way of getting links.
As with an effective SEO strategy, linkbaiting is best served tactically. There may be a big difference in the effectiveness of a linkbaiting campaign by understanding where to bait and when.
Ok, so the sixth piece of Holistic Link Building 101 is finished with only one topic left to explore, something that I termed Link Building 2.0, so stay tuned (hopefully it won’t take me as long to bring it to you). Feel free to review the previous posts in this series and I welcome your comments and feedback:
Holistic Link Building 101
- Holistic Link Building Defined
- Directory Submissions
- Content Development to Build Links
- Direct Link Requests
- LinkBaiting
- Link Building 2.0
Related Posts >>
- Holistic Link Building 101
- Link Bait and Viral Marketing = Traffic – So What!
- Holistic Link Building Defined
- Link Building 2.0 – Link Development in Web 2.0
- How to Win Links and Influence Webmasters
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
I was hoping you’d go more into the negative effects of having a large amount of low quality links, as opposed to a few high quality ones. Do you feel search engines penalize sites for having a whole bunch of little links all over the place, or is it a case of ‘it won’t help much, but it also won’t hurt’. I do like the idea of awards and badges, but I feel that you should already have a significant presence before you go around offering these things. There isn’t too much incentive for such things unless it comes from a place that you can actually respect. Good article though, glad to see you’re back.
Good call!
There are negative effects of having a large number of low quality links…the greatest thing to remember is balance. If you are only using a single type of link development tactic will be easily isolated by search engines. I didn’t want to get into the negative affects because of the nature and theme of this link development series is to have more than one tool in your link acquisition tool belt.
Thanks for the comment!
Great post. But why do you think that large number of low quality links is bad? So why most webmasters spaming many forums for having millions links. Low quality links. It’ll gives shorttime effect, but it works!
too right….having hundreds of low quality links is hurtful reather than helpful….try to concentrate on medium quality backlinks, and high authority backlinks are almost impossible!
I’ve read that a site owner must maintain a well-balanced link to avoid any trouble or penalty from Google (for example). But still, I’m confused about this matter cause some webmasters find all links as useful, no matter what.
Hi Pittfall,
Great post…got me thinking. You close with your best point. Badges, Awards, Content…it all has to appeal to the target market. I think those tactful plays take care of the dispersion of low-quality links that previous comment-ers have noted. If you’re honest and genuine with your content, the rest/Google should take care of itself.
i don´t agree that low quality links are bad for your site – but sure quality ist the better way – but you need both. Adwards are a good idea for good links – and it´s so easy.
I think that having any number of links from irrelevant pages are not going to hurt you in terms of rankings, but will not help you as much as a few relevant links. What is important is the links you get arn’t from bad neighbourhoods e.g. link farms, blackhat sites, black listed, spammy or sandboxed sites as these could really hurt rankings.
I’m one who believes that many low level links won’t hurt you, they just won’t help you that much (aside from those who click the links while they’re still new, such as in forum signatures or comments like this). As far as search engines are concerned, I don’t see it hurting, I just see them ignoring too many low links.
I have like 100 backlinks from PR of Zero, then I have one PR of 5 but the Anchor text isn’t effective! Its just my company name, boo hoo.
Wish I would have written that one right