What Is Link Baiting And What Are Its Benefits? - Semalt Expert
Link baiting is an action that is taken to obtain natural links leading to a website. We need to know what to do to get people to check out the site. Each such effective action supports the positioning of the website in search results. In this article, you will learn how to conduct Link Baiting well. We have prepared some tips for you - Be sure to read them!
Ways to do effective link baiting
There are many possible forms of creating your link baiting. However, it is impossible to rely on just one. In their activities, they should be skilfully differentiated. Here are some of them:
Infographics
Must be legible and transparent, containing maximum knowledge in an interesting graphic form. Why does an infographic attract a lot of people and links? Well, not everyone likes to read. Which means most users prefer photos, video or something else. This form is primarily much more digestible. In addition, we do not always have time to browse extensively prepared reports - in the case of a quick glance at the infographic, this problem disappears. In order to create a good infographic, professional tools help.
Guides
They can contain simple information for beginners who want to learn about a given industry. Publications with the announced number of goods, e.g. "10 examples for ..." are popular as link baiting. That is why it is worth using them to gain recipients who are beginners in a given topic, which is the majority. Such actions can have a positive impact on positioning.
Interactive content
Creating such elements as a calculator or a quiz does not seem easy at first glance, but they are very effective tools for reaching new readers. Usually, a good widget has a valuable use, such as a currency converter - which can be embedded in any website for better link-baiting performance. What people usually don't know is that there are code snippets inside these widgets that will eventually lead back to the developer's website.
Guest blogging (Guest posting)
![13 Benefits Of Guest Blogging [For Guest Writers and Website Owner]](https://static.startuptalky.com/2021/09/benefits-of-guest-blogging_startuptalky.jpg)
This is a very good way to get incoming links. Opening your site to bloggers means you'll get new content for your website. You need to make sure that the guest text is well written and that the persons who created it will want to promote it by linking to them. Blogging is also posting your articles to others on the same principle. Of course, when you write guest posts on other blogs, you create backlinks in your guest posts and build authority in your niche. The more good texts you write, the more you will be promoted. Most likely, you will also be invited to many other sites where you can write guest posts and get more valuable links.
Contests
This is a very simple, but extremely interesting form of link baiting because it transfers almost all the action to the users themselves. Regardless of the industry and products offered in the contest, the person must share our post on their social media with a short note about why they should win. Such a simple advertisement will ensure that we reach the friends of this person. Among them, there may be another person who will share the post, in this way our page will gain publicity.
Interviews
Conducting a good interview on an interesting topic with a respected person in the industry is not easy. You should take care of many extremely important elements that affect the reception of the interview. It is a time-consuming form, but well organized and advertised, it gives huge benefits in promoting the site as link bait. A famous name will attract people who will listen to the interview and send it to their friends who share similar interests, thanks to which we will gain many valuable links.
Video
A way to reach users for whom infographics or interviews are of little importance and steer clear of them. Producing a good video in terms of content and good-quality graphics is very difficult. However, this does not change the fact that such materials are a very good link bait that can spread quickly in the industry, as long as it is good and factual. You should not expect hundreds of thousands of views on the video immediately after its release, but good materials will boost the image of the brand and the website.
The most important thing is true value and usefulness
People mistakenly offer materials they don't care about. However, keep in mind that the value is relative. What is valuable to one person may be worthless to another. The more the user knows about a topic, the more simple things will not interest him/her, and obtaining links to his/her website will be more difficult.
Consider whether you want to create and share information for laymen or for people who know the subject well. Although this requires more resources, it gives better results as link baiting. Maintaining a balance between the two sides seems difficult to achieve, but it is possible, however, it takes a lot of time to adapt well to different tastes.
Evoke emotions
If you want your content to be passed on, humour can be included. It is not required that you post an anecdote multiple times in each post (in which you do link baiting). Skilful handling of humour is needed. Pay attention to time, if you see something funny on the internet that you would like to add to your post or post, check if it is not a topic from a week or two ago.
Sometimes it's enough for the internet to forget, and your online marketing will be perceived strangely by readers. There are no effective tools for this. You should follow current trends and check interesting media events, remembering that the Internet is still a medium for young people.
What does the link-baiting process look like?
For link baiting to be considered effective, this four-step process must occur:
- First contact - a person meets our link bait for the first time.
- Consumption - begins reading and absorbing the messages we have prepared for him/her.
