Few people who own websites are ignorant of the importance of building links of good value. The days are long gone where everyone just grabbed links as fast as they could, no matter what the quality was. As Search Engine Optimisation became more competitive, the search engines evolved. The chaotic link grabbing lead to the search engines ignoring indiscriminate linking and they now consider the links to content of high value.

Changing Rules

This forced all website owners to reconsider the value of their own websites as well as the websites they wish to link to. Smart website owners now won’t touch any websites that have the reputation for underhand tactics. No-one wants to be seen as being in cahoots with bad-boy websites and be judged as being untrustworthy. The current rules that govern links mean that the link building game has been taken to a new level.

Getting as many high-profile links from websites with impeccable records is what it is all about now. This is the best way to get targeted web traffic from the websites that you have inbound links with. It also enhances your web credibility and your website gets a vote of confidence for having worthy content. The new way of considering links meant creating an innovative way to generate content that people would want to link to.

Spark of Innovation

This lead to the concept of writing link baiting articles. Link baiting in itself is nothing new, except that in the good old days this was a rather dodgy practice. The new concept of link baiting demands link-worthy information. It has to be quality or no-one would consider linking to it. Good link baiting articles not only bring you valuable inbound links, but other benefits as well. High quality link bait content adds great value to your website; it can greatly increase your conversion rate and also improve your search engine ranking.

Link Bait Types

There are five basic types of link baiting. Creating a news hook is done by providing content that others want to link to as they do not have it. This is generated by writing a ‘scoop’ article and being one of the first to report on that topic. With the contrary hook you contradict a view or statement made by someone else. The link bait happens when you link to the original article and then put forward your countering viewpoints.

An attack hook is similar to the contrary hook, but you take things up a notch. You not only put forth your contradiction, but you put the original source under personal attack. The resource hook is used to provide others with useful and valuation information they want to link to. This can be anything from industry related tutorials, resource lists or interesting articles about ‘how to’. Last, but not least is the humour hook. Humour is a powerful attraction for most people and you can use satire, a really funny story or those ever-loved ugliest, silliest, most stupid types of lists.

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