Link Bait - Buzzword or Marketing gold?

May 10th, 2006

If your website wouldn’t normally attract people linking to you, then create a page that they WILL link to. Creating a ‘link bait’ page or even site is the SEO trend of 2006. The classic example of this is Burger King’s Subservient Chicken site. Word spread around the net of this perfect example of viral marketing, and today it commands 29,700 links according to Yahoo, and a strong number 1 position for the search term ‘chicken’ in Google.

As inbound links become increasingly important in search engines’ algorithms, attracting links can be an extremely effective promotion technique - not only from natural traffic from those links, but also in the SERPs. Even more rewarding is getting inbound links from large sites - Death By Caffeine shot from PR zero to PR6 in Google from a single link from the aol.com homepage.

The problem really is that most successful link bait pages are either funny, controversial or self effacing - which does not fit in with the company ethos of a lot of larger clients. This can work in the favour of smaller companies however who are willing to be flexible with their brand to get some of the best ‘free’ promotion possible right now.

Another great way of building link bait is by being on the cutting edge of new search terms. Take for example the term ‘link bait’ itself. As of January 24th this year, there were only 25 results for the term on Google - now, it’s in the region of 27,000. As more and more people blog and write about the phenomenon, they will often link to a resource on it - so the first few sites to coin the phrase potentially have 1000’s of incoming relevant links for that term to their pages.

Compiled from a few ideas we’ve had here, and reading a few blogs on the subject, here’s a few ‘link bait’ ideas (and of course making more great content for your site):

• Make a valuable resource (lists, special reports, history of, how to, etc.)
• Write an interesting article
• Run a newsworthy ‘event’ such as a contest
• Test something new that has not been done before
• Be the first in doing something on the internet
• Write something controversial
• Be the first to write the latest news in your niche
• Disagree with an authority
• Write some funny humour
• Make an interesting picture
• Be the first to research and document something
• Make a tool that others can put on their sites but that links to you
• Make a joke about a known person
• Make a resource that is just in time for a major event
• Write an outrageous theory and back it up with logics
• Write useful comments on something that is happening
• Give something valuable for free
• Coin a new acronym in your niche and get people to talk about it
• Become an expert in your niche and write valuable information