I was stumbling around Digg just now and came across an article about link baiting. http://www.1938media.com/linkbait-is-for-losers/ There's a video here by some guy iv never heard of but his blogs pretty cool and ill be reading more right after this post. The opening of it is funny, "I wana talk about link baiting, i think its the most stupidest thiiing..." He's been saying what iv been saying for a while now, Digg and Delicious are a good way to gain links and interest as its free and natural. What are your thoughts on this subject guys?
i like link bait, but the natural way. sometimes people try to create this link bait, by somehow starting a discussion on there own sites, which is the worst thing to do. if you have some tools, or content, then the natural link bait is going to happen, and that's good. who don't want discussions on there own links
Link bait is just about creating a great site or a great blog post. Its nothing controversial. There is nothing better than spending half an hour on something that gets thousands of amazing links. Justin: link bait is easy. For your blog just write an in depth article about something like the top 5 backup solutions for your mac and then email the big gadget blogs and get it dugg.
I think the guy is actually just arguing over semantics. he uses the term wrong, and the fact that he says something to the effect of "i can't believe people spend time thinking about how to game the search engines with link bait" shows that he's a little off target. The mistake he's making is that he's referring to good content as link bait. Or being honest as link bait. No. That's not necessarily link bait. That's just good content. That's the stuff you're supposed to have if you want to get lots of visitors. Link baiting is creating something useful, or, more often times, something that appears to be useful and then promoting it for the purpose of getting backlinks. IMO link bait is, in large part, half-assed content. Think about it. If the only purpose you have is to get links, then you want to get it out as fast as possible. I have seen so many tools that are buggy and incomplete, but serve a basic functionality, and are promoted in forums and blog comments or digg that garner backlinks. So. i guess the conclusion here is this: Linkbait is crappy content disguised as good content and then promoted as if it were useful. So stay away from the fast way of getting people to your site. Just write some good content.
Link baiting is, by far, the easiest way to get traffic. By definition, link bait means creating content that people want to read and link to. Why wouldn't this be good? Some of the individual posts on my blog have been linked to by over 1,000 other sites. Most people would consider this link baiting. Each time I write one of these "great" posts, I get a ton of new feed readers, increase Google rankings, and end with more daily readers. I don't see why this is bad, it just means I'm giving people want they want to read. Anita
Anita, Then I would argue you're not giving them link bait. I think link bait has the stigma of attempting to be good content expressly to gain links. If thats not the case, then we have basically just renamed the term "creating quality content" to "linkbait". And that is the most stupidest thing ever.
Creating quality content / tools/ widgets - anything that properly promoted can get you a lot of links is linkbait. Who cares about the word in itself!
Quality content doesn't equal link. And even you got link, you might or might not get your desire anchor. By modify the title and add a few line at the end, you can make the same article become linkable. Then you have to target it to people who are likely to link to you. (you don't submit story like "top ten unix trick" to Fark). It is more than just quality content Link bait was create for site that will not get link naturally (like a insurance site or casino site). After that people just abuse the term and put it on everything
I understand what ahkip is saying that quality content isnt always going to get links into it naturally, you need to purposely go out and add it to your delicious and submit it to Digg and other sites like it, in hope that many other peaple will do the same if they find it use full. Baseiccly if you have good content then you have to actually let peaple know unless they visit your site regularly. My web hosting site uses AJAX and the billing center uses Ruby on Rails and as these are two new up and coming ways to develop sites many bloggers blog about my site. The only thing is peaple allready know about my site, see the hundreds of avatars across DP,NP,V7N ect.. is good content something that peaple enjoy reading and find usefull or a site that looks good and impresses, or both
My definition of linkbait: Link-worthy content that you heavily market in order to gain natural links. I think what makes linkbait different from other content is the "heavily market" part. This includes digg, reddit, netscape, delicious, emailing other webmasters, forum sigs, etc.
Maybe this thread should be called "Whats the defanition of linkbaiting" as it seems the title is pretty harsh on those who link bait.
I'll agree that linkbaiting has more to do with marketing your content and less to do with the actual quality of it.
Yeah all though marketing has to be done as there may be really good content/tools whatever it maybe, even if its amazing, if there is no marketing done then no one will see it.
Interesting thread. I'm completely new to this whole area. Trying to improve my online marketing, after years of being involved in mostly offline stuff, so thanks for the info. I have so much to learn!
I think Link baiting is creating something that acts as a bait for someone linking to it. It can be good content, a good tool or whatever ... these are natural link baits ... white baits. There are maybe grey baits which actually nudges ppl to link to you. Then theres the black baits which forces people to link to you in excahnge for a service such as templates links, etc. Depends on your fishing style. My thoughts