Link baiting is for loosers?

Natural traffic? Crappy traffic more like it. Search engine traffic is what I would deem "natural" traffic.

 

If I write a good informational article and people are itching to link to it. Then am I a loser?

 

best post yet.

 

Well there are a lot of people writing for the sake or writing. That's the blessing and the curse of the internet.

The OP links to a lame post titled "Linkbait is for losers" with the "article text" saying "honesty is the best linkbait". Like WTF?

According to Matt Cutts link bait is anything "... interesting enough to catch people's attention." Not sure what it has to do with "honesty" and losers. Yes writing "honest" whatever is just as good a link bait as any - but from there to saying "linkbait is for losers" makes you a loser.

But then again - we like catchy "controversial" titles like "xyz is for losers" even if we don't have anything to say.

Move on people, nothing to see here.

 

Yeah thats true, all though it can help search engine positions. Iv got a site which gets on average 10,000 reffers from google and its been snooping around digg.com and sites like that for the last 6months.

 

What kind of link baiting are we talking about here? For example on one of my website i have a bit of code that others can copy and paste into their pages that will basically show the latest videos fed from my site. That code also contains a link back to my website. So how is that crap or for losers?

 

You know this thread had been mis interpreted, im not saying the guy posting the video on his blog is correct neither am i saying i promote his opinions in a moral way, im asking what other peaples thoughts are. I for one think Link baiting is an easy way to bring traffic to a site, and yes there is many differant types of link baiting.

 

Yea, im not having a go at anyone. Its just some people consider link baiting to be something close to spamming where others just give people incentives to link back to them.

 

Ill give you an example of one of the big link bait stories I was told.

Ok, a man fabricated the whole story. A poor family in indonesia was losing their home, the father has become sick and could no longer do his very physical labor job to support his family.

They had a son, who was 11 years old, and was trying to figure out how he could help his family. He read online of people his age making hundreds of dollars a month using a program called google adsense, and he knew this much money could save his family.

The person wrote the article in-depth, even photoshopped images of the boy holding up his google checkout with his family. It said how he in under a few months time started making over 2,000 a month using google adsense and literally took his family out of poverty.

All in all the website received over 15,000 links, from places such as new york times, cnn, etc. First place of digg, countless other things i forget he mentioned. Last 8 months its been receiving about 1,000 a month from adsense and he claims he did no work besides the initial story to gain links.

Now thats a link bait

 

People say "link baiting" like it's easy, a cheap trick. It's not. Link baiting means producing quality, while trying to make it catchy at the same time.
That's hard. It's also the journalism of the future.

 

I'm confused. From reading this thread, it seems that real web content is considered Link Bait?

Analogy doesn't work. It implies something negative.

 

I woudnt say its spamming really, for example the thing you mentioned were peaple copy and paste things from your website to there site or myspace page or something anyway That same logic is used allover the internet, its not spamming its a free way of getting users of your website to promote your website to other peaple. See its not just a case of "If you have a really good idea, peaple will find it and it will advertise it and youll be rich and stuff"
At one point, all the major sites we visit today, they must have been link baited at some point you know. Some without them knowing some with the webmasters knowing.

 

Now thats a link bait! rep added, also... A) Im a very experianced webmaster i would say, with 40 sites pr3-pr5 and i only make $300 a week on adsence ($1,200) so if some kid can make more than me in 2months

*i know it was made up but hehe*

 

But that's different. You said earlier that Link Bait was REAL content that attracts clicks. It was something of value and was original. In your latest example you are implying the story about the sick man and his family is completely fabricated. I would agree, fabricated content that is presented as fact (in other words, made-up stuff) IS link bait. It is also an ethical issue, but ethics seems to run low on the Internet due to the anonymity.

So, is your definition of Link Bait really mean anything that is unethically presented?

 

Link baiting is probably the best method of getting your PR up for a new site, initially. Some people are jsut too narrow minded and think there is only one way to do anything.

 

This entire topic is confusing. It seems to me it's a VERY VERY thin line between REAL CONTENT and BAIT. Bait certainly implies something negative. However, I agree with Jasonb, even great things need marketing or nobody will see 'em.

In the end, I still believe this is a question of ethics. If you can look yourself in the mirror and say, "this is good stuff - people really need to know this" then you're in the clear. Maybe I'm naive...

 

Some times what you think is good stuff to other peaple could just be rubbish and sound silly, its about marketing your ideas properly, if link bait is the answer then doing it, peaple who want to sucseed will do anything pretty much. If it means link baiting then theyll do it, lots of peaple think link bait is a form of spam, or spam for clever peaple. Its marketing, Online Gurilla marketing in a way. Sites like Digg.com and all them other ones, they open the door to bloggers to blog about stuff they read on there. If your sites on the front page of digg from link baiting, your a genius i suppose, becouse you have just opend a box to more traffic and blog posts about your site. Also, peaple read up on Digg, then go on forums and talk about the subject they see there or something, i see it loads of times.

 

Fair enough..

I particularly like "spam for clever people."

 

sound like any thing going into a site is link bait.

 

I despise the term 'link baiting.' Rather, I like to think of it in terms of creating and promoting compelling content. This is undoubtedly the future of white hat SEO and, as Google continues to evolve, is the only sure bet of influencing search results pages for years to come. Sooner or later, Google will begin to crack down on 'the dark side' (not that I have any thing against it....well maybe the comment spammers).