Not every page on your website can generate backlinks. This is one of the many reasons why link building is difficult. Pages need links to rank higher in search results, but not all pages will receive them. However, certain types of pages are better able to earn natural backlinks than others. SEO-area we call "linkbait".
Linkbait is content specifically designed to attract links. It's so valuable and unique that any industry blogger or influencer would find it difficult not to link to it. These links then help improve the websites' rankings in search engines.
Creating content that captures your audience's attention and encourages them to share it is a powerful way to generate links, traffic, and visibility. Linkbait allows you to leverage this by creating content so valuable that people can't help but link to or share it.
To successfully implement linkbait, you need to have a strategic plan and be familiar with both the fundamental principles of link building and current SEO tactics. When done correctly, by offering exciting interactivity and unique content that stands out from the rest, people will naturally share it online. In this way, successful linkbait strategies can attract attention and consistently draw in visitors.
Creating high-quality content is crucial for engagement. To ensure your audience connects with the material, research compelling topics and create unique insights that can't be found elsewhere. Then, enhance your visuals—striking images or interesting videos will capture their attention. Furthermore, it's essential to stay up-to-date so you can deliver fresh, new ideas that have the potential to go viral and spark meaningful discussion.
Reaching your audience is the final step in content creation. Make sure you do this across a variety of channels, such as social media, websites, and emails. It's crucial to monitor which strategies perform best so you can stay ahead by refining tactics that maximize engagement with your target audience.
Linkbaiting is an indispensable tool for businesses that want to gain attention in today's digital age. It increases website visibility and attracts potential collaborators, customers, and partners—all with minimal effort. While it can be challenging to implement correctly, the rewards are well worth it when done well. Let's take a look at why linkbaiting deserves your attention.
Google considers backlinks to be one of the most important signals for evaluating content.
Since Google views external links as indicators of popularity for a website or webpage, there is a strong correlation between websites with many high-quality backlinks and higher rankings.
You can have many backlinks from spam and low-quality websites, but they will probably not be as effective as a few backlinks from authoritative websites that are relevant to your business.
Backlinks also help Google find your content more easily. When Google follows a backlink to a new page, it crawls that page to discover all the links it contains. Therefore, you should implement an internal linking strategy. This means that pages on your own website link to each other.
This allows Google to follow a backlink to your website and continue following internal links to new pages once it has accessed your site. This is an important way for Google to understand your website's structure. Google crawls your website and indexes these pages, which makes your pages more likely to appear in search results.
Referral traffic refers to visitors who access your website via another website without searching for you on Google. They were "referred" by another source – similar to backlinks.
The advantages of referral traffic are:
New referral traffic can bring interested users to your website, which can lead to new customers. Google Analytics can help you check your referral traffic.
There are several different types of SEO backlinks. Understanding these different types can help you develop a link-building strategy.
Follow links are hyperlinks without additional attributes – standard hyperlinks, in other words. A follow link tells Google to pass on trust and authority to the linked page.
Note: There is no "follow link attribute" because every link is considered "dofollow" by default unless an attribute is added.
When you link to a page, you indirectly give your consent (and a follow link is used by default). In some cases, however, you might not want to do this.
For example, you might need to link to a competitor's page to explain them in context, but you don't necessarily want to give them authority. Or say you want to link to a page as an example within your content.
Nofollow links use the rel = «nofollow» attribute to tell Google and other search engines not to pass on any authority.
If money, a product or a service was offered in exchange for a link, the rel = «sponsored» link attribute should be added.
User Generated Content (UGC) links tell Google which links were created by users or customers.
This allows webmasters to indicate that they do not editorially endorse certain links on their pages. Examples include links in forum posts and blog comments.
Editorially placed links are links that you received naturally, without asking for them. For example, if a website links to your blog post via backlinks because they think it's a good resource, that would be an editorially placed link.
Google values these links because they are intended to improve the user experience and not to manipulate search engine algorithms.
Link systems (or link spam) refer to links that are designed to "manipulate rankings in Google search results".
Some examples are:
Participating in link-building schemes can result in a Google penalty, which can negatively impact your rankings. If you have participated in a link-building scheme in the past, you should consider removing harmful backlinks. This means asking Google to ignore certain links pointing to your website.
Being practical means creating something the reader can use immediately. Examples include tools, calculators, templates, checklists, and cheat sheets.
Another way to make your linkbait valuable is to give your readers something new to think about. This can be done by approaching a topic from a unique perspective and contributing something original to the conversation.
If you're as old as I am, you might remember Upworthy's glory days. In its heyday, it was as if every single article on the site went viral.
Upworthy is a website dedicated to positive stories. People shared the articles again and again because each one was crafted in a way that evoked awe, surprise, joy, and a general sense that the world isn't as bad as it seemed. Naturally, the content also worked incredibly well as link bait.
Positivity is just one aspect. There are countless emotions you can appeal to, such as anger, excitement, sadness, joy, etc. Try incorporating these into your link bait as well.
If people link to competing sites for specific reasons, it is logical to assume that the respective reason is important to the topic.
Therefore, before creating your link bait, you should look for common link reasons in the backlink profile of a similar page.
In just XNUMX steps:
For example, if we do this for the Greatist post about the perfect kettlebell swing, we see that quite a few people link to it because the post mentions the benefits:
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