Linkbait: What is it and how can it help build your online presence?

Linkbait is content which is created in the hopes that others will enjoy it and link back to your site. The process involves creating content which others would find valuable and link through to on their own websites or even submit to a social bookmarking or article syndication site.

Why is linkbait good for your online presence? Well, as long as the links which result from it don’t come from a questionable source, incoming links add credibility to your content in the eyes of search engine spiders. Additional links can also mean more traffic from users who stumbled across the link to your site.

How should you go about linkbaiting?

While the principles of linkbaiting should be a natural part of any content creation process, there are specific ways of creating content specifically to attract attention.

Your personal branding goals and industry niche should give you an idea of what angle to take to persuade others to link to your content and here are some pointers to help:

• Provide something new or unique.
• The more generous you are with valuable content, the more readers will enjoy it.
• Be humorous, topical or thought provoking.
• Supply the content which your audience is searching for (with the help of a bit of keyword research).
• Incentives are effective linkbait, but remember to include valuable content for the reader, not just incentives for those that link to you.
• Be controversial or engage in debate by posing questions and interacting via your comments section.
• Encourage linking. Make it easy to share, provide favicons for easy linking or even the optimised link code.