How to Create Link Bait

Link bait is the creation of something so useful, funny or important that other people want to link to it. It might be...

• Information
• A video
• A slide show
• A photo
• A resource

Link bait is useful in SEO, because it's a way to attract external inbound links. Most links to your site won't have sufficient PageRank to make a significant impression on your Google ranking (unless you're nowhere near the top). But every now and then, the right kind of link bait will attract a link from a significant player.

That one link can make all the difference, and see your site shoot up the listings.

The question is, how can you create something that is link worthy? If you're good at creating information, work on an article. Not just any article, but one of enormous interest to your target market. Something thorough, comprehensive, and too complex and awesome to copy.

If you're a videographer, get your camera out and start working on something useful to your target market. In this case, your target market is people who might link to you. This video has to be good, and feature something other people will feel compelled to share.

If you're a whizz on Power Point, create the presentation to end all presentations. Then upload it to Slideshare. This presentation has to wow everybody that looks at it. Be sure to include many things that surprise and delight your intended target audience.

If you're a talented photographer, perhaps you have or can take a photo that gets people talking. This is definitely the road to go down if you're marketing to other photographers. Use a service such as Flickr to display the photo.

Can you create a web utility (i.e. resource) of use to the people you're targeting? If you create something spectacular, people will tell others. If it's a web-based application, that's even better. It will sit on your site, and others will have no choice but to link to it.

Remember, whatever you produce, it has to be so good that people want to share it.

Can You Help Start the Ball Rolling?

Now that you've created your link bait, it's time to get the ball rolling. Popular bloggers are the key to getting the word out.

Your objective is to get links from influential Bloggers that already have the very audience you're hoping to reach. You want these Bloggers to link back to the web page that contains your creation. Here's how...

• Make a list of every Blog that focuses on your target audience. You can find them by typing appropriate key words into Google, Bing and Yahoo Search. Note down the top 6 blogs
  
• Visit each Blog on your list and see what their PageRank is. Install the Google toolbar to find each Blog's PageRank. Eliminate the half with the lowest PageRank, and find the name and email address of the remaining Blog owners
  
• Email each Blog owner individually, describe what you've created, who it's aimed at, and what it does. Do not describe it as 'link bait'. Include a link to your creation, and invite the Blog owner to review it and/or respond back to you with an opinion
  
• Visit these Blogs and see whether or not you've succeeded in getting linked. A link from even one of these sites is worth the effort in terms of the trust it earns you with Google. You'll find more people visiting your site, and so linking to it

You can probably come up with several other lists of Blogs by varying your key words. It also pays to use Google's Keyword Analysis Tool to find the most frequently searched key words.

The more searches there are, the more link juice you'll get flowing in your direction.