- Like - the content turns out to be good enough for the user to pass it on to others. It depends on this moment whether the person decides to send our material further.
- Sending - a given person who already liked the content decides to forward it. The link baiting has been completed successfully.
This process is effective link baiting, which is exactly what we want. Seemingly, the implementation of such an action seems simple - creating good content so that others will send it on, and the website will gain interesting links. However, the whole process requires a lot of commitment.
Obstacles to link baiting
Although the above steps may seem simple, in practice they may turn out to be completely different. Some barriers keep the link baiting between consumption and enjoyment. Most often, the content is a block of dry text which, although it contains a lot of interesting information, does not make the person reading the content forward it.
Consider how text can be turned into an image. People see when what we offer them is uninteresting or bland. In the latter case, they will not be willing to pass on our information, and that is not the purpose of link baiting. For the sake of the site, you need to create interesting material in terms of information and design.
How to promote your link bait?
It is naive to think that creating good material on an interesting or current topic is all we need to do to get information about us to spread all over the Internet.
Why? Because if potential linkers never see your content, how can they ever link to it? You need to start by posting materials on your social media - Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. It is worth considering buying sponsored posts on Facebook. You have to do it skilfully to target the content well, to the right users. You can also establish cooperation with people with larger reach in a given industry, who will place your materials with a link to the website on their profiles for a fee. However, such information really needs to be of good quality for someone to agree to promote it at home.
Controversial content
It is not convenient to post information or opinions on sensitive topics. Even if a given sentence agrees with the opinion of the crowd, there will always be people who will be offended by an opinion. So, you shouldn't be dealing with such topics? It depends, the opinion of what we should publish and what not is very subjective. There would be positive reactions - there would certainly be negative ones as well. Either way, there are bound to be people who will link to even simple reviews. It all depends on how our link-baiting is supposed to look at us.
Be inspired by the best
There is nothing wrong with modelling yourself on people or websites that have achieved success in the industry. It is known that the same procedure is impossible, but it is worth using a proven link baiting at home. Check if the competition has not published topics that you would be able to do better and in a more accessible way to the client. Maybe the article is out of date, but the idea itself is good. It is worth changing it, updating it, and considering whether it might work better in a graphical form.
What if there are no good examples of link baiting in our industry? Where should you look for inspiration then? It's very simple - in other industries. While you can certainly draw inspiration from random, completely unrelated "line bait" elements, it often makes more sense to gather ideas from semi-related industries. Selected topics can be freely changed so as to match the topic to yourself and your industries, you don't have to limit yourself for link baiting to work.
Link bait vs clickbait
At first sight, it may seem that there is little difference between the two promotions. In reality, almost everything is different. Click baiting is based on exaggerating the subject, using a flashy title and thumbnail. The content, on the other hand, is superficial, often very short and different from the subject. The creators of this type of content do not care about the user's opinion and the quality of the website, but only about the click. Link baiting differs significantly from clickbait, it focuses on the content and organic promotion of your material.
Content freshness
You always have to remember that what we create becomes outdated over time, new data, statistics, analysis and studies informing about changes in the topics based on which we created our link baiting appear.
The solution is very simple, you should analyse with SEO tools like The Dedicated SEO Dashboard and check from time to time, whether the topic you are discussing has not changed and it should be improved so that it is still tempting for users who will find your material.
There is also a second solution, namely the creation of evergreen materials, i.e. based on data that does not change or changes very slowly. Of course, it is harder to find and develop something interesting about the constants in a given industry, especially taking into account the Internet and the constant influx of new information, but such materials will have a positive impact on the positioning.
Consistent high level
Link baiting is a process that takes time and commitment to consistently deliver content. It doesn't matter if it's guest writing for others or creating infographics, you need to realize that probably our link baiting will not be effective right away, and marketing will not bring huge successes overnight. You should be persistent and keep a high substantive level in your content. If we carefully create materials with time and proper promotion, they will be noticed in the industry.
Summary
Link baiting is a very interesting but at the same time difficult art of promotion. It can use many different techniques that will improve our website in search results. You need a combination of well-prepared content, a well-defined audience that really matters to you in the power of links and well-done promotion of your materials. It doesn't matter if you create the greatest content in the world, you won't get any links if people don't know it exists.
Interested in SEO? Check out our other articles on the Semalt blog.