The 7 Es­sen­tial El­e­ments Of Link Bait

Link bait is a pow­er­ful form of vi­ral con­tent de­signed to at­tract large vol­umes of web­site traf­fic, in­crease Google PageR­ank, and gain brand exposure.

There’s no faster way to gen­er­ate in­bound links from mul­ti­ple qual­ity sources. Best of all, you won’t have to make any cold calls or ask for any favors.

With so many ben­e­fits, link bait­ing is an im­por­tant con­sid­er­a­tion for every on­line busi­ness own­er’s off-page SEO toolkit.

Of course, cre­at­ing the type of con­tent that peo­ple ac­tu­ally want to share takes time and ef­fort. But don’t give up hope – the best vi­ral con­tent has seven im­por­tant el­e­ments in com­mon which are easy enough to ap­ply once you’ve dis­cov­ered them.

#1: Orig­i­nal­ity

Link bait comes in many forms: a wid­get or an app, an im­age or YouTube video, or a great top 10 list, but the real de­cid­ing fac­tor in its pop­u­lar­ity has less to do with its medium and more to do with its originality.

The In­ter­net is sat­u­rated with re­hashed ver­sions of the same old in­for­ma­tion from one blog post to an­other. Emerg­ing trends or in­for­ma­tion that takes on an in­ter­est­ing slant gets no­ticed fast. Orig­i­nal con­tent might take the form of in­sider se­crets or an ar­ti­cle that takes old facts and ag­gre­gates them with a fresh perspective.

#2: Rel­e­vance

SEO spe­cial­ists know that rel­e­vance is of vi­tal im­por­tance in every as­pect of search en­gine op­ti­miza­tion, and the main method of gaug­ing rel­e­vance is by un­der­stand­ing searcher in­tent. The same prin­ci­ple is true with vi­ral marketing.

Is an article/image/video di­rectly re­lated to achiev­ing con­ver­sion goals, or is it sim­ply in­ter­est­ing in a more gen­eral sense? Fo­cus your ef­forts on cater­ing to qual­ity traf­fic rather than count­ing hits. It’s bet­ter to gain 100 gen­uinely in­ter­ested vis­i­tors who view your con­tent, click through to your site, and stick around for more, rather than 1 mil­lion vis­i­tors who view your con­tent once and never come back.

#3: Use­ful­ness

Peo­ple love con­tent they can put to use in a prac­ti­cal way. The best way to find out what might be use­ful to your po­ten­tial clients is to spend some time hang­ing out in dis­cus­sion fo­rums and lis­ten­ing to their needs and complaints.

Use­ful con­tent might take the form of a desk­top wid­get or a free app that per­forms a help­ful func­tion, such as a unit con­ver­sion tool or an in­­­dus­try-re­lated glos­sary. It could also be an in­fo­graphic con­tain­ing lit­­tle-known facts or a down­load­able PDF, pod­cast, or e-book. You don’t nec­es­sar­ily have to de­velop new con­tent – you might take some­thing that’s been around for a while (such as a pub­lic do­main item) and be the first to present it in a more ac­ces­si­ble medium.

#4: Flat­tery

It’s a sim­ple fact: Peo­ple are much more apt to share con­tent that makes them look good in some way. With a lit­tle bit of cre­ativ­ity, you can use turn this ba­sic hu­man in­stinct into loads of back­links. For in­stance, you might tar­get an in­tel­lec­tual seg­ment of your mar­ket with a fact-heavy PDF or an aca­d­e­mic lec­ture. Oth­ers can be won over with some­thing as sim­ple as a funny ar­ti­cle they can share with their friends on Face­book for a good laugh.

#5: Com­mu­nity

The best link bait gen­er­ates dis­cus­sion. This kind of con­tent of­ten takes a stance on a di­vi­sive is­sue within the in­dus­try; how­ever, use tact and be care­ful not to alien­ate or of­fend the very peo­ple you’re try­ing to convert.

A safer ap­proach might be to high­light break­ing in­dus­try news, or sim­ply to cre­ate some­thing bizarre enough that peo­ple can’t help but say some­thing about it. A re­view of the most pop­u­lar In­ter­net memes can pro­vide a valu­able source of in­spi­ra­tion in this re­gard. An added ben­e­fit of dis­­­cus­­sion-gen­er­at­ing con­tent is that it con­tin­ues to mar­ket it­self, trans­lat­ing to less work for you and more vis­i­bil­ity for your business.

#6: Pre­sen­ta­tion

Eye-catch­ing pho­tographs and other vi­sual con­tent tend to do well as vi­ral con­tent, so in­vest your re­sources in top-notch de­sign, code, and graph­ics so you can stand out above all the competition.

If your link bait is text-based, take the time to craft an in­trigu­ing or au­thor­i­ta­tive ti­tle that en­cour­ages peo­ple to click, such as „5 Ways Your Web­site Lay­out Is Sab­o­tag­ing Your Business.”

#7: Ac­ces­si­bil­ity

Vi­ral con­tent is only vi­ral be­cause peo­ple share it. You can fa­cil­i­tate shar­ing in a num­ber of ways by in­stalling var­i­ous so­cial me­dia wid­gets, shar­ing em­bed­d­a­ble code, or up­load­ing an app to the App Store.

Fi­nally, don’t for­get to op­ti­mize your link bait the same way you would op­ti­mize your web­site or blog. Take ad­van­tage of the op­por­tu­nity to rank for valu­able key­words if pos­si­ble, and al­ways keep cus­tomer in­tent fore­most in mind.

You can mar­ket your con­tent us­ing so­cial me­dia pro­files, press re­leases, PPC cam­paigns, and guest post­ing. Get cre­ative, and en­joy the ride.

By Fed­erico Einhorn

Founder and CEO at Full­Traf­fic. Pas­sion­ate about Search En­gine Mar­ket­ing and Op­ti­miza­tion, reg­u­lar writer for the Full­Traf­fic Blog. Since 2005, Full­Traf­fic has evolved to be­come one of the most im­por­tant Traf­fic providers world­wide for small to medium sized businesses.